A laundry list is its own ultimate beauty.
Licking the core of this breakup.

Your sternum’s craft and transcendence.

You’ve just enhanced my taste
for intellection.

A fantasy hive where seduction grows.

You project your desires onto me.

The unending battle between reality
and fantasy.

Sexting is alright. It’s holding its own.

A country that victimises me just
for existing.

Attempting to solve the problems
of indexes and stick figures.

Something not unlike intensity of focus.

There are more levels in this personal
disarray than anyone can know.

What survive are constellations
triangulating.

There’s an unmistakable brightness
apparent in this rotating night.

I’ll lie on my couch and see the glottis.

Pitching their passions into the trash.

Bridging the gap between boredom
and flight-worthiness.

I’m leaving it to you to figure out
why I amass these books I never read.

Squander your payout and pass
the lemongrass.

When you turn from the door you
can hear a tyre smack the gravel.

Too weak to notice your breakup
with the raindrops. The fury of
the aftermath.

Something about you has got a hold
on me. It’s much more than that
because no day was unscathed.

You’re messing with my resistance.
You scare the hell out of me.

What would I not give to snatch
back those moments of ecstasy.

To start all over again to retrace
those paces.

To be front row centre and see
the things you do.

Lick it in the north stick it in the south.

Still walking toward the unknown.
Still stoking it after all these years.

Can you take it all off and stroke it?
Don’t sing too soon.

Leaving in the morning what
we crave also craves us.

I trust the crooked I trust the straight.

Tell me whether to knock on the door
or to ring the bell.

Remembrance fishing in forgetfulness.

There’s a place for the clover,
there’s a place for our shadows.

On the gravel path a tulip matters more.
A proud bee keeps on turning.

 

Uche Nduka is a Guest Poet for Panorama.