No Ordinary Love

NO ORDINARY LOVE
“Didn’t I tell you what I believe . . .”
Helen Folasade Adu

How many moon cycles has our earth spun

since I leaped the ravine of No Return

to enter you as a sommelier

would a wine cellar,

since the bright crescents

of my fingernails

lit up the black sky of your back,

or these guitar strings bent

under cinnamon fingers

rhumba enough to evict

tenets of any religion?

Tonight, say a loose moonbeam

butterflies into the room

behind my ruby stung eyes,

mean a quill of light tries to inscribe

how nearly calligraphic kisses

could spell or dispel

lunar letters of despair.

Learnèd astrologer

under which bright constellation

might dreams cease

to summon those Calypso lips

glossed to lapse all logic,

if logic could even survive

your tresses

curling darker

than the drums

of what I prayed 

you could save me from.

Should I recite twin legends

of your razor swung legs,

but paint your skirt teal

as Sade's pleated lyrics

woven from shiver thin sheets?

Say doubt’s darkened cave of mouth

hid sparks of wildfire

to fell a forest entire,

then if all our nights

were spent like coins

glazed in the glare

of prayer’s fountain,

who cares?

Some wonder if we’re freed

or fried by the lightning inside

a theorem of thighs

that ignite five types of feral,

this time as the thin edge

of teeth on a low hung ear lobe’s

suspect rim,

that time as an ankle’s

brassy passion for police bracelets.

Let’s try to pretend
dawn’s first daughter,

danger’s onyx angel,

never snatched our head back,

hummed “Forever” into an ear,

or skipped our river rock quick

to spawn the sufi songs

of dragonflies that now seize

our pawns en passant.

Yet who else craved

an Old Crow moan

to throb their own throat,

or learned how vows

feel mouthed tho they sizzle unsung

in the cast iron marriage

of sly catfish & cool cornmeal,

between a first flame of bud

& that last good buy?

If his halo dipped

to kiss the curves

of Magdalene’s ear,

could even Jesus

have denied her Gospel

of touch?

Beloved,

how many Luna moths

need flit into old flames

while we burn coal hot

trying to unlock

a mystery like magnetism

with keys found under

the tea rose carpet

of your tongue?