[In a Hypothetical World] a Poem

            In the hypothetical world,

everything’s possible,

even possible is this colossal

misadventure to fold back on

itself,

gift us respite,

as we’ve never should have been to

this extent-

-shower-shunned still still nights,

flourished-envy, deeply dark,

mysterious in the intense clarity

knowing we’ve had our share of love,

affairs, love affairs running course long

after receiving a poor prognosis, locomotive

till tomorrow rolls forward,

directly over our beaten path,

and questions arise between us,

as numerous as stars rearranging their

next elliptical,

then the you inside,

the you everyone supposes

acclimates to those suppositions,

planets peering from behind cloud cover,

taking on titles unsuited if only to suit a

more viable presence-

we cannot take into each other each other

when those fragments aren’t indivisible,

individuals defiant, crying in a sad life as everyone

visible sadness has contaminated everyone visible-

-so shall we become invisible?

and will we fall into terminal despondency,

make still our motion as to attract no eyes

in motion?

Always, reckonings punching themselves

out, tiresome the wait will become darling, as

a fighter’s punch is always the last to go.

-Dontrell Lovet't

from [UnderStudies]

Photography by Nicholas Percell 

[All the While the Power-Play] a Poem

[All the While the Power-Play]

            You look so pretty today,

like an undeniable, undenied happiness,

& the power-play,

the night before the

last we spent together,

was predictably pleasurable,

releasing the most molecular

of myself into the wide, culpable

fauces leading down into the warmth

of your core-

-this was the day I found myself

face to face with a woman I suddenly

didn’t want nor wanted to be wanted,

if snakes were perpetually made in

the image of you,

they’d strike relentlessly,

unprovoked,

the friends you’ve scattered

like the plagues of old,

have returned, reconciled in our

confederacy;

the isolation,

the biome exceptional for

conjuring slaves,

has grown dense & rich

oasis-

-now you can go,

& as you go, you should

know your power-play has

played itself into predictability

now serpeants made in your

image can be exiled from this place

in me,

or stand petulant to be

cut down to extinction-

-from [UnderStudies]
Poem by Dontrell Lovet't
Photography by Nosmot Gbadamosi

[The Shape of Reinvention] a Poem

            This autonomous man has never undergone reinvention;

there’s never been a need so great to cause such an effect-

-manufacture is for the inane without self-invention,

the cripple of a soul needing some hindrance to project

the how and whys of declaring what should have been-

-nothing that has not been was suppose to be,

what has been was never suppose to be,

we make what has become and what will become,

we will make it as well-

nothing can occur naturally in the soil beneath our

feet; this is a man-made marvel,

standing as tall as the lowest structure

enduring time only by slight chance,

an orgasm by a precise measured fall from

the gallows,

an orifice of either-or differentiation-

-from [UnderStudies]

photography by Johnathan Jiang

[Eclectic/Electric] a Poem

 

I never wanted to act directly on our time,

only when hindsight has claimed it,

as it claims man’s structure;

 oh of the woebegone the woes

left in the willows of the muted cries,

do I see its savior-wisdom

We are permitted by a certain physics of a certain time,

drawn to an electricity alternating through an impasse,

 eclectic intonations from our moans

 still in the mausoleum of our minds,

extension given by nostalgia,

where reckonings drift heavy back to us

-from [Leitmotif]

[You] a Poem

When you sleep,

I hold on to the dreaming you,

the anticipation of the reawakening of you,

the beauty of you,

the you when you are grey and closer to the eternal sleep,

your beauty everlasting with the false or true,

scattering kisses on you in great broken cycles-

I  know the beauty of you in my aloneness of consciousness,

the very delight of life with clamorous wings.

-from [Leitmotif]

[Everyone] a Poem

When everyone has married their everyone,

everyone will be every other one,

taking one great chance on the one who has become their every-thing;

and when little birds do nothing more than smile at grinning roses,

truly not young are their lies that are perfectly afraid of human happenstance.

