[The Loiter] a poem

Tell me of this “no one” you

always refer to at your most darkest;

is she smitten by every speck of light,

or drawn back onto herself as a promise

 folded back on itself?

 Is she lustful of romance, that sentiment so exquisitely

 drafted by an almost forgotten era & remolded by the decadents?

Is she mindful of the lasting jazz yet soaring today?

Miles Davis, John Coltrane, lost notes of improvisation,

sacred spells possessing the body as music does the snake

 during its charm?

 Has she fallen, an angel whose wings were broken in flight

 & has since stared into the sky in her helplessness?

Or is it that she is lost? Possessing a map with no key,

no borders, written in an identified language, with no

desire to decipher any direction?

We can only be broken by a break we let fester in its prolonged

 semester & the break that comes to all?

Is she wondrous of this, the break, the timelessness,

 the motionlessness, the de rigueur of iniquity so common in a life

 spent staring at the sky awaiting a comet eons out?

 Does she harbor ill-wanting to be well, to be healed,

freed of corrugated chains welded on her utter able fragile wrists?

 Or is it that being held captive gives her the pause she needs,

 the loiter she needs to surrender against forward motion,

 against swimming against the tides?

Dontrell Lovet't

-from [They Took it All Away]