LISTEN TO YOURSELF

• Where is a word to hold the edge of blue waters
  when the waves wrestle
  like rival wives? Where is a word to hold a woman
  when she runs,
  runs, runs…where is a word to stamp out a fire
  when a sky has no
  home?

  Listen to yourself.
  Listen to the gossip of seas,
  washing
  up Nombolisa’s cooking stones.
  Listen to derelict hope
  swinging cloth
  hangers at the green lights.
  Listen to the man you cannot touch
  the
  manacled children, the rubbished innocence.

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MUSIC

• Noon, under a sun that’s lost its fire,
  your blue harp slakes its thirst
  for song,
  stretching its chords, wings of fire,
  arching on tiptoes, a
  busybody,
  unearthing the ages, like a
  baby hungrily thrusting a nipple
  into her mouth. Harp digging for treasure,
  here l am, a pearl
  sitting on my bum.
  Offer me a dance, pull me close,
  nourish my braids
  and l shall
  ascend, rung by rung,
  past the corridors of rust,
  past
  the aching rivers,
  past the lips l cannot kiss.
  I shall stand on the
  earth
  by the waters of rest.

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FELDAFING

• We had silence like nowhere else
  barkless dogs, babies sleeping in
  strollers. We had the miracle of first fruits,
  pristine air, a
  budding spring.We had a garden of potato fries,
  we owned a lake –
  full of laughter.

  You and l and a mountain road.

  We had a mascot
  of neon
  preserved by the force of dreams.

  We were triumphant, we knew
  loss
  hungry and thirsty, we licked the dew

  off the face of morning.

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© Toyin Adewale-Gabriel