Where’s the Love?

Often, when my eyes survey the world

They see joy lost and everywhere peace is gone;
And to earth falls flat pleas as dreams lay torn

From the lips of tears and misery I hear anguish

In panic my blood runs cold at things that unfold

When I shake hands with hurts and pain and melancholy.

It’s here I asked myself, where is the promised love?

With hope bereft and despair disguised as gentle arms

I went to the church and feathers of hope fell off me

I went to the village grounds and met open betrayals

On each street corner are greed, paybacks and spite

And all that can break your back left me dismayed.

I choked on the smiles on lips and the love on fingertips

And I asked myself, where is the love we talked about?

I cannot be at peace when people are not free.

And all that come to sooth the soul is angst
I ask myself is this what the revolution was about?

I see people who cannot marry the love of their lives.
I see countries and families torn apart by war and strife.
I met the nakedness of freedom, racism and inequality,

With a wounded heart that silently weeps

I do not think this is how it's supposed to be.

Like a seed that blows in the gentle breeze,
I want to spread love and put bigotry down on one knee.
Every human and every soul deserves happiness.
They shouldn't be harmed; we must lose bitterness.
But why have we lost love in our world?

Deep within my heart, there is a scorching flame
That demands I help my fellow man and woman
They scream at me to give them my hand.

My one wish is to deliver upon the world a soothing rain.
To cast away the reign of intolerance and fear,
To deliver humanity from tyranny's pain and torture

That a lifeless soul or a faceless one losses not the self

The Divorce

Fudzikomele, who will believe this?

I walked through the front door,

And you said, “Get Out of my Face!”

You said, “Else, you will find yourself finished.”

Today, I walked through the front door again,

And you said: “Look at the time! Look at the time!”

Thank you; I stepped out through the front door again

I didn’t see a thousand flaming trees on the road.
Instead, hills fell over each other, royally, to greet me.

By daily dying, I’ve learned to be.

I hope my silences are accurate and true

Maybe, it’s true, in the dark eyes begin to see better.

Ballard of the Sand

Fudzikomele my dear,

The mother we hired to birth you
Because she does not love me, leads you

Into deep waters, to the deep end

Where the water is darker.

Her open, encouraging arms
That never get nearer you are merciless.

You will dream of this water always
Where nothing comes nearer to your comfort,
Wasting your valuable breath now and then
You will scream choking , but no.

Unknowingly, she is drowning
In a forever thin air of the fog on her nose

Down at the deep end and she is doing nothing,

Really, she never did anything harder.
And you want me beside her. Maybe, in imagination.
Where the water is darker everyday unending.

Think positively and the sound will be music

And your moves will become a dance for you.

I wish I can turn this wry smile into laughter

And our long drought into a celebration of joy

But, you are learning how in this helpless water
It is with our skill we live else it will kills us.

Once We Were One

For once 

we were nothing, 

yet my people, we were one.

Somewhere in the forgotten world 

we both climbed each other,
cleaved and cleaved to one another.

We both heard the years hurtling past,
whirring like gears in a hulk factory.

We saw kin and kith breathing,
we gathered our thoughts like defetsui leaves

For the diviner and if some death was coming this way

it will go beyond our ears.

Even before we took Kete to Datsutagba 

there were no doubts swarming 

like reconnaissance planes over forests of sleep,

we were one.

We only heard words murmured in love.

What a grand time we were. 

Is it a grand time now?

What a grand time………………….

Where are we now?..

Where are we?

Nightmares

Every night my bedsheets are a snare

I swing, fling and punch my life away

Every night my pillow is a lake
I drown in my own tears without hope

The people I look up to are a harsh sunlight
and their smiles torture and slaughter my dreams

My pain goes deeper into my soul.
it kills my love
the Monster is asleep

I wonder why the sun sinks low
the sky above me burns every little joy I dream

I wait until morning
before my eyes close

in my tears I drown
in my dreams I die

screams woke me
oh, those are mine
I'm sorry
didn't mean to wake you
no, I'm fine
just a nightmare

just a nightmare
until you came in my dreams

The Monster eats pretty princesses when they close their eyes.

Missing Twice

They looked at their faces

And yelled: “Fresh off the boat!”

Broken English, dirty African clothes

And with identity mocked, they faded into emptiness.

Phone Calls from Home

I still receive phone calls and emails mostly from

cracked-up friends caught up in huge dreams, with no hope,

just booze and crazy American madness.

Most of their calls are flashes—“Call me back.”

They want some recognition of where they are

and it’s true, I was there, worse off than most of them.
but I wonder if they realize when their callS arrive?

When I’m dead in the library, when I am frozen in asleep.

