Even | By Kayode Olla & Carolyn Banks | A Collaborative Poem

I wish we could go to the beach
and watch the sun turn bleach orange,
but I hear you hate orange.
If you hate orange, would you also hate my ranch?

I wish we’d love the hum’n color of dark
or yellow — like peach, like oranges
like bare twinberries round and succ’lent …
and forage seedbed in your range!

Spare me this heartache
and please take my offering
a basket of figs
and please push me not away.
How long would you remain a stubborn lover?

Oh… this hardbark me is needy softcore within, baby!
This macho bass from beneath broad shoulders
is inward tender tenor husky with masculine longing…
long muscular longin’ spared, by you,
of entry access! Push me not away.

Eve… why are these leaves
of fig? Lemme def’ower and deleaf
you, relieve you of eaves,
go right inside… my Eve!
 
How long will the tears sting the eye? How long;
and what cost is the lot of love? Tell me,
callous friend! Being of li’l worth!
But please I pray in goodness’ name,
that you dash the ego against a rock
and for once, behold me!
 
Goodness me…! Hey girl, your soft-spoken swords
are twice a Sisera’s hostess’ refreshing milk
drink and sentencing peg nail — and twice an
Abigail’s remorse-stirring valor and endearing
and virtue — that you have rock-drilled deep
hard into a man’s temples of fevered
imagination! Goodness, oh
goodness me…!

Aw now, c’mon, staunch
this tear in your eye, my Eve.
And do not nail my headstrong
head now, please, Evelyn,
for I’ll say: Let us rather not go
to the beach this evening
where songs and sons may bleach
like beige colors of eventide:

but come back with me to Eden this eve,
my dear Evelyn — and let us there carol lines
of love sung to carillon tunes, my Evelyn
Oh baby girl, come back with me, this evening
to God’s Garden, to the love seat
to our Eden, my Eve …!

My!—wrapped up in the arms of him that calls
himself stubborn—oh my! the soft core
of himself is tightly under my arms!

Oh, passionate love that rides on
a golden chariot, a war, a battle of words.
Ah, they have paid and now I recline myself to Fate …

*******************

Image by Byafrique via Manufactoriel

[This poem is a part of Kayode Taiwo Olla’s collaborative composition project series.  Compositions were made via emails, phone calls and chat messages.]

About the Authors:  

Kayode Taiwo Olla is a graduate of Literature in English from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. His second and latest work (Dec. 2013) is Softlie, a collection of love poems spun into a story. He keeps a profile blog at www.kayodeolla.wordpress.com and manages a literary and art site at www.braveartsafrica.com. He shuttles between Osogbo and Ibadan.

Carolyn Banks studies English at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. She is a freelance writer, a poet, a songwriter and a lover of anything art. She lives in Lagos.