Is your love HyperQBic?
Does it have Alchemical metaphors?
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, how many
more dream cycles
must I hold my breath
until your cat eyes
& rebel red nails
re-press their crescents
into the midnight sky
of my back?
Until your vixen lipstick
recrosses the ravine
of No Return
to sip me once more
like a sommelier?
Ifemi, is it a rhyme
when not even
the nutty undertone
of almond blossoms
can stop a man
from being spotted
like a Luna moth
by the halo
of your porch light?
Ifemi, it seems
only this morning
that your fingers—
half icicle, half feather—
counted every curl
on my neck—
but who traces
your phases
of the moon tattoo now?
Ifemi, should
our eyes meet again,
I promise to parse
your wrist’s brassy passion
for prayer beads
& police bracelets
and how your husky pleas
might crown
my love as king.
Ifemi, why do
I seek cashmere
from palms red
with symbols
of five types of fury?
Ifemi, if I dissolve
into the blue flame
of your breath,
will I subsist
as breath,
or simply burn?
Oh, freckled cheeks of Jesus,
I now begin to grasp
why Shakespeare claimed
Cupid kills
some with arrows,
some with traps,
but Ifemi, who knows
which angle of light
could reveal
what’s hidden
in the amber
of your irises?
Ifemi, is it written
—as a saxophone
curls into cursive—
that a fool for roses
must remain
a fool for rain?
I don’t believe
you wrote
“a love like hours won’t last”
before your ponytail
braided with ache
swung past
that first flame of bud
to our last good buy.
Yet Ifemi, how can
I be sure if
your hair’s scent
of sandalwood & citrus
would settle
what a held breath
seemed to be trying
to say about absence
as a way of staying?
