random hallucinations

i. wind
when harmattan
is clawed,

devoid of violin
strings; cobwebs.

in its haste,
my ears endure
sterile songs

only brown
crisp leaves,

baked by autumns,
stirring and whirring

whispering the season
is at rust

ii. religion
while beside
the market rubbish heap,

a white dog, coiled up,
suckles piebald pups.

iii. Kilimanjaro
Kilimanjaro
+++ may not be a molehill;

frozen white ice slides down
grey rocks

as baptism of milk
and ice-cream.

mighty Kilimanjaro
wears cotton-white hair.

tourists come to gaze,
for her quiet

grandeur cannot whine.

iv. racism
a room does no divide
yet our don whines this skin,

my coat, should be black coffee

and this mind, the drop
+++ of fire imbedded,

and time with iceberg tongues
+++ freezes the fire.

v. creation
the river gods
gave us could not shrink

+++ for them to cross.
did not that river

turn red-blooded
+++ with their fury?

vi. national anger
these were droppings,
like ball bearings

sowed all about,
where we reared

government sheep.

does a country shit
with this extravagance?

at what cost would we keep
a government wolf?

vii. fire
I am too cold
to keep the hate

of a brush fire
+++ warm.
b r e a k the +++ water
with your brain.

if a stray scent
sent from a nectar petal
be this awful

kiss slow then the red
petals of wild fires.

—————-

Some of these places

(-after Warsan Shire)

some of these places
may not be homes.

they may be ghosts of slain
histories
fat with honest
diabolism,

akin to purple ticks
round with black blood.

eyes cannot glean gore
crust their lips.
it would rather decorate
the walls of their bellies.

how much they are homes
is why we miss places
whose goodness we have never
savored.

they may not homes if they can
be daemons possessing our emptiness.
Son, when you see our crowns
fitfully shake, it is for skull-crashing madness.

but which home?
which home must stand upon one’s
skull to proclaim her grandeur?

which home must best
roll one into a sullen grave?
a grave one’s son stumbles on

when history is a quiet black hole
on the face of dust,
when history is a cursed hole
winds are too mute to flute,

and truth a lantern
with windy tongues
blown afar.

far where dwellers of the dark
cannot see its glimmer
faintly wave its death.

there is this one we had
that we stole from ourselves
but how could our strange
tongues call it home?

—————-

Ayena

Ayena,
if from discordant
histories we have fused
like death to a corpse
or
day to one-eyed sun,
were we not butter goaded
from black and white teats?
shall we again search
for an envious sun
to severe these cords
between these veins
of words from your petal
lips and these green shoots of joy
in my heart?
if complete parting be where your passions love,
let us run back where we were never.

————————–
Poems © Marial Awendit
Image: thierry ehrmann via Flickr (remixed with pixabay.com)