apricots

Love comes

like a lioness stalking her prey.
Poking eyes just above the fringe of the parched grass, seeking. searching.
Target locked - me, the unassuming
gazelle
who believes that she has found
safer pastures this time, birds sweetly calling out to one another overhead
still lakes offer reprieve from the
unforgiving heat of the Savannah.
I had already dipped a toe in,
felt the reassuring embrace of refreshment lap around my
love starved feet.
I had already scanned for dangers - taken the time to ask the 'right' questions
to make sure that truths were precisely that.
let hands embrace one another
felt kisses on the tips of noses - actions proving value over lust
and the discovery of someone i could 'trust'.
So i stopped looking around long enough,
put my face all the way into the pool, drinking in
salvation that resides in the arms of the 'other'
to leave myself open
to the lock jawed clasp of impermanence
around my neck - jagged, hungry teeth tearing through
the last bits of hope that made my blood so sweet to the taste in the first place.
Like apricots.

Flight 666

It's just my nature, I ruin love.
not the love that passes my way,
oh no. I seem to have
the wonderful knack
of ruining the love that sustains
others. the love that seems to be
keeping them on track.
For you see, I am the god of mistakes -
not the ones where you trip and fall
and end up with nose bleeds
revealing your clumsiness
to all.

No. I am the god of lustful ways -
of wandering eyes and
indecision
of lingering glances between strangers
who have already clocked the bands of silver and gold
on 4th fingers

I am the god of summer flings-
hot July nights when we have consumed
far too much drink, and
visions and versions of truth have been exchanged
for beer goggles of grey areas of
"what they don't know won't hurt them"

Yes, I am the god of all these things,
I bear the bitter fruits of man's other side
the raging seas of desire crashing into the shores of cerainty,
the calling of "what if's" and " if only s"
the twinkle in my eye makes all things seem
within the reach of possibility
when it's the season of my reign.

It's just my nature, I, ruin love
the antithesis to the virgin Mary -
the doorway to the life you
didn't choose.

I bet you didn't expect to hear that from some random man at the airport. 

daffodils

This dream of you and I is finally no more.
This morning i felt it rise and fall
take it's last breath to let me know I lived.
That last memory of us -
the august morning when we lay laughing
in fields of daffodils as happy as we were
no reason for sunshine
no reason for roses
in your absence it seems
this is now the landscape of my heart.

This is now the landscape of my heart
in your absence
it seems
no reason for roses
no reason for sunshine
in fields of daffodils as happy as we were,
the august morning when we lay laughing -
that last memory of us
takes it's last breath to let me know I lived.
This morning I felt it rise - and fall.
This dream of you and I is finally no more.

insomina

Old habits die hard,
old fears scream the loudest, in the dark.
I can hear the house breathing, she's settling into her bones - the groaning fridge, the popping furnace,
the snoring women for whom sleep has come.
My fear screams into my ears, boiling, agitated - what if?
what if?
what if?

I have nothing to tell her
no solace to give,
nothing more than to add the dripping of
tears on a pillowcase
to the sounds of a
settling home.

Dawn comes
peeking round corners and
sliding through the sliver between drawn drapes
and with it brings the promise of
something i practise
how to not look for
anymore.
And so, she weeps.
Weep, then - if weeping is the act
that gives you peace.

Fire

                                                Q: what did you do, with your Sunday? 

today i set fire
to
the entire room.

(accidentally/on purpose)

they say flames are the best way
to exorcise a
demon
the oldest ones die hard - lingering
around corners
and in between folded pages of
paper spent planning
new versions of self
well - self plus other
well, you plus I
papers i should have flushed down that same well where i
wished away my worth -
on pennies that some how summed to millions of
pounds of my flesh.

i let you build a house in my heart
brick by brick stained in
sex and
topped with rusted shingles -
sex/brick + water/tears + tin = the rusted,bloody house
that our love built.
you (all) took your time - so long that i barely noticed
what was happening until you had
hung photos (of yourself) on the walls.
well, don't you look comfortable.

