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?
