ode to old flames

i was looking for some collection of limericks in my external drive when i stumbled at this material. some current of unease ran through me as i read the words that i’d typed a long time ago. this was written in the middle of some weird retrospection. i was going to edit it but resisted the urge to do that. it’s better left as “purist” as it has been, i figured.

note: preceding alphabet on each verse is the first of real names.

m.

shall we talk of times spent relieving under feline palms

until the estuary of laughter burst into unceasing rain of cobble stones?

shall we talk of the sudden surge of air

that came on the hour of suffocation?

or the sparing water that trickled down, alas, from

god’s middle finger?

who broke up with you?

i know the one who packed his sharded re-

                                                          mains

d.

mother theresa of the kogi river.

of course, we’re poles apart

but do I look like the demons your pastors talk about?

listen mother, even the gods sleep with men.

how was your jesus born?

f.

oh, those songs behind campus listening walls.

those secret nightwalks along craggy lanes

dodging guards and marauding canines

those needless excursions to god’s own door.

with angels (demons?) prying down from the steeple

of that friday under soluble sky

when silence spoke in operatic accents

and fingers tip-toed beyond the hovering sheds

and the strangeness of it all –

of the two gapping years

of you at the towering edge

of this memory and legacy

that love knows no age

that love is age-less

b.

the rigmarole of stupid promises is over.

those pestering speeches

of berlin wall melting into mediterranean sprawl.

but thanks due for the memory of sleek laughs

and accented vexations.

thanks due to the memory of frothful kisses.

and randy yarns.

of sweet musings that marked your paw marks

and of the tears

streaming into frothless beer.

damn ogun and this metal beadboard

stubborn daemon…

damn those fare-wells and

damn your tears. damn it all.

but doc,

will you unbelch this belly of this nuclear reaction, the one

your america ignores?

ps. even if these words read like hieroglyphics to your

hippocratic brain, yours is the heart that was desired.

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