sleek hours of the morning waking up beside her,
she's lying on her stomach, wearing a see-through nightdress
i can make out the subtle pantylines,
how lovely her *** looks,
the crack
of dawn,
how transparent
my thoughts are.
"do you think about me now the same way you did last night?"
"i don't have all the answers, loverrr."
it's all fun and games to me, it seems.
she wants to be arranged over the balcony,
bending over, gripping the railing.
the ocean is in front of us,
i am holding her tiny waist from behind
and back and forth, back and forth, the slapping sound
of waves crashing
as the tide comes in.
i am making love to this girl, this pretty-as-hell girl
though it is the island that has seduced me.
11th june
6:27 am,
everything that is literature has fallen from me.
breathe.
"i'm out of your league, baby."
"you say that, but i just finished on you."
i kiss her on the forehead, she immediately opens her eyes.
"don't ever do that again."
she says she doesn't care
but whenever she sees me talking to a girl
she walks up and puts an arm around me
then kisses me on the neck- an act of ownership, not affection.
"free those emotions," i tell her
slipping from between her sticky thighs.
Jun 18, 2014
Jun 18, 2014 at 5:51 AM UTC
You’re a book
A book with a convoluted plot, sometimes it’s hard keeping up
I’m slowly trying to learn you
I tread ever-so-care-fully
But when you are naked you are much more complaisant
It feels like we’re on the same page
In the penumbral light of my bedroom I climb on top of you and begin to kiss you
Under the sheets it is as if we are pigeons in the eaves, safe and cosy
Two souls coming together via flesh
My hands reach out for your *******
They reach out for love.
I see you in a new light.
I see you waking up with me in the first light of the morning
White bed sheets and sleepy smiles, your hair tousled
Your eyes plain, your lips unrouged
You’re skin is soft
We make love and have breakfast outside.
My muse.
The sun rises too fast
I find myself looking at you,
Perfect white teeth and a symmetrical face.
I’m way too fond of you to notice flaws
But if I did, wouldn’t they just serve to particularise your beauty?
It’s alright this, isn’t it?
This kind of connubial life we’re living.
Words are all I have.
I am a poet and you like my tongue
This very tongue that holds the small space between your thighs and makes you tremble,
This very tongue that, you say, sounds very unAfrican-
Why don’t you write like an African child?
Well, it is because of the way I grew up and the where I grew up and the who I grew up with.
Like that? Does that sound African enough?
The first time I took my t shirt off in front of you, you said I was thin
No, no,
I remember exactly what you called me: tubercular.
You are bold. I like that a lot.
But also, you’re kind of a *****
I am in love with you, the whole of you.
You and your nice smelling hair.
You and your dreamy brown eyes.
You and your half-hearted ********
Nov 3, 2013
Nov 3, 2013 at 4:55 PM UTC
A no-strings-attached thing is easy to arrange
It sounds exciting too, seems very straightforward
But sometimes you get caught up in things you don’t expect
Before you know it, you start caring
You develop feelings
You learn things about the other person
Her middle name, her favourite music, food
Her pet peeves, ambitions
You learn her innermost thoughts
Her insecurities, her ****** proclivities,
The little birthmark just above her mons *****
The one that she says looks like a map of the Dominican Republic
You lie in bed with her all day
She teaches you how to swear in Farsi.
You **** her every day.
One day she sees you making out with this random ****** and she flips
You say, but we said no strings attached or did we not?
It’s not as simple as that though, it never is
But this girl, she believes in you
She’s a paragon of patience
She sits you down and tells you to listen to her carefully
She explains to you that now you are sleeping with her on the regular
Your body is somehow her body too, partly, and vice versa
Says she understands that you are not together officially
But intimacy usually comes with an implied exclusiveness.
You say, Ok, I've heard you. And I understand where you’re coming from.
Then you tell her to **** off.
Time passes
You begin to miss her.
But you’re pride won’t let you call her.
You have *** three times with two different girls in one weekend
One of those girls has a boyfriend, you **** her in a night club restroom.
The other one on the beach a day after
Then a few hours later in her bedroom.
