Openings. Portals for longing’s quest. Finesse the eyes that hunger to see a world dressed to the nines in grace. Love lives in tales of bowler hats on sweethearts leaning loafer smooth, to peddle footsteps like silk on skin. Peeled awake. Thoughts tie down arms that hold down the city’s doubts. Soon to fly through clouds that pillow the noise of your mind’s traffic.
Louder than the pain of a hammer head falling on your thumb. Wounded hands play the ear drums with intent. Don’t let the beat scare you. Swing lightly with April, like your dancing with yo’ daddy.
Though we are not a gentle kiss when pressed together, and swaying hearts may rock the boat that floats on by, when Spring tries to hide her melody from your peripheral vision, you show your true colours when you swing.
No you need not be afraid of your beating heart. The beat is the life you live, and life is worthy of all your hopes and dreams. So swing with April, before the wild wind drifts you away into your last season and an eternal beginning.
Teenage dreams were purple, I wore blue and saw red when it got to me. Temper the beast with green, and watch it grow on the other side of the grass I inhaled. Roll without it. Like luck. Washed out. Like denim. Once or twice. Leaves and lies.
Teenage love was letters sent to her mother’s address, with words that spied on her thoughts. She thought. And she’d reply in kind and cursive, signed with a four letter promise of peace and hair grease.
Teenage fears were dying young without knowing that I ever was. I stole and ran, got caught once. A cast hand was clutched by desperation. Who writes poetry for a mute heart? If they didn’t kill me in Harlesden then it wasn’t my time.
Teenage hope was a prayer and a song to quell an asthmatic larynx and shoot hoops to high school glory. It was trying to master lessons of speech therapy and fulfill the prophecy of a Physio. A narrow Queen’s Park corridor was a palace of practice to double dribble and carry my fate quietly.
Lick shot, sunrise falls on tongue, and I am pinched by delight, left side of bliss, chose not to cry out in pain as long as the lash was held by her velvet tone, ruby green, we match eyes in the void, between the world we made up at play, a schoolyard of imagination, where paupers are crowned with time.
Not much left to see, to sigh, to say you were always at the centre of planets orbiting secret longings in the open and closed book of my life, indecipherable, I spoke only once in our lovetime to call you home, you belong inside of me, sheltered with my moonscraping day dreams that start where others finish their sentence. Lifers on the run, we race around the infinite questions, to chase a moment we never outlived, outloved, out of sighs, out of sight, seeing and knowing without and within your silence. I belong inside of you.
Napoleon Dozier's Dabbler's Hand 