Is your love HyperQBic?
Does it have colorpuntal pearls like a ghost poem?
Here we go again.
I’m not thirsty, you’re thirsty
AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION
AS MUCH ADU ABOUT NOTHING
“Didn’t I tell you what I believe,
did somebody say that . . .”
Sade
Ifemi, I believe
it was only this morning
your whispers
were virgin olives
in the temples
of my ears
and the silk scarves
of your fingers—
half flame, half feathers—
counted every curl
on the back of my neck.
But all moons wane
and who traces
your lunar phases
tattoo now?
And perhaps not wane
as in failure
but something else
in the key of F
which I hum
under my atheist breath
hoping your cabernet lips
sip me again
or your French tips
re-press their crescents
into the midnight sky
of my back?
Ifemi, hummingbirds
hover over petals
for the paradise
of nectar—
is it a rhyme
or a psalm in F Minor
if even the aroma
of almond blossoms
in another garden
fails to keep me
from being a Luna moth
spotted under the halo
of your porch light?
Oh, freckled cheeks of Jesus,
now I grasp
why Shakespeare said
“Cupid kills
some with arrows,
some with traps”,
because which angle
of light unveils
how hazel devotion
might bloom
or burst in your irises?
I don’t believe
you meant
“a love like hours won’t last”
even when the ache
braided into your ponytail
swung from our first flame
of dopamine
to our last adieu.
Ifemi, if our eyes meet again,
I promise not to ignore
your wrist’s brassy passion
for prayer beads
and police bracelets.
If I then dissolve
into the blue flame
of your breath,
will I subsist
as breath,
or simply burn?
Is it a fugue
in the key of F
—as a saxophone
curls into cursive—
that true faith in roses
means elegies
penned by small hands
in the rain?
Ifemi, all modern religions
privilege belief
and in this they resemble
all ancient religions
—but how long
will the traces
of sandalwood & forsythia
you left on my pillow
still believe
in waning as a way
of staying?
