Spoken Word / Whiskey Sours (At Tea Time)

A faceless poet once breathed

“We are all searching for someone whose demons will play well with our own”

We reach out for sharp edges and sweet-sour relationships

Garnished with sugar-rimmed glasses to combat lemon tanged disappointments

Because we embody imperfection

 

We can’t stomach grenadine sweet all the time,

We’ve got to have extreme moments so we don’t always retreat into day dreams

Tacking on pretty pleases with a cherry on top of everything

We’ve acquired a taste for the salty,

The sour and bitter moments that caress our very beings

 

We like upping the contrast in pictures to highlight our colourful lives

While we’ve perfected a way to nurse drinks to take the edge off of reality,

Making memories we half remember for all their fractured clarity,

We swallow feelings that last our lifetimes

 

I don’t want a lukewarm existence

I want to burn my lips with silver tongues and let life engulf me

Exhale Namastes that enhance my heartbeat

Pounding exhilaration and broadcasting my adrenaline from the sky, down

I don’t build from the ground up

 

I don’t want to temper my existence with dashes of milk

And packets of sweetener that make every day powdered and artificial,

Predictable as early afternoon chimes that ring up tea times

 

I refuse warmth that evaporates too quickly

Moments that leave me gagging on a bland existence

I’d rather be the burn in someone’s shot of whiskey

Than a cooling mug of tea, rushed to a microwave to coax back its heat.