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
Beloved, I believed
your fingers
were half jasmine,
half flame,
circling each curl
on my neck
as if touch were teach
and the husk of your voice
was nothing
but incense drifting
in my temple.
But all moons wane
and whose fingertips trace
your lunar phases
tattoo today?
And not wane
as in failure
but a bluer fugue
in the key of F
your fingers erase
as they fret
—not one
I can hum
with atheist breath.
Sufis say
what I seek
is seeking me,
but is this true
if I seek your fingertips
in the weight of blankets,
the silk of socks,
or the fur lining gloves?
Helen, I mishear
the Phrygian psalm
of my wings
as hummingbirds
hovering for nectar
until not even
almond blossoms
can stop
the starving
of a Luna moth
caught in
your porch light.
I don’t believe
“a love like hours won’t last”
even as the braid
of your ponytail
tightened between
our first slow dance
and our last adieu—
even if
my wings alight
on the orange charcoals
of your voice.
I miss little
except the way
your fingers & lips
left crescent lessons
nightly on my neck
—shapes my nerves
cannot unknow.
I kneel before
my radio each night
until your voice
circles above
—a raptor’s shadow—
yet if I open my mouth
my teeth shatter
into tiny vipers.
I try to scream
but my tongue forks
instead into satin petals.
Oh, freckled cheeks
of Jesus,
I never grasped
why Shakespeare said
“Cupid kills
some with arrows,
some with traps.”
If I find the inside
of your arms again,
I won’t bind myself
in their silent circles
but instead seek
your wrist’s brassy need
for velvet-lined
police bracelets
and obsidian
prayer beads.
Is it a phrase curling in F flat
or an ache in the bass clef
that faith only loops
into a fugue in the rain?
I don’t know
what true religion
requires beyond belief
—but tonight
I tune the guitar
of my body
to nothing
but these notes
of blue jasmine
waning
in our blankets
and sheets.
