We would like to thank all our excellent writers and loyal readers who have provided such beautiful poetry and material to us through the past couple years.

Due to time constraints, we can no longer maintain this site. Instead, we will host your poems on Coffee Table Poetry for Tea Drinkers on a separate page within that site. Please feel free to continue to send us your creative thoughts, words and hearts. We will post it all on one site along with poetry from the traditional and classic poets.

Many thanks again for all your contributions. We have enjoyed each and every poem you have shared with us.



Your Poetry Loving Team
Coffee Table Poetry for Tea Drinkers

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By: Philippa Lane

 Blue floats and hovers
it never comes to rest
its scent is distant bonfires
its touch moth-breath

Blue is man-child
with spiritual eyes
a stranger in a room
who isn't one
soft down on upper lip
felt without touch

it is dreaming at night
of what is not and cannot be
it is gauze-vision
half-reality

it is a shaky signature
on a typewritten page
seen through mist

Blue is pain that is borne alone

it is quena music
bone-notes quavering over absent flesh
in death worship

yawns are for want of blue
and partially for having it

Blue is pigeons
and siamese cats
and snow shadows
it is for ever
stretching

it is ten billion spindles
weaving blue fabric endlessly

it is the certain
uncertainty

(Nov.2004)
(Senneville, Quebec)


Philippa Lane


Daily Quote: I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a canceled note - torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.
- Henry Ward Beecher

Linguist Corner-ITALIAN: estraneo: stranger / noun
Example sentence: Non invitare estranei a casa, per favore.
Translation: Please do not invite strangers into the house.

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Posted by V. Mahfood - 2012

By: Gert Strydom

 Hovering I saw a redbreast and a wren,
who were both very scared of men
and to me both birds had some lovely charm,
as innocents to which I meant no harm.

Fluttering some cooing wild doves came down
making my small garden their very own
some pecked bread or landed on my arm,
as innocents to which I meant no harm.

Pecking some hoopoes landed in my yard
and the two of them was never apart,
fleeing in their scared heart throbbing alarm
as innocents to which I meant no harm.

Gert Strydom


Daily Quote: slimsy \SLIM-zee\, adjective:
Flimsy; frail.
Example:
"Nice girl . . ." he mused, "but sort of thin and slimsy and delicate, not robust and hearty like the kind of girl you ought to have on a farm."
-- Bess Streeter Aldrich, A White Flying Bird

Linguist Corner-FRENCH: être dans la lune
: to be lost in one's thoughts, to be absent-minded ("to be on the moon")

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Posted by V. Mahfood - 2012

By: Godfrey Rust

 There's a place where socks go
when the washing is done
and the driers have dried
and the spinners have spun
and it's past eight o'clock
and there's no one about
and the launderette's locked
then the odd socks come out.

There is hosiery here
of each pattern and hue
some plain, striped or spotted,
some black, red or blue
some wom only once,
some so old they have formed
to exactly the shape
of the foot they once warmed

some were brought back from Sock Shops
in airports in France,
some were hideous presents
from matronly aunts
but in all their variety
one thing is shared:
to the place where socks go
they will not go pre-paired.

Then the odd socks remaining
are placed in the chest
(They must turn up sometime
now where was that vest...?)
and new socks come at Christmas
and birthdays bring more
and the old lie, alone,
at the back of the drawer.

And maybe, one evening
when memory is low,
they too slip away
to the place where socks go
and in silent reunion,
each one with its pair,
they join in the dance
with the other things there

the letters unanswered,
the calls not returned,
the promises broken,
the lessons not learned,
the lost afternoons,
the appointments unmade,
the best of intentions,
the debts never paid,

and the friends not kept up
and the others let down
in the ragbag of conscience
they waltz sadly round,
beyond the respite
of the washing machine,
no amount of detergent
can now get them clean

till that day when all laundry
is washed white as snow,
and everyone's tumbled
and soft soap must go,
when nothing is hidden
but all is revealed
and socks shall be holy
and souls shall be healed.


Godfrey Rust


Daily Quote: Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
- Mohandas Gandhi

Linguist Corner-ITALIAN: neve: snow
Example sentence: Quando c'è la neve in città è una gran seccatura!
Translation: When there is snow in the city, it is very annoying!

