FUGITIVES

Our Cracked heels carried dust from beneath our bare feet
The spirit of the red earth rising above our heads
Making uncertain the way ahead

I
Was fleeing the darkness
The violent dark cloud with angry eyes
Eyes glowing with hate
Lighting the dark, sucking me into tartarus.
The angry clouds begin to drizzle spittle
Thundering commands to the girl in the corner of the mossy wall
Her balloon navel gives life to the GMG logo on her flour-sack dress
The wind uproots a boabab and sends the slithering roots at her
It tears...
Her clothes, her innocence, her hymen
RUN!
Run little girl run!

You
Were chasing a persona
A daddy who will not pay a lump sum
To escape a life time of installments
Who will not, like the first smoke from a wet hearth,
Spark joy and leave fast for the clouds
And leave a small boy with a birthmark and a search quest
Pitting him against a sore self
RUN
Run little boy run, there is fire on the mountain

We
Brushed shoulders and locked ankles
We did not fall easily
We fought off and fended off
Grabbed and missed and threw our arms wildly
scratching at the wind
We held on to fear
but we fell.

YAA OF THE RESTLESS SOUL

We gave up on her,
no her ways.
she would cry for no reason
and scare us with unprovoked laughter
she will embrace us all in the morning,
drive us all insane before noon
make peace by dusk
and make our beds on the roof before midnight
this Yaa

she is moody at funerals
and stoic at festivals
we skirt around her temper on egg shells
but we swear shes forgettable.
her dark brown face and blank eyes
the lost look in them loses us and drowns us
we don't remember the mounds that are her lips
we don't look at her much
this Yaa

Yaa the earth goddess
a cold barren land this one
brown sprouts, salty springs and angry mountains
she bears stale fruits and thorny weeds.
she has no bosom our Yaa
her children will drown before she receives another tear
from her runaway lover - the sky
she has baffled the wisest
and smothered the bravest

Yaa of the restless soul,
those who stay long enough know shes troubled
we watched her burn forests
trying to warm up to us
we watched her lover smite her,
his fiery temper and cold love-making
cracked her skin into tortoise shells.
we looked on indifferently
while her children hurt her and neighbors abused her.
our intervention?
we sing of her peculiar ways in the markets.

THE EASTER EPIPHANY

My haughty spirit arrived,

In a long hall, All white;

Blinding self and wiping the smirk

Long etched in the granite heart of mine

Infront of me was a king-

For he was enthroned,
 with an endless entourage

Yet I doubted.

For my eyes could not behold

That from which the hosts hid their visage.
 this king, was naked

And his crown uncomf’table

 it dug into his scalp and shed red rays.

Yet his serene countenance sought

To comfort me for his pain.

His regal gait was unaffected

By the fresh wounds that bled

And dropped stains on the snow-white floor,

I watched it meander to form branches

Exending farther than my sight.

I was broken.

His eyes were a pool of fresh life

When our gaze met.

Yet his hosts could not lift theirs

His trembling hands handed me

A chalice of the purest gold

stained by his sticky prints of blood

His fingers too bruised and crooked

To have a firm grip.

I took it mechanically for I’d become

A lump of shivers.

He spoke in a resounding voice
 from the beginning of time

“I saved it for you,

For the health of your body,

Even your spirit and soul.

Make it count.”

With trembling hands I pass on

The chalice with the savior’s blood

That the next person might be saved.

A TRIBUTE TO HOPE

i died a million deaths when 

i found in a dark alley

on dead-end street

at new beginnings close

you

the drying remnant of

bitter tears on a smiling lip

the first and only home

on the deserted street

shadowed by haunted houses

painted with diluted tar

from a bloodied jar. 

it was light red and heavy black

you lived alone

hope full

you taught love to recalcitrant ghosts

you stitched my rags

and made a shawl for my bare shoulders

you made me smile to warm my comrade

who shares the condemn cells

i birthed a million tears

when i found you

a smoking flax in the wind

murdered by a thumb and a trigger finger

they killed you in one casual, mindless act

because hope is the return athlete

now limping and old and unqualified