In the morning her room is all sandy,
Going home you begin reflecting on things
You've learnt one thing for sure:
However much top-shelf ***** you get, it doesn't compare to the love of a good girl
So it doesn't matter how many lovers you have in this world
If none of them give you the world.
You swallow your pride and call her
She can’t make it, she says.
But she comes the next day in the evening.
You explain everything,
How it felt like she was tethering you to her
How you took it all too lightly.
You’re not too good at it, talking about your feelings
You say that what she’d told you that day had gone through one ear, out the other
So you had to learn it all by yourself, you had to go through it
Finally, you apologise.
You’re very sincere.
She asks you, so is this closure?
You don’t want it to be, but you don’t know if you actually deserve her
**** you don’t know if she’d even take you back.
If she does, you've still got a lot to prove.
You’ll be in luck, but you’ll be starting on nothing.
If she doesn't then you knew and blew a good thing.
Nov 3, 2013
Nov 3, 2013 at 4:54 PM UTC
I’m twenty years old, I wanna get caked up
You’re twenty years old, but all you want is to get coked up,
Live it how you want it, I won’t judge
And you’re a happy girl
As long as you’re fed, admired, and taken to interesting places
But anyone could do that for you,
I want to know why you’re with me.
It’s a pretty chilled afternoon, cloudless skies
And the sea is so blue
As blue as lapis lazuli,
You’re on the hammock reading War and Peace
I’m learning how to clean a shotgun
My father’s working on the Peugeot
There’s wet air coming in from the sea,
He’s hoping the salt hasn't started rusting the chrome
You’re hoping you’ll finish that book in one lifetime
I’m hoping you can stay here a few more days.
This
This is our life right now
We could all be roped up, tied up, and dead tomorrow
But this
This is our life right now.
Nov 3, 2013
Nov 3, 2013 at 4:53 PM UTC
*for Auntie Faith,
God rest her soul.
13-09-2013 Kilimani, Zanzibar*
Your daughters, all four of them
Your beautiful daughters
All dressed the same,
Tears streaming down their cheeks
One by one, grabbing a handful of sand
Emptying it over your grave.
I was woken up at 3:17 am
I was told the news,
I thought of your daughters, all four of them
Now without a mother.
The soul is gone.
Nov 3, 2013
Nov 3, 2013 at 4:50 PM UTC
My muse, my muse,
She’s here right now
She just took a shower and her hair is still wet.
She's wearing a bathrobe, she walks up to the bed and sits
When she crosses one leg over the other I catch a flash of her thighs
Inviting thighs, long legs
She has pretty feet
And pretty ankles,
I always look at feet.
She has delicate wrists
She has long thumbs, here she is
Now leafing through a magazine
With those long thumbs,
Long fingernails.
Her shoes are on the floor, shoes that she wore last night
They've fallen over on the carpet,
My eyes find my way back to her
She seems to have found something interesting in the magazine
Here she is, concentrated on it, her back is straight
In this light, this natural light,
Without make up,
She looks impossibly lovely,
Renoir would paint her.
I get out of bed and walk into the shower.
There’s something strangely intimate
About taking a shower in a girl’s bathroom,
Shampoo bottles and hair conditioners all around me
Water cascading down my bare chest
Recollecting and replaying scenes from the night before:
Unbuttoning her jeans, pulling them off
Seeing her Hello Kitty underwear
And laughing, and thinking it was cute
And saying, umm… so how old are you again?
Humour always works, yes, humour always works.
I love ********** this girl.
It seems as though I'm always ********** her.
At night in the living room, on the sofa
Unfastening her stockings and slowly rolling them off,
Next her skirt, then her underwear…
Sweet parting flesh
I begin thinking of how it’ll be, how it’ll go down
She's always in something classy,
But man, it seems as though I'm always ********** her.
Sometimes I strip everything off her body,
But I ask her to leave her earrings and heels on; they confirm her nakedness
Hoop earrings
Red lipstick
Red heels
I lie in the middle of the bed, lights are dim, she climbs onto the bed
Curls up between my legs, begins by kissing on my stomach...
Great lovers lie in hell, the poet says.
Great lovers lie in hell.