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Posted by V. Mahfood - 2012

By: Dan Nelson

His deep expressions of love for her would be his worldly gifts,
Beyond her...he had always had a higher purpose,
To give freely to all with an open heart,
To prove that love was real,
To show others how much a man can love a woman,
To bare his heart and soul to all and without restraint.
To reveal to them his complete devotion to her.
He would become her ever loving poet,
Her best friend.
The man who loved her the most.
And she would become his most beautiful work of art,
His eternal inspiration,
His masterpiece...


Dan Nelson


Daily Quote: "Go within every day and find the inner strength
so that the world will not blow your candle out".
- Katherine Dunham

Linguist Corner-SPANISH: flojo, adjective / weak; lazy
Flojo is often used to describe things which are weak, from people:
Example:
Todavía tiene las piernas muy flojas.
His legs are still very weak.
...to tea:
Este té está muy flojo.
This tea is very weak.

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Posted by V. Mahfood - 2012

By: Francis Stella

 An October’s windrowed field,
And on my hike I have to yield
When from the path you launch your lark
Then settle pressed against some bark.
A question for you, question mark:
How was it you were so designed
With beauty not foremost in mind?
You share the sugar maples’ mood
Like all your red-orange autumn brood,
But soon you’ll seek to winter where
With wings together as in prayer
You’ll haunt some crevice and forbear.
And why that trial by snow and ice—
Should not a chrysalis suffice?
Your wings when you will not confide
Show us their dullish woody side—
And that mark that can be coy,
That silver ringlet trompe l’oeil,
For which your Adam did anoint
You an interrogation point.
Then how you warn us story-lovers
Of judging books just by their covers,
For with one vivid respiration
You part your Book of Revelation,
That splendid text of ash and fire
Whose secret wisdom we desire!
And as you breathe who are the sages
That turn unseen your burning pages—
Can I become an intimate
Of Lepidoptera Holy Writ?
Your wings as well are so curvaceous,
Their flowing margins violaceous,
Like leaves in dreams, and hereupon we
Have to ask, this kirigami:
Who plied the shears with all this craft,
And where then are you autographed?
And shouldn’t such perfection’s hours
Be wiled away in minding flowers?
And yet you crave what can’t invite us,
Felled rotting fruit and such detritus—
Between your flying-circus stunts
That fling you everywhere at once:
You’re like a flaming paper plane
Inside a private hurricane!
Is dread alone what makes you start?
(The thought of that can break the heart.)
Or is your romp that’s so erratic
The raptures of an Earth ecstatic—
WITH schooling in the Eleatic,
When since so often it’s your plan
To end up right where you began?
O question mark, you midair dancer,
Is silence then your only answer?
There’s so much I would like to know
But now I see you have to go
And leave me mostly in the dark
On matters of the question mark.



Francis Stella


Daily Quote: "Gardening is all about optimism.
I put a seed in the ground.
I consistently tend it,
confident I will see the results, in time,
of the nurture I have provided."
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Linguist Corner-FRENCH: soutien
English translation: support
Part of speech: noun
Example sentence:
French: Le gouvernement envoie de plus en plus de patrouilles de police en soutien.
English: The government is sending more and more police patrols as a backup.

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Posted by V. Mahfood - 2012

By: Robert Anderson
 in my fragility
i often bereft my very breath of life
of all the wonderment left by dreams--
induce myself
into a tragic, tragic beauty
echoing my heart's sheer deservings

immortal tracings of longing
somehow aurify the crevices left in my soul
by all i have ever known simply
to versify their very essence
to the surface of each willing page

i sense far more in only
the most romantic of poets:
days of yore when the Promethean bard
[Shelly] crossed in his own self
the fine line between heaven and earth,
Keats with his melancholic breathlessness still rests
deeply within my heart;
oh, how they remain my unsurpassed favorites

and so, you see
i am but a humble man whose been bred
completely in the pulsating depth
of poetry

may i pertain to this
forevermore.

Robert Anderson


Daily Quote: "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant.
If we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome".
- Anne Bradstreet

Linguist Corner-ITALIAN: comprendere: to include
Example sentence: La lista comprenderà i nomi di tutti i vincitori
Translation: The list will include the names of all the winners.

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Posted by V. Mahfood - 2011