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Uche Nduka
Transbird
i
stare my erection down.
you must be ready to connect with the dexterity of
my carelessness. unwild wagging a reprimand.
won't play chicken with this agenda. the tightwad is
no model
of sobriety. i need a country in which mismappings
can securely happen. pop those nodding balloons. low
low low neckline.
will you tumble with me. the question is whether
it's worth eating
a
humble pie. you may eavesdrop. don't rush the
lovesong. guitar soloing, ten tiles grimacing,
unbland. we have our share of country, blue grass
and blues. strapless you.
i
need to invite the tester, the upholsterer, the
twister.
more at ease with the cringe factor. the jutting jaw
of tediousness. queasy.
i
do hope i make you queasy. halfway through breakfast
in bed it happened. those were footnotes to
painterly vices.in less than five minutes i got it
off my chest. goes back to elan in Far Rockaway. i
cannot keep away from laughter's
sway. loves unweave themselves. in me shores are
born.
crocus rolling towards a storm as a new day
genuflects.
i
roam and hurl the seemingly unmagical into the air.
better to push me into
Charlotte's
web. struggling to keep
an alliance with firecrackers. one day all
chocoholics...where do you live. in the tower of
ink. she used to boss my dreams around. for beauty
am insatiable. assessing this move from hot to cold
coffee. severing: pulling away from lyrical dogma.
godward into granite. bad hair on the porch.
less of you. and when it comes to haystacks. when it
comes to being lecherous in a Song Of Solomon kind
of way. is dupery somehow necessary to what you are
about. you're dope. won't settle for less answers
from your mouth tightening around the sacrament of
sex. at each thrust your voice comes: "love me". take
the mangled mandolin, risk the abyss.
how loud this cloud has become. the rain grows fat.
we are no longer in a
high edge closer to the crab we call HISTORY. how
loud this wind has grown.
like the hooligan in a cherub. the storm can shed us
and the earth can
shed us when ease leaves a striptease. but who
cares. what could it
have been.
shaken and reshaken: illumination's fate.
away from grumbling
cards. skein to skein. this life's alternate take.
or the hands that spread you
or the maw that rues you.
we happy with the
decision of that fixer in
tights.
that means a woodwind morning. from dragrope
to shutters. visible
in it-we are visible only in a crest that respects
no borders. you are the one
the old days spoke of. light of my blood,
mist of my
blood. not for a moment
could you stand a wire fence. that doesn't mean
moving from plain
disorientation to mere peregrination. are we happy
with those snails covering
what's etched in stone. are we marked by indigo.
by
a blue harmattan.
sharing a spider's breath, stepping into a hidden
granary.
you sluiced and scrimped and died of tripe.
you
slummed and rummed and
died of tripe.
you slashed and heaved and died of
tripe.
you heirloomed and
clamshelled and died of tripe.
you dusted and carpetted and died of tripe.
you polehugged and bullhorned and died of tripe.
you
flinched and twitched and died of tripe.
what if the sins of the
rainforest were God's.
these revulsions of fiberglass. and periwinkle and
corn and pear.
and the sex
that plays us like flutes and demissions the willow.
ours this scratch,
this awakening. against whom do we battle in this
procession in
the garden of being. silence catches light from one
door to another,
approaches. i bristle at the crotchrubbing of a
sculpted measuring weight.
is this silence hard.
rearing goats in the sky. is
this silence soft.
planting
yams in the sky. is this light its own undoing.
is
this light a broken footprint. i
ask you:
mystagogue and wet nurse. you: towards an
arc of love bent.
this is what it is like. you are writing a book and
the book is recreating you,
delighting you, infuriating you. hence the hefted
the tufted. ablutions pool
and its lantern. i have to jump across a shield, run
away, when she approaches
me and memory's spillway. or else stay and read a
maternal foliage, its
cardinal pages,
solar premise. or else tell this
erection to water the aces.
this is the space gorging on days right in front of
us. here's our address.
we shall rise and prune a thicket and put a plea for
mutineers. futility isn't
our kinsman, a cruel quietude, asinine gourd. bells
of homage rumble in the air.
honeysuckle morning jokes about the number four.
jokes about the eleventh month.
of faith redeemed. of a stream's gleam, of shoal, of
sunzoner whose music
cobblestones once knew but forgot. as he once knew
his father but later forgot.
he heard the dance speak. he saw the song dance. it
didn't scrounge for chords,
mythologies guitars adored. so he did collude with
snake tracks in the dust
after all. as once he made peace with a mat of
straw. as once he saved
the bullwhip of longing. don't sound so sure. it's
so hard to find a way to the
transparencies of a brown heron. from asphalt to
cloverleaf. as if a broken dart
is not a testimony to exclusion. a quibble only the
alto sax knows. you say you
pulled me back from the brink. i was all by myself.
elsewhere as well. on the
other side of fate. we are made sacred by
these-sunbathing and coition.
where we wobble together
and wobble apart
in vertical laughter
am tossed about
by the sounds
your perfume makes
inspite of thirst
epics of migraine
catcalls of sawdust
prophecy
splashed on sickle
in a dias
heartprint
as crucible
as fingerboard
a
cupping of tenderness
margaritas to share
curvy iambs
essentializing jisms
sifting through spurts
i
wing away to lumina
i
can't decide whether
to question the noonings or not
in a dungeon out
of a dungeon it's
all the same
are you sure
i
have walked
and seen a dome eat ash
gravitas in reheated jams
beauty is not the absence of ugliness
uptown mulching
a
loamy ridge
no kindness is powerless
bringing back
the bottom that fell out
knocked in or knocked out
i
won't die of rock and roll
she is the source
of my ecstacy
if that's what comes with cowbells
threw out a prong
had enough of it
i
keep turning myself
upside down and inside out
and that's how she came
up with a shimmy shake
there wouldn't
be us if there
were no jellies
luxury's prance
spreadeagled
luxury's contralto
thighs riffing
joy never goes out of style
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