- and when everyone marries their everyone, every-one will sing,

 every-one will remember that one in every many

 who has made everything for oneself wholly that

 one thing to live for every day;

 and when trees give off nothing more than their lilac-scented sap,

no one else will live the polite way that love has never been privy to.


-from [The Paper Womb II]

[Nightfall[ a Poem

Spin the ebb of the earth inside these blackening petals,

when our shadow have shrouded the sky that tolerate us.

Give me the roadmap pathway to the crest of a globe,

enlightened with cherubs, awakened endeavors,

sliver of legions,

immortal makers inoculated by

the core of nightfall.

-from [The Paper Womb II]

[By Choice] a Poem

We cannot eliminate all human despair,

and I think we’ve no right to try;

elimination is to flagellate ourselves of despair

and if we must go,

let us go in a spirit of choice

and not the spirit of fear;

tragedy is not only a staged effect;

its life begins in our lives,

a tragic-comic sonnet,

dawn drawn to its very last breath

until its moment of death

-from [The Paper Womb II]

[Love & Science] a Poem

Tire yourself to fatigue if necessary,

so this culture of love will read true in pathology;

and if the scientist who have bombarded you with

rationality of *peas and chocolate,

remind them that science cannot explain all things,

not the tides swallowing the shores,

 nor the fever dancing asymptomatic on the melting flesh.

-from [The Paper Womb II]

[This Learn'd Life] a Poem

No one can talk you out of what you must suffer;

the penalties of life taught by the infractions of life,

 sabotaged unions with self-loathing,

and what is tasted will be an elixir,

 with an aftertaste of wilted wildflowers,

 gone days dying in the wilting day.

-from [Leitmotif]

[Exiles] a Poem

We can invent ourselves twice over at the last moment

 facing a feeling of nothing,

a rigour of the meager,

 a leaf merely turned,

- but by now we’ve been disenfranchised

 from our own selves,

left exiled to find a new home

away from our old.

-from [Leitmotif]

[Echoes] a Poem

-a crevice in the covers where

the ghost of all lovers still lie,

a room echoing with their desperation to be free,

or to live once more

 With the night comes the spirit of the gone,

the long gone and never to return

& the memory of the syntax

that wholly kisses you,

the stain of lips corroding the skin

-from [Leitmotif]

[The Disquiet] a Poem

A woman cannot be just another entity;

 she dreams of the world aflutter

 before the world ever knew it could take flight

-of laughs, she can force the one vacant cry

on paper and

let no one read them

 the pain is the entity that comes from unread pages

-and of love,

if she finds none,

she’ll find it in her mind,

a mirror of conceit,

a disquiet to render her reality

bearable and sound.

-from [Leitmotif]

[The Unchosen Path] a Poem

-because I was unable,

incapable, unwilling,

my path in life was chosen for me-

-and now I roam,

circular patterns around squared misery,

cry during comedies and laugh

when tragedy arrives without invitation but with a reservation-

 -I order a “Death in the Afternoon,” at the bar;

tragedy has taken a corner seat,

ordered an aperitif,

telling the waiter

“He won’t be here long.”

-from [The Paper Womb II]

[How I Became Hers] a Poem

I wanted only one thing;

that was the fire that burns bright between her legs;

to get it, I resorted to opening my heart,

to further open her thighs-

-it was then, that I became hers

-from [Labial Laughs]

[The Light in You] a Poem

Light may be perpetual in you,

in me,

the dark always finds a way inside.

