Eros.

Ember hues.

This poem is too vulgar.

In what my dad describes as a pure teak

bed, his dad got built in 1955, I plunder

the history of my entire family, in a single night.

 

Nero, who is still

clumsy at best, hurts his bare feet

as I laugh in distance. The trees that

were on the window pull up and stare,

Shake violently in protest.

This vulgar desire that has long existed

in monochrome, reveals to me

Nero’s face in freckles, his hand

playing with my hair as the smell

of his perfume, eucalyptus, escapes the room

and entices the gods too,

makes the mirrors jealous, sit up

in surprise, as my eyes move back

to Nero’s again. I taste the soft skin

on his neck, go down, the bridge

his back, his muscles defined

through history. As perverse sounds

fill the room, penetrate walls.

My memory fades, I forget if Nero

is who he says, if his language

is one I speak.

Our voiceless faces in exile

console each other all night.

It is kindness that keeps us together,

plundering teak beds for pleasure

In lost homes.

Embroidery.

Home

and where have you been

my love

what nights have you seen

come sit

in comfort, you can rest

this bed

i made for you, tonight

you see

that night you left

in haste

i left the moon behind

to keep

watch. And return one day

with letters

that read your name, still

in bold

i know you remember this address

we call

home. miles away, it tells me

you are

here, with me, tonight, this bed

lies in love.

Absence.

My poetry is still young,

wet in its making.

It sticks to my hands

I carry it everywhere

 

What you think

I have left it with you

on your bed

has seeped below the mattress

 

and stuck to the marble floors

where you stride with your lover

before you two get on bed

that is all my poetry sees.

 

That is to say

it can see you in my absence

silently. without words.

in my absence.

On the other table

I see you, with a new boy

not half as decent as I.

who sips his coffee

with a tender demeanour

only common on first dates.

 

He is young, his skin burns

in the heat, the fire

your eyes are.

This, and you are all i see.

 

My eyes are all I have brought today

My senses, the rest, are still in bed.

 

Saturday.

 

like sunflowers belong to the sun
I wish my name carried words
from yours. I hunt here on the bed.
Where your scent still lies on my favourite
bed-sheet.

That i must wash today
before mother arrives and asks
what i did for the weekend
as i sit imagining you, your lips
and how your hands carried me last
Saturday.

Now, I wait. Patiently for mother
with my carefully constructed lies
i watch the front door, wishing, imagining:
you walk through the door, with
Saturday in your arms and on your lips,
Me.

Exile.

In exile,

my desire mimics the space

it occupied in my small garden

under the tree where it whittles your name

and whistles like the wind

as it did a year or two ago

was it summer? or the rain?

no one remembers.

 

In exile, my desire mimics

everything but you, weeps

and slowly whispers:

 

I have overstayed

my welcome

but do not let go.

artwork by Giovanni Esposito Illustration

 

 

 

 

“Of all sweet passions Shame is the loveliest.”

the title for this poem comes from a poem by Lord Alfred Douglas of the same name.