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.

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 *******.

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 *******.

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.

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, *******, and dead tomorrow
But this
This is our life right now.

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.

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.

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.