petals close when you are near

stars shudder at your finger tips

the moon shakes in it’s silver skin

and I -

blossom,

despite myself and my heart’s warnings

against your cruel caresses

I sigh, into your curves

and bury my head in the sands of oblivion

Today it won’t rain it won’t bathe the soil
Our grasses won’t merry corn shall fall
Papa soon thank is guest on constraint eve
Over bloating his ego like Jaja not Opobo
Father wants to marry his 20th wife.

Well wishers, who will come? Our pastor
Soon sermon those one wife stories
My father hisses with gallon of palm wine
Pastor preaches thou shall not drink.
Fermented liquid that’s alcohol not him.

Two commandments my father said three
“Thou shall do as he wishes” father said
I will couple more matrimonies on earth
Then thunder struck the rain fell.

~
In her sulking-place
alone and naked

framed in soft sepia
—the vintage, harlequin hue

at this supposed faded hour
she sits looking back on memory

she sits and stares
into the boudoir mirror

at herself
at her embonpoint

yes, at these *******
—at their landscape

how they fall
(like Niagara)

where they point
(like a compass)

what they tell (so fondly)
when pressed together

about their time
—their work and play

towers on the precipice
of judgment

both callous and
uncharitable

if the mirror
truly be her reflection

her vision is turned around
as illusion

—a study of tonality and tolerance
for one's own flesh

the room
an invitation

or perhaps
a lockaway

where she even keeps secrets
from herself
~

You are the Mecca that honey the bear
The tan that slumber the night
You make the day just a light of thunder
What is your name?

Yank your smile when my bridge comes
You make the heavens weep in glory
Don’t reorient your temerity after all
What is your real name?

I won’t tell them is Ayola
I won’t confide your real love
Not even the night would hear this
What is your name?
Let me invite your soul to dine

Ayola am sorry I never called you back.

By Akintola  kunle:
Her days are not waking
Staring far and near and nothing cares
I could feel her depth like bud of soar
Flying ferociously like the storm
Hallows was her cry swamping .
Consuming everything that’s things.

By Lori Jones Mc Caffery:
Her hours were not wasted
Searching in the rubble for the rubies
Casting out the pearls and fiery opals
With a fury that belies tornados
Calling down the voices of the furies
To set flame to everything that's left.

By Akintola  kunle:
Raiding on a bustling horse back
Her craft will course your cut the more
Raven smile swallows scraggly whales
Neither blue or white she bed all
Angelic like the claws of the falconer
Telling me to plead for this stormy love
Winding every score in human me
She would bury my love after my lost.

By Lori  Jones Mc Caffery:
Turning on a golden thread
laced into the sunshine star awash
with ever jangling music made
From dreams and cotton candy
She sends out a reach that rocks
The world that I created and I find
That I am lost in everything I found.

Written by Akintola kunle and Lori Jones Mc Caffery

I need a new kind of pill to take
I’ve gained twenty pounds in the last seven months
And I have to stop all those ounces I’m gaining

I want to be an ungainly person
No matter what Merriam Webster says
And no matter how gracefully I move
And how elegantly swan-like I appear

I  desperately need to ungain every pound,
So again I ask:  “Is there a pill?“
                                                          ­ljm