End of the Affair

Today's poem is End of the Affair by Kwame Dawes. Hope you like it.

End of the Affair

I hate the word deploy
let's use use, although I am sending
and sending these lies to you,

but not sending but letting them go
in what I am not saying,
and waiting for the end of things,

though I know the end of things
and fear are the bridge I slide on,
waiting for you to stare at me,

cold as stone, asking me what,
after all is said and done, is the ploy.

From Gomer's Song. Copyright 2007 Kwame Dawes. Used with author's permission.

Eating With Fingers, by Kwame Dawes

I love this Kwame Dawes poem, Eating With Fingers, and I hope you will enjoy it too.

Eating With Fingers

  I've returned to South Carolina
where summer is barefaced and plain-
  speaking, no dalliance here in Dixie.
For three days, I am comforted
  by the lingering spice of your daal
in my fingers, and somehow
  while it lasts, it is enough.
Still I am sure I will return
  without warning to Marlowe's dark
Thames, that ancient stream
  on whose southern banks New World
Kurtzes rave among the natives.
  I will come incognito, travelling light,
and seek out the shelter
  of your sun-washed loft, there
to make poems and scoop
  handsful of basmati
souped in your garlic-flecked sauces.

From Kwame Dawes' collection, Midland. Ohio University Press. Copyright 2001 Kwame Dawes.
Used with author's permission.