Night

no-one seems to embrace you

your slick reserve and enigmatic shadows
blanketing love and lovers words, their
lips and hands and flower-stemmed fingers
disappearing in your midnight flesh.

and then there's the others, let's not forget
with slithering vowels, hisses and maladies of
foaming breath brandishing hurt behind the cloak
you unwittingly provide..
their knives pointed, cutting reality like butter
murderous beings using your nightly beauty as
a knapsack to fill with their perversity.

night
your infinite voice of melody strokes the faceless
whispering beneath a flower, falling to the ground
your dusty back arched and pruning yourself
with the fragrance of children who tread the supple
contours of your belly.

you are innocent

it is we
unbearable humans, miscreants feeding off your gifts
abusing your rules with viper frequency that turns
you into fear, your blackness painted in story books
as the headpiece for evil, the diamond for dark secrets
and bogey men.

the seams of your dark skin stretch across the world
your yin and yan temperament always a source of
intellectual curiosity, never knowing you, how you work
how the stars hang in your hair
your body is the endless
universe where we'll never capture you

we can't touch or taste you but we feel the pulse
of your enormous vein - we see the simple complexity of
your machinations in nature's wink

we can't emulate the cogs that move you
yet we hear your voice if we try,
in the tune of a thousand beasts
and we wait for the gentle embrace
of your sticky dark melodies
around our obstinate ears when the sun goes down.