Oh love,

I wish it weren’t so,

I wish I didn’t have to wake with fleshy wood to

abuse your venus till numb and unbearable,

the same person who loves your light

is the madman with murder in his heart,

 who all the same loving you,

envies your ability to be-

[The Entanglement] a Poem

I can live off your smile;

 everything of death, departure and loss subsides with the very sight-

-send your hands astray across my body,

 deepthroat my shaft until my mushroom-head tickles your tonsils,

revolve around the tip as the moon does this great planet-

-sex is the connect that disconnects us from

 the daze of being hostages to this world;

If we are to be captive, let us be captive in the

mist of our entangled beings, lost forever to this primitive

form of coexistence,

that is sex-

-from [Labial Laughs]

[Be Elsewhere For The Moment] a Poem

It is not your wish to be taken as a whore is taken

 by a paying deviant,

but I cannot restrain that deviant in me

who desires the whore in you-

-so for the moment,

grit your teeth against the fabric of the pillows,

go elsewhere in your mind,

set your body loosely to be manipulated by savaged

 hands driven by a savage mind transfixed on that

 fantasy that has made you a captive initially-

-a woman you are,

a lady in that regard,

an equal, standing upright too,

tall and strong on this earth,

for this hour,

allow a malleable bend to live below your standard,

if only to please anothers’

-from [Labial Laughs]

[In-Motion] a Poem

What set of concerns can be offered

 to lead to a life in stasis?

Night is sure.

Tragedy following beauty remains beautiful

 I’ve walked too far to hold my steps

for the next who cannot,

will not,

are incapable of,

walking themselves

-from [The Paper Womb II]

[What We've Done] a Poem

[What We’ve Done]

            Things I have done,

you’ve done,

have been done before;

smothering each other with

gas lights is only self-induced

guilt-

I’ve apologized,

as I’ve done all my life,

then you’ll accept,

as all my apologies have been all my life,

double-back & give me

the dagger in an already

compromised spine

-then I’ll lie,

helplessly,

knowing paralysis will be

the story of me,

the same of you,

who has never had the

integrity to deliver a mercy

blow to an ailing lover-

[Self-Savior] a Poem

Hide in the darkest,

most secret corner of self;

It will keep you safe from manufactured growth

- though growth may come in spite,

asymmetrical from light,

It swallows the flourish of greener noons

 & orange evenings,

It renovates the flaws in a moment where

 they are disguised by flaws nonetheless

& though all may be lost in the deep chasm of isolation,

 it is a savior of rejection from the bees that will be had,

 will promise that sparing you from cross-pollination

 will be done in your honor.

-from [Labial Laughs]

[Fe Lamou] a Poem

[Fe Lamou]

-the life

is a taste of

honeysuckle,

a likeness of you-

-be quiet and drive,

pull over

at our nearest convenience,

follow the path never

trekked,

then double-back to where

we started,

on a path unfamiliar

-that’s how it begins,

a beginning,

spinning,

a farfetched in-hand sketch,

where two bodies bare

bear witness

to chance continuum-

-from [UnderStudies]

[Case Study] a Poem

My dear,

never-mind your flaws and your ugly tendencies,

life is squalid for both the pretty and the defected than meets the eye,

these eyes, about you, about who you are,

the farfetched vertebrae that collapse even the fighter,

brings the lifelong tenure of the brain to its end.

It’s pretty obvious that pretty petty little mechanisms,

constructed to illustrate one’s idea of strength, i

s as ephemeral as the true touch

 that humanity tends to be selfish with.


-from [Labial Laughs]

[The Chemical Necessity] a Poem

So I’ve admitted that my deepest emotions

have only found a way to be released under a chemical spell;

such a chemical, know this love, cannot manipulate a

man whose dreamed of all the good that can

be harvested in a lifetime from one woman-

 

-sentences are now broken,

 what I once knew to be true has now disintegrated,

become defunct, been carried far and wide with

the wind on its voyage to the nether of all that is otherworldly-

-when the crash downwards occurs, know that everything

I held dearly in secrecy will now be yours to do

with as you see fit

and once again,

I will be well in your decisive embrace-

-from [Labial Laughs]

[The Second-Class Immortal] a Poem

This frame of myself is bigger than my surroundings;

 I’ve flogged the vagrant in me too much now,

wither away now is a penal-colony condemned criminal,

a second-class citizen made second-class immortal

 from second-rate ideal and education.

