I hope you've heard my love hiding inside the melody that Donny Hathaway plays
From every poetic note folded amongst the ivory keys plucked
This heart writes light like butterfly wings fluttering in flight
But it's heavy when I barely see you
So, my vision grows old like my wishes of us
Weakened only by fleeting time
Yet. lengthened
Like desires that chain-link hopes to the wildest dreams along far streams
You could say I'm always in your hair
Wherever the strands flow, I follow its fibers feverishly
Strung along by song of nature so strong, that
I'm in a Pinocchio-state, made to move by your voice
A puppet parroting psalms to praise your personage
In the richness of your favor
In the hour of knowing
It's been a minute
And time is indeed money
Every second counts when I'm around your golden smile
I wish I could play this track forever
Or rewire my brain to rehearse every one of your favorite verses
Be the B-side of your cassette
And rewind to the best moments
Unwind together.

Ifeanyi N. Okoro II © 2018

The room sleeps
As I lay awake
And as the sun rises
I want to reach out the window,
shove it back down and
Give myself a few more hours
With the calm rise and fall of your chest.

I don’t exist outside of here,
Only between the posts of your bed.
Fabrication
Needing constant validation
From your touch.
And if the morning never comes,
You’ll stay here
And I can pretend to be
What you need.

If time runs
Then I should be able to dam it up
Like a river
Stop it from flowing
Freeze it in place.

But time is greedy.
The moon is too weak
To stick around.

When light fills the room
And wakes it from delirium
The dreamer stirs
And I disappear.
Am I just a dream?

When I’m gone there is nothing.
Just time.

One word from your lips
And my body reanimates
Dances, breathes
then lies still again.
Finally awake.
But alive? Real?
The room only knows.

Remembering nights when feet talked to asphalt
Making the way to nowhere fast
Just daydreaming in the time of tribulation
Even that seems against the law

But this is the season of desires
Wishing for the sun to catch up to the moon
Or for blazing June to date breezy December
Her presence
Hotter than July
So Stevie Wonderful
That vision fails to relay perfect captions of captured view

And heart rapidly repeats beats like winged mockingbirds do

And voice drops sonata when cantata is through

I realize I'm flirting with danger when thinking of you
If you are the heavenly hazard,
Just who am I casting my flirt to?

Ifeanyi N. Okoro II - © 2018

The pen is poised in hand engaged
Awaiting rhyme or sage
Thoughts to give it motion
Absent the flow of love or rage
Unmoved but exhausted it lays down
Crisp blue striped sheets turn brown
After what seems an age
Dust completes the task of covering the page
Ideas unexplored, untold emotion
An eternity passes by
And possibilities unborn die