Photograph by Michael Nichols

Tea Party In A Fox Hole

I'm enrolled albeit fictitiously

In the School of Udhra

Committed at last to philosophy

Expressed by Udhrite School

Of poets who

"When loving die"

A Bedouin tradition and

It’s complaints

Of singleness and unrest

Of union and disunion

Dogon avatars carry

Duende through the ages

And I am inside their

Dark rhapsody

Stitching together lost

Memory and mystic roots

I’m helplessly in love but running

From it

Towards something affirming

Enlightening

Love with ugly in it

Conjunctive and disjunctive cadences

Inspired by revision instead of lies

I fall in love too easily

And I’m not ashamed

I confess love

Without a clue anymore what it means

The language needed most

Can’t be found

So I’m speaking with broken voice

In cliché

In abstractions

Babble 

Why wait until magic wears off

Be foolish

Speak in tongues

While the spell is on

Love is dark masquerading as light

Pin trajectories

Through solid night

Love is hippopotamus

With thick hairless body

Short legs

Mammoth heads like giant sledgehammers

Our condition (this embracing)

This socializing at tea parties

For hours on end

Oblivious to time

Submerged in enthusiasm

Excreting lethal mixtures of urine

And feces while twirling tails like a propeller

Hippopotami

Fertilize everything in the water and on land

To humiliate their hippo rivals

And to mark territory around a watering hole

Swishing their little tails to be sure

Plenty of coverage is at nose level

Hippos are extremely aggressive

Unpredictable and unafraid 

Upsetting boats without provocation

Chomping humans with huge canine teeth

And sharp incisors

Love can be like that

Wanting what’s impossible

Every sentence uttered is faux pas

Because no one knows what to say

But say something anyway 

As long as the other will listen