photo by Alex Lear

giving the one who left

the benefit of the doubt

“i always leave

while love is aching good

running home

to get it good

don’t answer the phone

ain’t seen your people

in forty-seven days

& don’t miss them good

since i know

it’s going to turn bad

& spoil because

ultimately everything does

disintegrates to the dust of unhappiness

and i so despise death scenes so why

should i stick around and await

the inevitability of us looking crosseyed

at each other — why not just jet

one morning after a momentous fuck

get hat and have the beauty of that

always simmering in the flesh memory

of our passion patinaed body cells?

i am like a plucked guitar string, a strand

of lucille’s vibrant hair, when i weep i feel

better — & i’m fully aware

you will never understand

the utter logic of shoving red hot love

into the cold water of been here and gone

unless you too have hurriedly left a lover

but never ever even once stopped loving them” 

—kalamu ya salaam