this sound is dangerously new
and his key is something
you’re not tuned to.
you are paper thin,
willow girl. nothing’s there
inside you to drive the hurt
away.
it will take a year
but you will leave him in your
best friend’s room
after telling the new boy about
your dreams and kissing him
as the grass turns golden.

2.
you’ve got hold of the rhythm
but you’re still stumbling
over fingerings, especially his.
he doesn’t know how to love
something like you and
you know it, but you’re
drowning in the way he
teaches your mother how to
count measures over dinner.
he will leave you in the field
that he carried you through
when your foot was hurt,
and you will cry and call
your best friend but fighting
means she doesn’t pick up.
you will sit alone there,
but don’t worry —
he is the only one
who will ever leave first.

3.
you should’ve known there was
something wrong about kissing the
boy whose apartment used to
give you nightmares. you will get away
before he can hurt you while
you aren’t sleeping.

4.
he doesn’t deserve to be the one
whose hand you’ll be holding
when you realize that you
can only ever lose yourself
in girls.

5.
she will coax out all the
notes in you that you never
knew you could hit,
but when your pitch starts
to fall she won’t be there
to even you out.
her touch will take ages
to rub off your skin and when
she comes back to you
with all her pegs out of place
you will only smile
and plug your ears.

6.
she will be the one
who teaches you that it is
usually best to stay far away
from the only person you can’t
begin to wrap your head around.
hearts have always worked
the same way.

7.
her touch will make the stars
less endless and the mountains
more suffocating. her curls will
tease your chest and snake around
your neck and you won’t know why
you don’t want them to.

8.
you will never find enough cadenzas
for a calamity like this.
she’s the girl who will kiss you
between boulders and show you
what a mountaintop sunset
really means and you will
love her like you’re not supposed
to love anyone yet; she will
turn you selfless and see-through
and broken and you will take
too long to see how she is
shattering you.

9.
you’re out of breath by now
but it’s okay —
the only notes you’ll ever
need to play with her arms
around you are the ones
that ring, “i’m safe.
i’m safe. i’m safe.”

Maximum hot silence,
As neutrinos finger-out,
Playful harmonies,
on this fretted frown,
Nano-seconds before light overwhelms,
And billionths become measured,
Strutting and strumming and fingerings found,
Playfully erupt,
Like sound interrupted,
And staccato resounds,
Expanse and corruption,
Bringing me down,
Creating life glimpses,
Often unfound,
This mere direction,
Taking lifestyle mirth,
Unknowing and knowing,
For whatever its worth.

let me play for you
come hear my fibrillation
improvisations
reverberating on breeze
in synchronizing rhythms

let me share with you
muse inspired whisperings
reaching deep places
hallowed bamboo offerings
interpretations of air

let me catch the wind
split the stream inside my flute
tonic fingerings
let it oscillate and grow
healing melodies for you


Del Maximo
© March 23, 2009

when i was fourteen i gave my first *******
without even knowing what “*******”
meant.
lips did not touch my
lady organs until i was
seventeen.
when i was fifteen i gave over fifty blow jobs,
approximately over one hundred hand jobs
and received one to ten
fingerings.
the boy at the time could only say, “you’re so good,
you’re just so *******
****”.
with my uneasiness and black rimmed eyes i
said little. all i wanted to do was
please.

i was sitting with a friend and as her soberness vanished,
she told me a man had never gone down on her.
i looked at her with wide eyes and when asked why,
she said,
"it’s just too weird. i don’t trust any man down there."
yet she could deliver tongue thrusts and gags left and right.

when the first man kissed my other lips,
he said i tasted wonderful, delicious, i was the drink
he savored for.
and i remember in that moment that i wasn’t just a
"girl".
i had transformed into cleopatra.

i had a man say i tasted like chicken, and i was his
favorite meal. as his tongue flickered, i would ***
inside clouds. and i wondered why this was such a
hidden treasure.

i wish for all women to be kissed, on both sets of lips.
all women to experience tongues dancing within their
insides. i want thighs trembling like earthquakes,
moans erupting like untamed volcanoes.
i want all women to become cleopatra, joan of arc,
ophelia, marilyn.
i want all women to
become
celestial.

if only
your misty rose glowfist
were to be my heart -

glinting
all the feels
with

bright felt fingerings
expressing
so. much.

then, maybe, i
could
feel

real,
again.

