Your curious eyes stare at me in wonder,
Like a scared little animal before you wail out in fear when I take you.
I hold you gently to my chest, feeling your tiny heartbeat slow down,
Your tears subside and your body calms.
Your head resting on my shoulder while I sooth you.
For you this is scary right now and I want to take away all your fears.
In time you”ll have questions, insecurities, anger and feelings of loss,
And for those days, I will be there for you.
To make you feel safe and help you fight your demons,
even when we fight each other.
For I knew I loved you before I met you.

She sat by the roadside head bent low.

At the sound of footsteps, her eager hand darts out.

She doesn’t raise her eyes.
Tightly curled knots form a tight cap
That snugly fits the dome of her head.

The timeless hiss of fat tyres
Forms the background symphony of her day,
Still her head bends low.

As the hiss fades and the steady crunch of a step is heard,
She looks up,
Vacuous eyes staring unseeing at the thick blanket of darkness.
The startling blue of the African skies
Doesn’t soften the thick blanket folded across her eyes.

She doesn’t blink.
Slowly her head drops to her chest
Her hand creeps back to its fold.
One more moment has passed…
Is there anybody there?

Numbers, no names in this toothy field:
Stone incisors tilt drunkenly beneath a twelve o clock sky.

Your flaking bones and gaping mouths
lie forgotten in the press of earth,
lost lacework…

Did tender fingers once trace the shell of your ear,
some mouth kiss your warm cheek,
before grey walls and white doors shut out the light,
before your brain burst behind your bloodshot eyes?

Who never came to claim you?
And who clunked the gurney under the run of soulless lights,
Who signed the form, slotted you, filed you and forgot you?

Where do they lie?

But in the crush of years
all turn to dust,
cherished and uncherished.
So why do I ache to scratch away the earth,
find your milky bones,
tease tarsals out like little seeds,
cradle your skull,
give you back your name?

I tremble. A fragment stirs
and I breathe its evocation:
Names can bind and set you free…

Perhaps the mystic in me has not withered utterly;
Parchment dry,
but waiting for a little rain.

The man I love lives off borrowed truths.
He is a hoarder of facts.
He quotes entire Bible verses verbatim.
He collects the realities of strangers.
He struggles with his own truth.

He goes to Accounting class
and then compares me to a deferral.
He chats to a classmate who does Chemistry
and then compares me to potential energy.
He tells me I am the girl he would love
if he had a heart.
Clearly he doesn’t do Biology,

I bring him food from home so he can fill his mouth
with something other than words.
I tell him stories.
He moistens his lips with juice I poured
at my kitchen counter and continues to speak.
I ask him to tell me about his past.
He tells me he doesn’t have a father.
He says I am too beautiful to know the rest.
The man I love is a liar.

If I was your lover, Miss
I would beam at the rise of my hand
To the soreness of nothing on you
And give you warmth in sun and moon
That from the aphelia be heard
To which winds and barks acquiesce

I would caress your rear and some
For many nights in silence of tongue
And bring us vittles and brews
From the echt nigh merchant
So we needn’t go hungry and athirst,
Somewhere ‘tween our pleasures

If I was your lover, Miss
We’d make sojourns of pleasance
To many shores of fair weathers
Pressuring our palms in parallels
And gaze at the stars on our tolerance
To forever rest in serenity of days

The commotion in my psyche is beyond strenuous
I get temptations of repugnant conduct
My better-half also confirmed my heart’s melancholy
On this, would you be gentle Mother Nature?
Take me wing, soon as I slam my sight

My engagement in collection of ignominy
Has been a unremitting excursion
Which so long as I live through
Shall embrace me in its tender pain

I went in and out of infirmaries
Every time I woke with just a perfect pelt
To which white-coated folks cheered
With little acquaintance of my valid condition

Oh liberty! Why do you shy away in this
Have you no espy of my affairs
Even when with conviction I assert
That should I gather one more dire truth
Those of reasonableness shall embrace my presence?

I have seen my lady many times
Strutting her hair in pride and chimes
It is my heart she’s giving beats
My emotions like the sun she heats

I have seen my lady many times
Every hour of sight stopping times
Wishing for a second to impress
For some more I would depress

Yes I have seen my lady at a time
When her eyes were of the colour lime
Marvelling what language she could say
But whichever, I wanted her to stay

“Good Morning”, sang the songbird.
“Good Morning”, rumbled the stream.
Where on such a glorious day shall we go?
I will go where the wind takes me.
And I will go where the current flows.
And that is where they went.
To wherever the wind blows and the current ends.
Drifting and flying they went.

Your love is sweet like vanilla
Which flowed in my veins.
The way you say my name…
Like it’s somehow safe in your mouth
You treat me like winter mornings
Like one hand on my knee as you drive
Like blissful childish laughter.
The way you clutched me at the waist
And murmured; “I love you forever.”
Like a secret that tied us simultaneously.

But just like winter you left …
Your love for me was figurative, licentiousness.
You jilted like everyone else.
And I’m now wrecked to the bone.
How long is forever?
The corrugated blue lines have become so prominent.
The way blood just oozes out of it
The same way your love did…