Arun Kapur
Etymology
Sitting, our fingers locked in
each other’s, you profess love again
as though repetition
would sharpen the trite blade
of the confession, as though
the confession lacks the potency
to convey passion so infernal,
so rebellious against classification
You yearn
to grasp love by its roots, you want
your tongue to carry the wildfire in
your chest, to express love at its truest
How impossible this endeavor
reined in by language. We journey
the long etymology of love,
Every word curls fetal into another – an
eternal fold of petals. The English word love
opens up to luf, opens up to lufu, opens
up to lubo if you go German, or hub
if you go the Mediterranean route – all
attempts to trap sensation in the body
of a word & so we unknot & unknot,
our tongues raging,
freeing themselves from skin, from the
fringes of language, speaking in the
thrashing of bodies. We hold ourselves,
miracles pulsing in each other’s palms.
Abdulbaseet Yusuff is a Nigerian writer. His works appear or are forthcoming in Brittle Paper, Rattle, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Up The Staircase Quarterly, MoonPark Review, Kalahari Review, Burning House Press, Ice Floe Press, Memento: An Anthology of Contemporary Nigerian Poetry, and elsewhere. He’s contributing editor at Eboquills, and tweets @bn_yusuff.
Enigmatic. Charismatic. Passionate. Lover of life and all truth that binds it. Arun Kapur is a Wolverhampton born and bred artist that aims to bring life through all his creations. Using the medium of photography, poetry and film, Arun believes beauty births from all forms of life.