CONSCRIPTS: CHILDREN OF WAR

Conscripts, Innocent children robbed for war
From Congo, Chad, Central Africa Republic, Mali….
From Uganda to Sudan and South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Senegal…..
They are the forefronts young fatal fighters
From Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, Lord Resistance Army…..
They are these merciless Militias mouths-youths
From Biafra-Nigeria, Bujumbura, Asmara to Abidjan Civil Wars
They are their battalions’ fertile feeding grounds
They are Kony, Riek Machar and Ruthless Rebels’ mercenaries
They are Ouattara, Nkurunziza, Salva Kiir…..youthful foot soldiers  
They are Resistance Armies and Liberation army’s guerillas  

They raided a village
They foraged the villages
For innocent, forced conscripts
At dawn-at dusk, daytime-nighttime  
At noontime-at eventide-every time

And she begged
These satans that came
At the mask of dark nights
Slithering silent as serpents
For her last left and living!

She mourned and bemoaned
Helpless and hopeless
Her, grief-stricken hapless
But under those ****** shot eyes
Those coals-hot red coloured irises
That pity or its empathy knows not
It was all in vain-to no avail!

Determined, resolute, uncaring, ruthlessly  
Him tucked on her compassionate chest
Him still tagged on her hopeless breast
Its cheeks struggling to suckle any fluid
From these sagged sacks of balloons
Him they riotously robbed

And those that can’t they ripped
To those that can’t they opened
Those that can’t they roped
To those that can’t odd happened
Those that can’t they *****
To those that can’t they dampened

Those able fingerings wrapped
On frontiers as fighters they lined
With no war experience
With no ammunitions intelligence
No boots-barefoot, no shirts-bare chests
As shields shivering, roughly ripped
By advanced military and militias

Never to know home again
Never to know its warmth again
Never to know fears again
Never to know pains again
Never to know happiness ever again
Never to know the sweet tastes again
Of what Mama’s milk-nourishing colostrums contain

Somewhere in tough terrains
Somewhere in jagged plains
Somewhere in rugged mountains
Somewhere in thicketed montanes
Somewhere in brutal bushes
Somewhere in shriveling shrubs
Shallow graves of their immature bones
Their carrions lay leaked white by scavengers or time

Lucky him that deaths avoids
Lucky him that deaths mercy observes
Lucky him that deaths shyly eludes
Fortunate him it sympathetically spares
Lives in agony of pain and guilt
Lives in fears of loyalty and liberty
Lonely eyes, hollow sorrow, mourning souls,
Empty heart, mad tampered mind, tempered looks….
Him, innocent Conscripts, Children of War!

© Kìùra Kabiri. All rights reserved.

I ripped out my heart
And served it for you on a silver platter
You said, "dont worry baby, it wont shatter."
You put it on the top shelf of the wooden glass case
You told me it was the safest place.

What you failed to mention was that
You got angry,
And your vision got blurry.
You threw me against the glass
Making it crash
Against the hard wood floors
Each piece breaking and shattering

You pinned me against the wooden case holding my arms together tightly out of your reach,
Grabbing my shoulders, you slammed me again, easing your voice to a deep scream.
And as my still beating heart dropped to the floor
You picked it up with deft fingerings and starting picking away the pieces of shattered glass
Making your fingers bleed

You slid the glass against my skin causing small cuts where your hands should have been
Raising your fists in the air holding in your defending scream
You released me
As i caught air, i ran
For the door

And you pushed me making me squirm against the floor
Still grabbing the handle
Twisting and turning trying to escape
You picked up my heart
And threw it at my face

It was broken, torn up to shreds
And you left me.
Holding onto the handle, dead.

I missed a run again and my conscience shouts at me in anger.

Apparently, it needed a break from the monotonous hum of hasty, disquiet fingerings for buzzer beater deadline finishes,
and a respite for smashing cushions all day.

My dear, my dear
and I are bored
he is surfing

the internet and I practise
not to disturb him
fingerings in the air

I will go away, move
and he? frets himself
looking for a way out

slowly the night falls
silently I close the piano
if only I could help him

foot by foot four passes
to behind his chair, gently
I touch him, caress

an arm, he puts the screen away
and leans back, lets me
wrap my arms around him

quietly he lays his hands on mine
if only he had tears, words
if need be, passionate kisses

Set here, between the sky & earth
We filled each other's greatest need,
To change this small world casually
To Canaan's land or tacitly
Some semblance of the living word,
A narrow path of flesh and fruit,
Foundation of the universe,
Disguised as just a music show.
The need to move the air tonight,
With screams and pleasant fingerings,
Marks made on pages as the mind
Wants more, wants sin and salvation,
A comfortable bed and a chance
To understand a simple day.