Sometimes You Drink Cold Wet Tea

You drink cold wet tea
from a porcelain china teapot
that is convincing enough a fake
you are able to bow in makeshift shame
before the friends who gave it to you
and exclaimed immediately afterwards
with severity and fervour that shook your teeth
you are not at all worth their act of kindness.

You drink cold wet tea
from a porcelain china teapot
that is convincing enough a fake
with its dragons and phoenixes intertwined
you let the good friends who gave it to you
back into the world beyond your sight
you let them be stolen, you give them away
you bless them as they go onto their pilgrimages
and become relics for men, you smile at them
pride dripping from your mouth as they become
fishers of men -and of women every now and then-
you allow them unsatisfactory kisses in little cafés
and movie theatres, you solemnly nod as they
gently give head to those that they come to see
just a bit stockier, just a bit less resolute, just a tiny bit
less fashionable and smart than the One
in drunken hazes, you pray
as they convince themselves, as they get wet,
as they get bitter. You let them out into the world
and let them be, as you ponder what sort of love
or arrogance makes you give such a convincing
fake porcelain china teapot
to one you deemed unworthy
with such absolute clarity.

You drink cold wet tea
from a porcelain china teapot that’s way too hot to hold
but still convincing enough a fake
that while the friends who gave it to you are doing their own thing
you are made sure Beijing cannot be the
polluted colourless shithole your friends claim it to be
and you know there’d be misty little rivers that sang
tea songs in your name, there’d be
rice paddles for you to work, terrace after terrace
and old Kung Fu masters who would greet you
with wrinkled foreheads and funny accents only if
you weren’t deemed unworthy and reforged into
a djinn forced to live within the teapot—

“Oh well,” is all you say
some get to see China,
and some don’t, some fall in love
with idols, some with pricks, sometimes people get drunk
sometimes they’re so desperate they don’t even
need to get drunk, sometimes
Beijing is just a shithole, sometimes Kung Fu masters
have been dead for centuries, sometimes
kisses in little cafés are remembered, sometimes not,
sometimes it’s simply time you moved on, and every once in a while
the china you’re unworthy of is just a masterful fake;
but mostly
a scapegoat is needed
by strangers and friends alike,
and “Oh well,” is all you say
you know with absolute clarity that
you were a natural born.