They talk of a long driveway leading
to a four car garage, rose garden, blue skies, fruit trees,
beautiful women, a new car each month, red carpet freeways

and dream of fairy-tales in America the beautiful.

I’m 69 years old now and can’t go on retirement;

Oh! How much this flesh had to suffer, yet cannot die;

Hmm! How much this heart had to bear, yet cannot break;

raises questions that these painful tears cannot tell.

I still receive their phone calls and emails.

One came this morning when I was shuddering

At the surgeon’s knife, searching for quivering life
but death chooses its own time; not till all evils are borne.

For Lives lost in South Africa

Amenorvi, your death didn’t give me pain;
How can it shake me when my feelings are numb?
African men and women, what has become of us?
Yesterday, we fought together for the peace of our land,
Today, we sold our unity, killing one another on streets
Loaded with blood-soaked faceless human bodies.

Is it for this that we stood in long lines on Robben Island

And shouted Amandla when at Pollsmoor Prison,
There were no mountains to shoulder our sorrow
And no rivers to dissolve our tears?
Is it for this that Rolihlahla Mandela died?
Africa, our Sun has fallen into the ocean.

Take the gun, take the machetes, walk the streets,

Search the alleys for every footprint coming to town,
Drive each soul away from the lovely morning,
And fence the moon, divide the sun and take the stars
Apportion them according to your household!
Are we no longer kith and kin of the African world?

I pity it, I pity it when I look across the street

Many like us are lying there in the dust,
Blood spread on the streets of J’burg;
Machete wounds cut the head in two;
And many souls are caught in an oppressive night,
Away from home, and this pen refuses to write.
It tells me, we cannot write a song. It pities it.
 

Norvinyewo, the silence of the starry night

Shouldn’t burden you to go lost in memory.
In the remaining light of the day we won’t forget 
Those we lost along the way, and they know
Those left at home will listen to every dog’s bark,
To not keep quiet when there are no answers to WHY.
They will cry, they will weep, till every soul reaches home.

It’s Over

when we met you told me lies:
you said you loved me and I was

the only one in your life and I
believed you and trusted you

you pretended you shared my sorrows

when my tears were flowing like a river

now I know it was all just a game

to make me believe you have the latest kiss

I was a fool to trust in everything you said
that you were an angel spreading your love

but now your words cut like a dagger
you wanted me to take care of your needs

it doesn’t take long to catch a thief in its own game

‘cos a dead yam-leaf falls off by itself into the dust

and we don’t burn a thief’s house; we comb it

I’m glad you found a new pawpaw-twig to swing on

this morn I learned of what you told my friends

my tears and sorrows are not part of your dreams

all you wanted was me to take care of your needs

so, our love was just an ATM machine

glad to know you obviously never cared

but that doesn't matter anymore
glad you found someone at my backyard

but it won’t take long for the world to know you

the lid you found this morn is for the bowl you hated

the elders say, there’s a reason mother hen in on the market
now I know you thought grass is greener on the other side

well, I’m just too glad you had to go and we shut the door

Misconceptions

African boy,
he ain't got shoes except blues
works all day and hopes to play
like others in the sun
with a face that's tan but
at the end of the day, when work is done
he ain't got anything but blues

yet, like a bird on a wire

like a drunk in a midnight choir
making a living out of black-land dirt
he has tried in ways to be free
like a bird out of a cage

like a fish on a hook

like a knight from an old fashioned book
like a baby stillborn
like a beast with his horns
no one reaches out for him

yet, like a beggar
leaning on a wooden crutch
like a soul hanging on a darkened door
he saved his ribbons for you
and got your bills when you don't own his ills

the African boy,

he ain't got anything to lose
when you watch him squirm
put him on a hook and you drop him in a brook
everything's gonna turn out just right,

tonight you'll see him fry fish

with his eyes dancing with the stars

Tears and Cries

these tears
pour down like rain
covering my cheeks like a blanket
as they run down my face

no one knows
the pain hidden deep within them

no one knows the scars

buried deep in my soul
or why these tears burn and sting
as they pour out

walking through the rain
I try to forget the pain
I try to ignore the sting in my eyes

like many of my age

we lost our fathers before our puberty rituals
but losing a familiar face in an unknown place
leaves you not knowing nothing about you and your past

I heard many die after the rituals

but I also heard you aren’t a man without the rites

now, I know why I run from my fears
and I know why I’m followed by my tears

I want to leave this unfamiliar place
but where will I go without a father
or without a mother who left the dawn after my birth

trying to release the fears I locked away for days
only runs me into a sea of storms

never knowing when there will be a closure
all I could do is to cry myself to sleep
although I want to know more about me and my past

Why Can't you let me go?