-I take my steaks rare, still a ham and eggs man despite

 my knowledge of the short strata of DNA;

I still eat with the peasants and bleed with the starving artist,

 revolutionaries camped on State Street;

Who needs a dream to grasp for when their reach has only been sufficient enough to strangle the hope from them?

-from [Leitmotif]

[Something Other] a Poem

We know nothing,

almost nothing of fatigue,

of grief,

the manner in which it metastasizes in the muscles,

in the viscera, how it diminishes our cerebral functions-

-a theory, that our cells are affected physiologically when we see the resistant strain of sadness a resplendent thing, a resilient, inhuman thing, that plans to arrive temporarily, sees that its transplantation is a possibility without rejection,

 and refuses to budge from its cavity of capture,

distils its spite through septic memory and math, envelopes a ratio almost mute to clotted sounds of capital antibiotic-

-there then is a seething city,

 dense,

 both with proud smiles and dimming lights inside a mind

 lost in landscape of memory and darkening roses,

roaming the narrow streets around itself

while it too roams different wider streets

 around something other.

-from [Leitmotif]

[Cry Beautiful, Nightjar] a Poem

            -just when you think,

you become thoughtless,

I, without anything credible to say,

to pull you from the war-torn

dreamscape terraformed the very

instance we said “Hello.”

we are entitled to nothing,

we’ve forfeited that right;

and this hell we reside in,

is our hell to accept-

-from [UnderStudies]

[Waiting for the Dreamworld] a Poem

 

            The first wonder,

as a kid;

if I could ever stand directly

beneath the moon?

Man’s footprints are upon it,

every eye yet to shut to the world

are upon it;

why would a kid’s endeavour prove

any more naïve?

-from [UnderStudies]

[A Dick of a Man] a Poem

I knew a woman once,

sort of sorted in sorts,

elongated in a disparity all too

unfamiliar-

this is why,

I’m obliged to beg your

pardon,

I cannot understand why,

Or how she’s suffering-

hell I saw no point of it

at all,

-or maybe I was all-too-masculine

to have seen three paces past my

dick.

-from [UnderStudies]

[Pub Writing] a Poem

“you’re writing in a pub mate?

What are you writing?”

“Just a map of the past”

“How is that then?”

“Bleak enough to recall.”

-from [UnderStudies]

[Residual Mess] a Poem

-you were gone,

So you are no longer here,

To see the mess you’ve left

Or the mess you’ll never again make-

-from [UnderStudies]

[That World] a Poem

 

I’d always been lonely as a child,

rogue and vain,

in this, selfish like a child,

unlearned at sharing,

unseen at caring,

telling tales to tell the tale

of my wayward ascent-

-it was then,

during telling these tales,

I came to know a fanciful life,

worlds inside worlds,

swirled, gnarled and mangled

In their own,

trapped inside a jungle so wide,

nowadays vast,

those worlds never to be this one,

became me-

["They" are "We"] a Poem

All our worldly bliss is now gone;

It has been said to always become to be such a way;

“They” say “they” the ones who’ve known better

 to be burned twice,

“they” who stagger now, all alone,

as “they” say we are born

& will die “they” are “we” now;

we know better now to mettle with love again

-from [The Paper Womb II]

[Drowning Orchids] a Poem

I regret the day you melted under

the intensity of my love-

-I water my Orchids until they drown;

 this is the only way I know to love;

Pygmalion seeking Galatea’s heart to glow mad,

grow stag,

 beat furiously with intent to never want

 to know the end of that sudden electric pulse-

-from [The Paper Womb II]

[Coitus Interruptus] a Poem

I’ve learned as a lover,

to see beloved,

learning,

frustrated;

then distantly disdained,

departed,

and fate rests in all the stars.

Over your breasts, my seed will contend:

glowingly ripened to only fall to pathology,

 and also your mouth desire to swallow

so that your own pleasure superintend

-from [The Paper Womb II]