Coin Death Life
for Shenique Hart

with this unworthy energy
unworthy mind

like bringing or like offering up
inappropriate hands
to do a job or to make something with

wish to make poem like cake from scratch
like pottery upon a spinning wheel

something though to reflect you
I love you, you know that

how you sparked it off, light in darkness

girl you ever had to light a pilot light
knowing how dangerous such a thing was
holding a lit match, trembling, waiting

to hear the soft poof when it did light
rather than boom of too much gas
escaped into the air, into the atmosphere

boom loud enough and with enough force
to lift the house roof, blow it off

love can be efficacious or it can destroy
can self destruct, can go up, can blow up

or we can have dinner or we can dance
and flowers can be bought, can be brought
or can be delivered

I like fruit in bowls also
apples, oranges, pears, grapes

I like onions, avocados, yams
mangoes, cantaloupes, watermelons
showing their near red insides

inside a poem I open for you, filled with nice things
against the nastiness of this world
against what annoys, against who annoys

what do you miss most about your island
what do you love most about our capital city

what you triggered off in me
I wish I were able to explain

if I did you might lay no claim to it
might know not of it

silly me, reading what you were not at all sending
or saying
hearing what you were not telling

am I feeling you now, are you feeling me
hearing me

are you helping me invent a poem
one like none which ever was

this is just between us, o.k.
how poems come to be made
my head in your head and yours in mine

it calls for being intimate, into one another
do you mind such intimacy

to hold spiritually and couple and copulate
though as apart as a pen top off a pen

lost, looked for all over the place
until brought together again

can cover the pen when the poem's written
I have a case for it, a place for it

put it away until I have something to say
to you again

write so you can locate me in the dark even
feel about until you find me

I'll be here or I'll be back


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2009
7:34 a.m. 19.05.09