Three Poems, Petero Kalulé

Stipples

^(whispered)

–– for Carson

my foot steps

     where

        your foot steps

step, standing

        on the hollows of

                            absence

but sand song s-

       pool

       where our feet

             sink, s-

tipling hollows full, sof-

            t,

          heeled over

Kafunda

– for Tim

in attempting to enter the meanings of this word, i break it down, into 2 small words ka & funda

i start w/ ka, a diminutive, to mean miniature, small, tittle, pocket-like. w/ diminutives, inferring the affection and intimacy of cracks

            small things ...

i move on to funda, which comes from o’kufundikira/ kufunika to mean the tucked in, the secret, the mesh shrunked in, or out, the enveloped, the shawl, the wrapped, the pouched, the folded, the shrouded, the tender smalls w/in smalls, the open-out ––fungua

meaning engulfs in the kafunda, meaning in the kafunda is multiple … a kafunda thus unalterably becomes bufunda, inferring a multitude of kafunda.

the kafunda is many but one, petalled, ––origami. english doesn’t do the kafunda’s plurals justice, english won’t do the contours of these folds justice; the grafting of grammars is wrong–– for english is exterior, superficial

i can only describe the kafunda imperceptibly as one would describe the folds of lovers, their strange familiar open-out places. perhaps, one shouldn’t even (have to) describe another’s folds? Which is to say, one should only experience them amorously in relation, abutting, rubbing, scraping, ruffling w/, into, and beside them

a lover’s or a friend’s folds needn’t say much either …not much initiation is necessary. they simply relate. they fold out. they hold out, teaching one how to avow unconditionally, in a tangling without presuppositions

             

                                      like ears, they “gap” & pull one’s unmouthable secrets, quietly, with-in. The folds of those we love never ‘straightforwardly’ emerge, no; they are lightly waiting, wavering, faltering, always lightly waiting patiently, ––ka. like a likkle smile. all folds arc into the emergent, waiting open-out for relation (i.e., an involvement from within/without) revealing crannies of hospitality, kindly on, from the very beginning

the potentiality for this relation is always there, silent, inward, in the cracks of pockets already there, priorly welcome, already there, defying time, always here, exigent, errant, playful, defying boundaries, supplely passing & returning, passively yet intently, never without delay, creeping

                                 insurgently also

in this sense, the kafunda (un)folds itself flexibly, paring space, orbiting, as its own parabola, past, present and futural, up, down & sideways s w inging sweetly also

bodies (un)fold within the kafunda in similar motions. bodies become bufunda … in similar ways, they crease, past, present&futural-up, down and sideways, all so yieldingly. they s offly flounce, emplaced, through small parallel-surface divisions of selves, flexibly, receptively, never without delay, stealthily, always there, haptic

when pushed to a far edge, we find comfort in the fragile crests of the kafunda, where we open-out, negotiating entrapments, boundaries, rims, dents, partitions, considering all the different skeins of the kafunda’s-bufunda that embed us. at the same time, we shrink (calibrating the gaps of death - exhaling breath, its rhythmic quaver … for shrinking/funda also implies the gap, the crevice, the aperture of kufa/closure/the crypt/the-ultimate-leap) considering the ever-changing open-out space that the kafunda’s-bufunda occupies (yet gives/ closes away/ & RESISTS) when its forms cling, when its skins gently touch

this open-out-&- shrink space involves some kind of intervallic folding, it involves a double unveiling, a balletic bind … a stitching of an enveloped body to its flaps of emerging enveloping selves. It is a pliable secret inflected gesture of sharing [for the texture of sharing  which is a texture of kindness - is a topology of flapped folds – perhaps, this is why one ‘wraps’ a gift? -] that owes an interconnectedness to other body-non-body-spirits in their peculiar dispositions, contortions, & (non)formations …

                       i flutter, you flutter, we flutter

in the open-out-&-shrink, bodies move, bodies weft, mesh mosh, enmarsh, rift, raft, bodies collapse, bodies scaffold, bodies enjoy-n-in their super-imposed multitudes upside-bottom to top. bodies break; their hearts-nerve, their ii’s-unlid, their lip-hips-lop, slippery, their straight-thighs-curve, their front-behinds-clasp, their pleats-frock-&-prong (jolting, all in the pocket) rub-a-dub-dub 2gether

all manner of social-elasticities unfold together in the open-out-&-shrink of the kafunda: consummations, contemplations, confessions, exploitations, frolics, evections, contaminations, waverings, deaths, debts, mournings, wreckings, worries, langourings, ablutions, absences, silences, lapses, perhapses, songs, arrivals, departures, dances:

over & over,

in crossing over, i take-all-off and in-

              fold ;

  né ––

         fundikira

perhaps, in attempting to describe the recursive open-out, i’ve crinkled this fold way too far, and revealed way too much incomprehensibly

ach, the fold always shrinks !

and so, i must remember the kafunda’s microscopic smalls. i must remember its ability to entice, pouch & gather me into the oblique unknown, into the elsewhere of the open-out-&-shrink

but perhaps most importantly, i must always remember that i (shan’t) fold alone, that i can(’t) fold alone; [in-2 my own interiority]

& i say yes, i must remember that to kufunda is to wholeheartedly embrace the never subsumable open-out-&-shrink

                   

Things

having things is talk is having things talking

about is to talk having things about is to partake in

things having talk is things to talk about having

Petero Kalulé @nkoyenkoyenkoye is a composer, poet, and multi-instrumentalist. Their collection of poems Kalimba was published by Guillemot Press in May 2019.