I'm falling asleep afterwards, but not her
*** invigorates me,* she says, tying her hair in a ponytail
This girl, she has the effect of lighting a matchstick in the dark.
She lays beside me and begins to read Jeanette Winterson
And just before I succumb to a deep slumber I remember something and tell her,
Baby, baby, baby, your Morse code interferes with my heartbeat.
Nov 3, 2013
Nov 3, 2013 at 4:45 PM UTC
scenes from the night.
she gets up to draw in the curtains,
then walks back to the sofa
and falls back into it, floats really, back into soft white cushions.
she undresses slowly, pulls me onto her
her bra is on the floor,
her ******* are firm round pillows with a darkened bud,
tonight i'm all yours, she says,
she surrenders to those last words... i'm all yours.
we make love right there, her astride me,
in the favourite manner of ancient Greek poets.
very early in the morning
i wake up and she is still asleep, wearing my t shirt, wearing my boxers,
she is bound by twisted bed sheets, bound by her long dark hair.
i'm hoping she'll wake up soon, i'm hoping we'll have time,
just once more.
the sweetest smile when she wakes up
thighs and long, smooth legs,
her eyebrow twisted in a parabolic curve
yes, the unarticulated promise of sleek *** in the small hours of the morning.
then the day begins
and light crackles at the bottom of the curtains,
goodbye kisses are the ******* worst.
Nov 3, 2013
Nov 3, 2013 at 4:43 PM UTC
in front of a full-length mirror in the bedroom she stands.
naked, she is completely naked.
she is not like other girls i've been with, they would never
stand stark naked in my presence in the middle of the day, the room beaming with light,
while i was sitting and watching from the other end of the room- no, they would feel shy.
to be naked is to be vulnerable.
not with her, she is standing in front of the mirror
cupping her ******* one before the other, raising them, examining them, and telling me
that one, the left one, grew first.
even now it's still a little bigger than this one, she says, if you look carefully.
it is as if she's describing and showing me something commonplace; like maybe her hands
or her feet.
mistaken for a work art,
so fine-boned and delicate,
her beauty is ethereal,
it is almost satanic.
these midday ******** are always the laziest.
she moves slow, ritualistic almost, looks up at me
then continues, her mouth moving in long, sweet, agonizing reaches.
i **** her against the door,
her fingers digging into my fro
sometimes i **** her from behind, she holds on tightly to the bathroom sink
like her life depends on it.
we are always ******* it's like we cannot get enough.
it's like we're ******* in order to get an answer.
an answer about something we're so desperate to know.
thinking about it now it almost seems sorrowful.
she likes to be naked in front of me.
she doesn't understand that i am not moved by nakedness, per se
i am taken by glimpses of femininity;
like seeing her brush her hair in front of the mirror in the morning,
her arms raised and bent at the elbows
one hand brushing the length of her hair and the other following through,
the hollows of each armpit bare;
or seeing her preparing for the gym,
tank top and tights, running shoes
tying her ponytail really tight, like an Olympic gymnast's,
her face pure, divine, free of make up
this
this child of a goddess,
i become drunk seeing such beauty.
after dinner she is reading a book, lying down on the bed
her head propped up with pillows
i get on the bed and immediately begin to unzip her denim shorts
what are you doing? she says this without removing her eyes from the book
i don't respond, i begin to pull her shorts down
seriously, what are you doing? this time she lowers the book and looks at me
she lets me do it though, she even raises her torso up slightly when i'm pulling her underwear down.
but no, no, stop it,
she really wants to read
also, she tells me it's uncomfortable to have penetrative *** on a full stomach.
i am confused. why did she let me take off her shorts and underwear then?
i give up and lie down
she's got all the pillows so i lie with my head between her legs
using her pelvis as a pillow,
we stay in this position for a while
until i turn my head and glance up at her; she is looking down at me and breathing calmly,
she closes the book and says,
baby, why do you torture me like this?
beneath my ear it is wet.
how do i make you understand this feeling?
how do i go about
converting it into text?
these are not just words.
they are a window
into my mind, into my world.
Nov 3, 2013
Nov 3, 2013 at 4:42 PM UTC
And she confessed, and she cried, and she apologised, and I asked,
You ******* ****** him off?
