Cold Tea As a young boy, he is full of out of the ordinary and the ocean is his invisible friend And he would smile as he cried and pretended to drink sunflowers He is an artist at work with his tub of purple finger-paints And his little purple thumb. As a young man, he is a masterpiece shut away in a closet from being explicit He creates mock Mona Lisa’s with shades of purple paint He is forever forgetting what sunlight is except it looks like scrambled eggs and feels like warm elastic He doesn’t know what love is Except it looks like heaven and tastes like soft rose petals. As a middle aged man, he locks himself up against the sun and the people because it’s all he’s ever known And he puts away his paints as he begins to go mad And he still has a yellow piece of paper with little purple thumb prints Hanging on his wall. As an old man, he is sitting on a chilly iron chair on a star touched balcony babbling dreams of umbrellas and cinnamon, Pausing to listen to the ocean’s reply and smell the salt and burnt soda bread. Pausing to contemplate the thought of madness and explicit Mona Lisa’s and purple thumbs. Pausing to take another sip of cold tea