Happy Helen Folásadé Adu Day!

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

that your whispers

were virgin olives

in the temples

of my ears

while 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 phases of the moon

tattoo now?

And perhaps not wane

as in failure

but something else 

in the key of  F  

which I hum 

under my atheist breath

until your cabernet lipstick

sips me once more

like a sommelier

or your manicured nails

re-press their crescents

into the midnight sky 

of my back?

Ifemi, hummingbirds

hover over petals

for the beady paradise 

of nectar—

is it a rhyme 

or a psalm in F Minor 

if the even nutty aroma

of almond blossoms 

in another garden

fails to stop me

from being spotted 

like a Luna moth 

under the halo 

of your porch light?

Oh, freckled cheeks of Jesus,

I now grasp

why Shakespeare claimed

 Cupid kills

some with arrows,

some with traps,

 because which angle 

of light unveils

what religion might bloom

or burst in your irises?

I don’t believe

you meant

“a love like hours won’t last”

even as the ache 

braided into your ponytail

swung from that first flame 

of dopamine 

to our last adieu. 

Ifemi, should our eyes meet again, 

I won’t underestimate

your wrist’s brassy passion 

for prayer beads

& police bracelets.

If I then dissolve 

into the blue flame 

of your breath, 

will I subsist

as breath, 

or simply burn?

Is it a ditty

in the key of F

—as a saxophone

curls into cursive— 

that any faith in roses

must be an elegy 

penned by the small hands

 of the rain? 

Ifemi, all the modern religions

are about belief

and in this they resemble

all the ancient religions

—how long

before the traces  

of sandalwood & citrus

in your hair

fail to settle 

what every scent

seems to believe 

about waning as a way 

of staying?