BECOMING A CROW

When they tell you:
That your skin speaks in Melanin
tell them how the sun dangles
on your equatorial neck.
The Sahara pants hard;
because the sky has iba
it wraps itself in blankets of clouds
as an abiku, you  twitch
under kindred spells.

Too long have I run away from shores
that bed hot coals under prodigal soles
Truly Africa, no hell can match you
But one love brings heaven to your home.
There’s a light I have denied in your nights
Your darkness glows as ebony wood.
A step to heaven starts from hades:
But first you must be a crow racing from foreign tides
back to where the earth finds its pulse
to find the foreskin of your humanity.
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DO NOT BE SHOCKED

There’s plenty therapy
in my dirty herbs.
Stranger!
do not be offended
that this black pot brews
a broth of creamy, white pap.

Do not be shocked
that my blood is red;
and my sole is blonde.
the sun has stained my skin
black with melanin.
but my face is a widow
with an ebony sigh;
you will stumble upon gems
when you poke the humus deeper.

I am prey in the jungle of history
where antelopes frown at the tale
leaping from lips of a wild cat.

how shall I write my story?
when they ploughed the land
with their Imperial tongue;
and weeded my florid dialects
their tales are twisted tubers.
they have burnt my tongues
inside steamy, bubbling cauldrons
of white instructions.

But I too have my forte;
and when the day
is terrified by the night
my frame announces itself
with a shadow well differentiated
in the towering darkness;
I glow in the legend of Hercules
that strangulates the Nemean lion
on a path to home.
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Image: Pixabay.com