Tim Fab-Eme: ‘Claribel’

Claribel

You’re a map of myths and mysteries
cast in the paeans that possess me
mirth dusts your face like rough diamonds
on the skin of the rising Sun
I can’t bask in your warm laughter
without your charm etched on my mind;
for example, your mouth’s a rose petal
oozing peace in a time hate infests

our sickly world with guns and bombs,
it holds more books than a library
each tooth a classic I’ll write someday
I come to you, my muse, I
come as a friend, lover, and man
to weave this web of luscious dreams.
Your eyes are moons on my planet

soft and serious at once, like life,
transmitting the text of my next thought
yet I come to you, naked, unashamed
like a child, amused by your grace;
the parakeet said I am the song
you warbled in your sleep, and rehearsing

as you yawned out of your bed,
it was my name your neighbour heard
remixing all the highlights of your soul
it bears the buds of a beginning
as we sit here peeling our doubts

the way my mom skins small cocoyam
and we sit in this plastic Eden
to create zygotes of all we wish.
Let us mould our minds into stairs

of hope that stretches up to heaven
and what divides us will be extinct
words on the lips of old Thomas;

so I take your hand and together
we’ll work up our own world, pure

as paradise, just the way we want.

Tim Fab-Eme