Sunday 4 July 2021

The language of the trees

A year later

Everyone had lost someone

Grief had bound us by it's hearth

Our hearts were sore from being pummeled by sorrow


A year later

Everyone had lost someone

Grief had bound us by it's hearth

Our hearts were sore from being pummeled by sorrow


We lost hope itself

The disease took everyone it touched

And it touched our healer

We gathered to send him off

To the ancestors who left us for dead


We had hoped

That he would find us a cure

But everything he did, killed us faster

All the herbs, shrubs, trees were fighting us

We stopped trying to get better



As he did for others, we laid him

On a plantain leaf- lined bamboo raft

To send him off on the sacred river

With his dying strength, he grabbed his remaining son

Who will now be infected

His shout came out as a raspy whisper

"They have finally come, the people that understand the language of the trees"


Tuesday 1 January 2019

THE GRINCH OF NEW YEARS EVE

Seated.

In a crowd of dancing jubilants
Shaking hands, sharing hugs
Daring to speak their hopes as prayers for others
Camouflaging their trembling hearts in white robes before a God who smells fear.

Seated in a bubble

What do you tell a God who reads minds?
What do you ask a God who whispers to noisy hearts.
How do you dazzle a God to tattle a future he clutches to his chest.
A God who earns devotees by keeping the future to himself.

Seated in angst

Before you get presumptuous
And wish another person a Happy New Year,
Remember what happened the last time you did.
If you had the power to grant happy new years, would you share it carelessly.
Are we generous with the wishes because they're empty?
Do we get punished by a jealous God for assuming his power to give happiness.

Seated in a Halo of Epiphany.

Seated.

Watching the hope-peddlars peddle cheap stuff
To the same who will be visited with all manner of misfortunes
Watching their hearts swell like the Trojans charging at the Greeks
I comfort them with hugs and handshakes
I wish you will have a Happy New Year

Wednesday 11 July 2018

Tomboy

If you are one of them
you are not one for them
So hide your curves
In plain sight of their clothes
Hunch your shoulders
Hide the breasts
Speak their language
Be like them

Walk like them
Walk with them
Make an ally of predators
Take his mind off of you
Sheep in wolves' couture
When you take it off,
You're beautiful

You are soft and supple
Vulnerable
A woman in a man's world
They can have you
Forcibly, harm you physically
In a man's world
You are woman at night
Behind closed doors
In cover of darkness

It's morning, sheep
Whatever you choose to be
Today is not the day you wear your skin

Monday 1 January 2018

New Year Requiem

We are quest-ers
Left with even more questions
We find out at the end
We are being dragged to begin again
We only fake control

When you are thankful for an ending
You are also giving thanks for a beginning
But you only have one
Because life doesn't allow double wins
And yours is not the invisible hand in control

Control
When you try to get more
Out of this than you ought
So you set milestones to celebrate
And set goals to attain
To mark an ending
And fake control

But endings are beginnings
And
All that is ever gained 
Are questions
Even more questions 

So meet me at 
Your goals ending
Another beginning
And show me what you have gained
I know what you have found
More questions

Before you can ask
"Is this it?"
You are thrown into another beginning
But if you can find space
Between the old and new
An unclaimed space
Between the old and new...

Seize it, you've earned it
And have a Happy New year

To False Starts

Instead of early sprints,
The stuff of high expectations
The mother of heartache
Borne of the age-old scammer
Optimism

Let
The first few go
Unscrutinized
They bear no traits 
Of the oncoming
Trust that
They are not 
Pregnant harbingers
And let them
Flow

Make room
For false starts
And glitches
And do not go
Knotting them in threads
Attaching them to the unseen
And conjuring patterns
The ones that live in your head

In the name of
False starts
And
All that can go wrong 
Happy New Year

Monday 25 December 2017

A Heart on Empty

I can't tell.
Is this my replay
Or hollow echoes

This tug-and-pull
Of doubt and glee
In the same heart
Gasping for life

Your words could
Should
Make the difference
But what do I make of an
I-would-choose-you-a-thousand-times-over
I who have only brought grief

My heart has no fodder
To ignite your love into a flame
And though you are enough for two,
I can't come to love
With my heart on empty

Everything the Light Touches

Come with me
Into the light

Let's be dancing shadows
Gyrating silhouettes
Beating out of sync hearts
Giggling school girls

Come with me
Watch the hills wake
The light penetrate the mist

Come with me
Baby
To where the touch
Is gentle
the glow unfading
And everything the light touches
Can be yours