you stand behind that old brown curtain
dressed as always in that Dana-Buchman-Twisted-Ponte
dress stained from sweats and dungs from the armpits
wanting to teach me the two-step and a turn dance
while stroking your rump in my face at every turn
and you don’t want me to pick up my suitcase and go

you want me to smooth the hair back from your forehead
and kiss your neck with longings enough to make cows blink
you said you need my help like we need the jukebox for free
that’s why you grab my bag and nod to me to enter the house
to unpack the sack while you continue to stroke your rump
in my face till I can’t tell the river from the rain

then you undressed, and put on your red Sweet-Sixteen
lingerie and asked me to unzip you because you like that
you then pulled down the straps of my shirt
and unbuttoned my pants before I could ask a question
why do you do these things to me when you know
we both belong to somebody else and we can’t give
each other anything anymore than just a wink

often when alone I think about you
and wish you could call before anyone gets home
moments like this I wait anxiously by the phone
and wish you were here but, when I think the more
about you and me I ask myself many questions
how could something so wrong be so right
but I hate to think about us not together

why do you these things to me when you know
we both belong to somebody else and we can’t give
each other anything anymore than just a wink
I know it will break our hearts than the burning at the stake
but we can’t safely keep this secret for long and I can’t
secretly shuffle back and forth through your door every time

why can’t you let me grab my bag and go

 

To Ashes

fading is the writing on the page
the paper graying with age
the age of innocence and love almost dead
but the bookmark stands at where
it all begun

the blurring inscribes where once
it was novelty, soaring cozily
memories flash back puzzles
in quest of where the story glide
flapping wings like the hummingbird

with the writing fading
each page begins to wane and mourn
with the paper's corner shriveling

and I shall not see those words again
except the ashes in the bin

 

It's not about the Journey

it is not the walk that is tiring
rather when you go for a walk
and see the tearing down of green
tall trees for a football field and
suddenly you realize this was
the same place the village once
gathered and asked for rain from
the Diviner’s Bag and from the single
sitting the gasping earth had its fill and
seeds flowered rich buds and there was
drumming and dancing in the village I recoil
and remember Akpalu who was comforted
in exile by thoughts of our forgetfulness

only yesterday for instance prayers bloomed
beneath this baobab tree outside the village courtyard
I remember how mothers brought boiled eggs and palmoil
to the grotto and when at last their wishes were heard before
the next dawn they leaped like a wild dog with outbursts of pride
knowing too well their sufferance nourished their dreams

but today long dusty roads stretch from Abor to Tsiame
and young ones clap hands over wine parties and throw
dust into the face of the moon I remember the gourds
of palmwine that once lined the bosom of this baobab tree
and we harvested joy with our feet and heart with music
it is not the dusty road that is tiring but how we plunge into things
too eagerly like a powerful dog not stopping for anything
and now after the wine parties generations are scattered on
distant farms selling nothing but sorrows at deserted spaces

I thought I would grow old with fond thoughts of home
but I’m old and full of sadness with thoughts of the
transience of life hoping for a cool day beyond the skies

Reflection 27

this life is but a stopping place,
between the womb and the tomb
a resting place along the road
the road to sweet eternity

we all have different journeys
and destined paths along this road
our experiences also differ
but in them we learn lessons

what these lessons mean
we never may know till we reach
our destination where our tears will melt
and who we are is revealed

and when we meet He who sent us
we'll claim a great reward
according to how we faired
with the crosses in our experiences

so, until our journey nears its end
and till we hear the angels sing
lets face each new day as it comes
and feed on the love left by our fathers

 

A PLEA

My father’s God, here we come, carrying a million crucifixes of shame, kneeling on a dunghill needing a cure for our dead selves. We are exiles unsure of whom we are or where we are going; and vaguely are we aware of what we have lost, having been so long away from home. Those we left behind are gone beyond the horizon; their children and children’s children cannot even remember our names. Where once stood our house is now a football field and where once we gathered and called on the ancestors is now in ruins. The fences that once hemmed in our souls have been eaten by termites. Hardly can we now stand on our feet to bury our dead with the weeping and dirges of our grandmothers. Sometimes, the dead stare into our faces and wonders where the drunken pallbearers were going. My father’s God, we have wandered away from peace and love and lost our joys in the sand.

God of my fathers, we have come home to cleanse ourselves, to look for where they buried our birth cords only to meet a man with a huge testicle in our mother’s bed. Everywhere are dead goats and cattle while vultures hover above singing halleluyas in the hideous voice of trumpets. Where do we go from here when the ashes in our mothers’ hearth are dead cold?

Will the fire-god in heaven rekindle a new spirit in us, or he will lock his ears and turn his face away?