(take your feet off my couch !)

but this heart, is not your home
just a house built with spotty craftsmanship at best -
you never paid much attention to the details.
let me take
a sledge hammer to it.

(no. wait.)

today i set
fire to the room.
i set fire to the fragments of
you
that lay lingering in the house you built
but you know, a house, is not a home.
at least, not for you, any more.

I used to say love was like friendship on fire.
fitting, with that same flame,
i finally send what's left of you on your way. 

                                        A:  oh you know, not much, just cleaned the house.

a martyr for nobhule

i push
into the darkness of my
known unknowns.
scraping and clawing against the
idols of truth
that adorn your walls.

i am wailing,

at your walls.


My master was
Mc Master

and London my lord
i clawed my way to the top of your tower

sliding and tripping over the heaps of bodies at my feet.
they look like me.

my brothers
sisters
mothers.
i see her smile, she shakes my hand.
i go - i am going, i am rising
where she cannot.

rise, she says
climb
whisper into the ears of the gods
who doll out
remittances.
for my children, they are starving.

so, quick, give me my crown of thorns
degrees will surely keep me warm
or at least the
slow
laboured tears that pour down my cheeks
they burn and give off some heat, while they 

sting the back of my
third eye
who always sees,
what i fight so hard to deny
that my deepest
fears are my
deepest truths
in the deepest
darkest
places of my soul
that sees and knows
some paths are meant to be walked alone.

i may not find
solace in
mantras of modern men
or in the kind of light that
radiates from such
'enlightenment'
but who else will seek to feed the mouths of 5,000
they so quickly turned into millions.
I cannot feed the multitudes
with my degrees
but I may whisper in the ears of the one who can
those lions in the Suits of gods
those self made Goliaths

i push into the dark
i push into the rage
this is my deepest
darkest
truth:
this is why i sold my soul.
this,is what i buried
my unborn babies for.
this is why i learned to love
i have been staring into the mouths
of lions and giants since the day i was born

i would have named my son David.

just give me my crown of thorns.
just give me my sling.

i have many tales to whisper.

Surely, now, i have earned the right
for you to call me doctor

air miles

i have travelled

6,373 miles to return to

me. 

with each mile i am unfolding

discarding petals of a dewy, fleshy

pink. 

with each breath another

falls away to reveal

my blackness -

rounded, smoothed glistening.

new to each of you who only

knew the passivity of my youth
which wrapped what you could not understand
in pink roses.

barbie always wore pink. 

with each mile 'i' am blooming,

breathing,

beating new life into the 

hidden selves that lay buried somewhere

deep within towers of ivory

and all the ways you wanted me

to be. 

don't be surprised, that i emerge fucking angry

doused in kerosene and rage, 

i dare you to strike your match first. 

i didn't know what else to be

no one taught me what black even means - and so i grew fearful 

of myself.

your lessons spread like venom, causing me to default. 

wait - apparently it's actually my fault, you said i read the signs wrong. 

 forgive me, i must have been looking in all the wrong places - but six feet tall advertisements 

adorning sky scrapers, really do catch your eye

and they don't flash faces of my own mahogany design.
except for maybe, beyonce.

beyonce sure does wear a lot of pink. like barbie did.

in case you were curious, 

it may only take you 6,373 miles.

this is the distance of a journey inward
through the wormhole of my soul

where i deleted from memory, every line i was fed.
and all the things that i read wrong.

all of this, to introduce myself to me.

hello. see?  i am black, i am beauty.

and i hate pink. 

we didn't even say goodbye

alone. alone.
(alone?)
there is only silence,all around you
that cannot be drowned out by rooms of vinyl.
and the aching of your hand - you will have to fill it with other things
(a pen perhaps? wine and whiskey)
alone. (alone?)
there is no whisper of the beloved
there is a bed, with that annoying cold part
where your body cannot warm (i can't be all places at once !)
no glancing up across tables
no dancing in kitchens
no beauty from the shared mundane -

don't you know the simplest chore becomes fodder for joy
in the company of  an 'other'.
(but, there is no 'other')
alone. (alone)