It was nothing, she said, I didn't feel anything. I swear, please forgive me baby, please.
I can’t believe this, I said, get away from me. You ******* disgust me.
She began apologising again, profusely, and I said, barely in a whisper
But you ******* ****** him off?
I said it to myself really, to let it sink in, to fully process it.
She placed a shaky hand on my chest and said, I didn't feel anything at all, I swear,
It was like I was just going through the motions, I swear. You've got to understand me, baby.
Stop ************* touching me, I said. I was truly and absolutely disgusted by her.
She looked scared, nervous. She moved back. She was not used to seeing me this way. There was a pause,
Silence.
Slowly I moved towards her, deliberately, held her face in both my hands
And looked at her,
She was still sobbing softly, looking up at me like a frightened child
I carefully studied her face
Her lips
These lips, I thought to myself, as I moved a finger to touch them gently
These soft, elegant lips
That each night I kiss, touch, linger on... wrapped around another man’s ****
She was probably on her knees, his **** half way in her mouth... No. **** I’m only punishing myself thinking about it.
I took a step back and looked away from her. I mustn't think that way.
Her lips are exactly the same as they were before, nothing about them has changed.
The damage is within me, I understand that. Nothing has changed physically, just my perception.
Just my thoughts. Thoughts can **** you, I swear.
If only... if only I could... I don’t know... these words seem to die before they leave my mouth, respect for her has long since dissipated.
I thought we had something. I really did. I thought we’d made promises that only us, broken souls, could keep.
What about us? Huh?
What about the beautiful mornings walking along the shore, the day before us
Wayfarer shades hiding your eyes, Canon camera hanging from your neck
Me sidestepping pebbles and hot coral like why didn't I wear slippers?
And the not so beautiful mornings spent hugging the toilet, puking
Holding your hair back, saying I’m never gonna drink again, never
But no, Llahi, don’t be silly, I didn't say get rid of the Tequila bottle.
That's Sunday morning after a wild weekend
The afternoon is lazy, torpid, us feeling ****** up
But the night is quiet, cool
And these conversations we have at 2 am lying on your mom’s living room sofa
Sharing things with me that you couldn't with others
Sharing things with you that are more intimate than ***
Sometimes a dreamer needs a realist to ground them
And sometimes a realist needs a dreamer to help them fly,
That was what we said, what we were
But it has all disappeared before a fleeting moment of lust,
Nothing is the same
Nothing is the same
Nothing is
Nothing,
See how much smaller we've become?
And I never want to see your face, not for a long time
But maybe I just want to kiss you this last time
While your tears are still streaming down your cheeks
Tasting of regret, of broken promises, of ringing emptiness
Because you have failed me
Or maybe we have failed each other
Surely, the universe has failed us both
But you don’t know how much I love you, you ******* *****
I wonder if the sunsets will taste the same
Without me.
Aug 10, 2013
Aug 10, 2013 at 4:46 PM UTC
We walked along the ocean for about an hour
Lost in conversation
I suppose it was needed after misunderstandings six months ago
We encountered lots of things on the way
There were mangroves and wet sand, hot coral, dry sand, sea **** couple dried up sea urchins
A bunch of other ****
Just things the tide had dumped
We stopped for a while to watch the sun
Which was setting, and do you remember how you said
It looked as if, far out on the horizon, this great orangey-yellow ball that was suspended in the sky with invisible ropes
Was slowly being lowered into the ocean, sinking
Never mind me, you said, I’m not making any sense
I understood what you meant, I think, I wanted to kiss you
Waves were breaking, gently crashing into our bare feet
And I noticed this cut on your foot, just a little one,
I think you hadn’t even realised it was there
But I kept quiet, didn’t say ****
And all your toenails were painted blue
And the waves would break over them and slowly retreat,
Leaving your feet wet and toenails glistening,
It was kind of a pretty thing to look at.
I don’t know how to be romantic
I don’t know how to write poetry
All I know
Is that you are a mermaid
And I am drowning,
Will you save me?
Aug 10, 2013
Aug 10, 2013 at 4:42 PM UTC