I prefer the men who dress dapper
and glow with an urbane mien–
with eyes like the Caribbean,
Brown skin glistening from ocean sprays,
Teeth white under a brimmed hat.
Monthly vacations on the sea,
A seafarers wife- is the life for me!
A Greek boy with an idle, ancient tongue-
A tragedy where passion rules and ruins;
A cycle of sins, generations lost and adrift
Fickle waters of the Acheron and Styx-
But I do not mind it.
When we dock at the insidious-
Honorless hour, the darkest hues of blue
stagnant and thick-the hour of the cowards;
An assassin catwalks on the midnight heights;
Arrow posed and ready-
But-
A fine melody breaks the silence,
Fine flutes filled to the brim
With bubbly, liquid gold; hot
Hands unhook and caress-
Allowing the whispers of Dionysus
To cage me, pulling me to the precipice
Of tantalizing and treacherous dreams.
A transparent sky suddenly appears
As lightening strikes; flashes of utopia
Made of fluffy, fragile clouds-
Buttermilk skin and winged shoes
The indomitable spine of Atlas trembles-
Horus lost eye parts the wisps, with a
Contemporary ease.
Bronze skin and Isis’s magic
licking against, tickling my swollen face
As I wake in a bed, not my own.
Leopards and lynxes twine
And peak and poke their heads
From underneath my sheets;
Sheets stained with a thick wine-
Thick like blood, fragments of the glass,
twinkle like forgotten, lost stars.
Discarded berries and twigs-
A flash of horns as a fine melody
weaves through, a passion almost unsure
blinds as Ra’s rays ravage–flood
with a precarious ease!
Mecca-Amirah Jackson 