serafina said so.

11.30 - 4.days.late

Haikus from the nape of my neck:

Procrastination
Is the best habit your lips
Practice on my skin

Kiss me there gently
It is where all my secrets
Swarm like summer bees

When we are threatened
With a sunrise in August
Hide there until dark

(April is National Poetry Month, so we write a poem a day. They will probably all be quick but I cannot guarantee they will be painless.)

10.30

When I wake myself up in the middle of the night
With limbs stretched across inhuman angles 
And a twisted staircase for a spine, I wonder
If across town, at that same moment
She is pressing hers up against yours
Like palms pressed together in prayer
And if after leaving my full moon mouth
That is secretly where all of mine
Settle in to sleep

(April is National Poetry Month, so we write a poem a day. They will probably all be quick but I cannot guarantee they will be painless.)

9.30

I was born with my father’s wild stallion heart
It pounds like a relentless war drum
But is easily spooked
Prone to smelling storms on even the sunniest days
And yet still, you ask to hold it
Your palms filled with the calm understanding
Of its constant need to run
And your mouth full of whispers to call it home

(April is National Poetry Month, so we write a poem a day. They will probably all be quick but I cannot guarantee they will be painless.) 

8.30

It’s easy to disguise words that should be spoken out loud
In labyrinths of lined paper
Tucked behind the audacity of vowels
Cradled in the safety of consonants
I speak with the steady cadence of ballpoint pens
Through looseleaf lips
But these are poems of prayer
For when the steel curtain of syllables falls

May my tongue be coated in courage
Thick enough to carry every sentence
To the ears that deserve them

Amen

(April is National Poetry Month, so we write a poem a day. They will probably all be quick but I cannot guarantee they will be painless.)

7.30

He sees the fullness of my lips
And wonders what ancient dialect takes root between them
As if my mouth could be the gateway
To his own cultural enlightenment

He tries to read me
As if there is calligraphy
In the curves of my hips
Spelling out exotic incantations
He can use to label me

So before I tell him what I am
I tell him what I am not

The olive undertones of my skin
Don’t make me a cultural chameleon
Able to transcend the boundaries of race or prejudice
I live in Canada
I am pale in the winter and tanned in the summer
It’s just melanogenesis

The moles on my body are not a roadmap to a plethora of worldly knowledge
Not constellations of ancestral wisdom and guidance
Connecting them will not lead you down some holy road of awareness
It will simply
Turn me on

I am not a square you can tick off on the bingo card of your sexual adventures
I am not a challenge, not an unconscious colonial conquest
I am not a trophy to be polished and mounted

I am Mediterranean red wine
Full bodied and complex

(April is National Poetry Month, so we write a poem a day. They will probably all be quick but I cannot guarantee they will be painless.)

6.30 (late)

They bought a house that looked like every other house
Lost in the subtlety of the suburbs
Coated in one of four exterior colour palette packages
Crafted by designers and limited by developers
In an effort control the “personality” of a neighbourhood
They would never set foot in again

They went with a muted tan and grey
Wet blanket beige
Dead elephant ivory
Her mother called it “sensible”
While numbing all five before noon
In pools of colourless vodka
She told her daughter that settling was a rite of passage
As if mediocrity was the next step after menstruation

(April is National Poetry Month, so we write a poem a day. They will probably all be quick but I cannot guarantee they will be painless.)

5.30

Three Thoughts on our Silence.

i.

It was the blanket I kept at the foot of my bed
A seemingly unnecessary piece of decorative bullshit
Until a Tuesday night abruptly arrived
With a particularly cold embrace
And I had never been more thankful
For the way something so soft can swallow you whole

ii.

Once, in the thickest part of it
We untangled ourselves
Only to reach for our wine glasses
At precisely the same moment
And I thought this must be how plants
Rooted so deeply in constraints
Always turn to find the sun

iii.

You squint at me
The way you always do after your first sip of hot coffee
I can’t tell if you’re forming a question
Or waiting for an answer
So the ribbons of milk just dance
Until even the boldest things become cloudy

(April is National Poetry Month, so we write a poem a day. They will probably all be quick but I cannot guarantee they will be painless.)

4.30

Ask me about the weather

I will tell you that there have been
Five hundred and forty seven sunsets
Since the hurricane of our introduction

Ask me about politics

I will tell you how the tension
Between your right wing fingertips
And left wing tongue
Sparked a revolution between my thighs
And a coup in my heart

Ask me about sports

I will tell you of my soul’s marathon
Running from everything
For decades
Through lifetimes
To find you

Ask me about books

I will explain that you are the wild fiction
That leaves stains behind the eyes
The type of story you still taste in the morning
You carry me by the spine

Ask me about music

You will only learn that
When your name is sung in conversation
My eyelashes beat out hymns
Betraying the crescendo in my chest

Ask me about my evening

I will tell you that I only dream of you in colour
Close up
And in focus

Ask me anything
But be warned

I cannot speak to you
Of anything other than love

(April is National Poetry Month, so we write a poem a day. They will probably all be quick but I cannot guarantee they will be painless.)

3.30 

(In which I join NPM 3 days late…)

~

If there is a love more monstrous than this
I dare it to bare its teeth

I pray this wild beast
Punctures my body
Until sunlight pours through me

I will simply come spilling out
Like an unruly river
Flowing even faster
Towards you

(April is National Poetry Month, so we write a poem a day. They will probably all be quick but I cannot guarantee they will be painless.)