DYING SUNS

Your children are maddening gales of claret dusts,
And gyrating loops of infinite longings for your swollen womb.
Their gaggle laughter used to be clandestine alchemy
And sleeping trees in the middle of the century.
And now, Kalahari is arctic shadows
And they are wearing the hours inside out.
The windmill is still churning the ancestors’ songs of terrors.
And the black sea has made a home in the spaces between their skeletons.
And here you are, throwing the dice against their light.
Have you forgotten how to hold dying suns?

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SABBATH DAY

Your aunt with a smoldering mouth gaping without a tongue,
Spent Sabbath day laughing and laughing.
This was after your mother told her how
Her son tore apart the yellow sun,
Trying to swallow whole a dusk full of owls,
Dandelion and shadows.
He is a pyre now,
And she is sorry because someone is yet to remember how to
Hide the deep-sea in human bones.

Your aunt with hurricane eyes wide without irises,
Spent Sabbath day separating silence
From her sons’ paraffin-smelling bones.
And you are holding your lungs in your thighs.
You have remembered that you knew,
How your cousin started stealing midnight after
Ghouls started speaking to him in broad day light.
He is a hymn now,
And you are sorry because someone is yet to remember how to
Unbury ghosts with still beating hearts.

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Poems: Gaamangwe Joy Mogami
Image: Moyan Brenn via Flickr (modified)