Guest Poet: Two poems by Soonest Nathaniel Scholes

Never Dies

After our steamy sex,
I knew you
were still awake
even before the day broke,
your orgasm was fake.
First crow,
you said you were pregnant;
and I unlike the fisherman
did not deny.
Like a trout, I swallowed your bait,
but only asked;
with what?

Putrid prophesies,
catholic curses,
or beautiful blasphemies;
stocks for shylocks,
merchants trading dearth
in the season of harvest.

There was no milk from your breast
when that day you returned
with a chick to our nest;
we put litmus to test,
and your lies were corrosive.
But I did believe,
I accepted them;
those lies so sweet, supple, poetic.

But the feces you refused to earth
now gathers flies,
still the scales won’t fall from my fickle eyes;
for that which truly lived, never dies.

 

Scrabble of life

Mimi
Ours is a hard scrabble life
A life stronger than art;
And in the end,
All we have is a bag of letters
To scrabble shattered dreams into order.

Nne
I too rune tiles
To cast my faith,
There's a new word
I've been trying to spell,
And it's not sokolowski;
It's a word I first read from tea
leaves,
While working on a Chinese tea farm.

I've heard it sung
On holy tongue,
And used in divine utterances,
Now I long play them on the scrabble of life,
But my tiles are missing a vowel;
O! I want to play a premium.

Mimi
You are that lost vowel
Of the missing alphabets;
Without you,
The essence of my existence
Cannot be clearly spelt.

Nne
They say
Everyone lives in two words,
But u and I are a ligature;
I have no paint brush,
But I know u see the picture.
Gravity
Is not as real as our emotions,
And our dreams are far more powerful than history.

Thus lend me 'you' Mimi,
Lend me the vowel of yourself,
The ligature of your love.
Lend me 'you' that I might play
The word,
The new word
Needed for that premium.

They say it's found in no lexicons,
By no dictionaries,
Nowhere;
But I tell them
That nowhere is the new direction,
And there this helpless romantic is headed.

Mimi
I don't care,
Don't care what they say;
Just give me you and the finest word I'll play.

Mimi
You are the vowel,
The ligature;
So come my lady,
Come baby,
Come let us scrabble shattered dreams into order;
O come! O come!
Come and we shall make of this life a premium.

© Soonest Nathaniel Scholes 2014

  

Soonest .I. Nathaniel currently holds the title of poet of the year for the Korea-Nigeria poetry festival 2014. He’s a graduate of mathematics and computer science who believes that Albert Einstein would have touched the world better as an artist. His works have appeared in various publications including Lyriversity, Sentinel Nigeria, Seaview Poetry, Wikicolumn, Loudthots, Kalahari Review, EGC, WRRP, and Pearls Literary. In his spare time you can find him listening to the music of the spheres or reading the stars.