1. I crave so baldly
yes, crave
that death-giving
killer of feeling
cigarette
that
until yesterday
was what saved
everyone
from random
floating bitchiness
that poisoned air
as much as second-hand smoke
2. It is not so difficult
not so long
as I drag this mind
whine/kicking
and generally tantrumming
from #1.
Noel–I just had to reblog this onto my page–hope you don’t mind–it’s just that good!
Amicabe duel
of giving and taking
lines, ideas, voices
colliding and colluding,
sometime skipping along gaily
sometime contrasting, sometime complementing
always enriching,
wafting and walzing with mounting additionality,
perfuming the sky with rhythm!
this one, from Asia, 1963
he writes to her
locations blackened out by censors
but they left
enough of his yearning
to lie next to her
his hand covering
her newly-swollen belly
feeling for that
first small kick
no one else
but my mother
and my unborn brother
ever felt those fluttering movements
and that brother
left both of them
long before naming
or even funerals
but here, I find him,
before
just a number spoken in a list
spoken quickly
before the magic
of my sister’s birth,
the first success in a series of tries
ending in loss
but here, in this letter
he lives, they all three live
in faded ink hope
finally, past pretending
I force my eyes
from the fixed point on the wall
I was memorizing
instead of listening
and look at you;
my eyes starting at the point
I suppose
your heart leaps
beneath skin and sternum
though I no longer
wish to rest my head there
lulled by that drum
while I sleep
drawing that line of sight up
to meet your eyes
dazzling in their fury
of brown backlit by fire
yes, there is someone else,
I say
the me I forgot
a long time ago
and further lost in you
that’s who I love
and why I am leaving
you shake your head
and ask me to speak clearly,
having missed
my targeted gaze
so much easier for you to understand
if I had just
made up a man
to leave you for
so enmeshed in numbers
height, weight,
the measurable distance
between eyebrows
the arc of a nose
shades of eyes, hair, and skin
all dictated by the way melanin scatters
to paint us in rainbows
shape and size of eyes
flare of cheekbones and
fullness of mouths
all adding up to beautiful–
calculations I am comfortable
using in cat shows,
those exacting breed standards
a cat
after it is shown
continues being feline,
uncaring how it is seen
or how those numbers
rise and fall to calculate value
it is no less cat
not so with women,
not so with girls,
least of all very little girls
crippled & twisting to fit standards
of Barbie impossibility
they forget
their essential selves
and how those cannot be any less
based on what is seen
***Inspired by Rhonda’s rag doll.
By Susan L. Daniels and Noel A. Ihebuzor
All life is motion compelled to move;
you and I, we must move too
even in apparent stillness
our atoms vibrate
past vision and all senses, rearranging with
the simple harmonic motion of elements,
the inner rotation of the subatomic
like mirrored, miniature solar systems
the shift of season into season,
the pulls tides answer, and strokes of waves
all singing life
every motion has brought us
closer to this motion today
where we move in unison
your voice in mine and
mine in yours
your tongue vibrates, feels
and feeds my throat motion;
fluttering, trembling, all kinetic and stirring
and we move, the rhythm of us a motion
born of force and attraction
by polarities that pull
create this swirl, tremulous gyrations, vibrating, oscillating
where merging in vertical and horizontal flows
we reach forward and beyond
with hastening speed
and now, with vectors charting
direction, force and magnitude
this joined velocity singing and ringing
still accelerating, celebrating
the influx and efflux of creativity,
its season of release
***Whew. Hope you enjoyed that as much as we did. I’m italicized and Noel is bolded.
we are fabric
woven
from threads
of stars
awe we resonate with
when we look up
and greet
a night sky
full of our kin
Susan Daniels Poetry 