nabii Poetry (34)

Your garden is filled with bunnies –
I see them hopping around like this ….
Oh, I have been fighting those things for so long;
my husband thinks that I’m crazy.
I’m kicking against the resistance, tired and all,
but I take a rain check on giving up.
Somebody is going to pay the piper.
I am colder now;
I haven’t been hot …
for so long.
I’ll be there in no time –
my father is waiting for me.
I’ve spent milk money
to see Jack Robinson and Willie Mays
make their statements with hard wood and leather.
It is colder over here.
I was there when Luther first had that dream;
the Bureau had to shut him up.
Since then, black people stop dreaming;
they’re scared of being shot.
Look what they do to my bed of lettuce.
My God, not my pak choi.
You guys are rabbit stew.
Those fools don’t know how to do it, do they?
All I want to do is get my tail back to Cincinnati.
I’ll have a damn good time,
just like I said,
I’ll have a damn good time.
You have got to know it for a while to see the changes.
I had a young man, who was helping me,
I told him let’s get the hell outa here.
What I was doing was the right thing to do;
I was ready to go.
I can’t handle it now,
but I could handle it yesterday.
I’m justice’s daughter;
I believe in free will.
I was the lady that was there.
It makes me feel good to know I’ve seen all struggles,
but my time has come.
Don’t let those precious moments pass you by.
Enjoy your life honey.

Hands too weak to fan horsefly
that feast in open mouths.
Skin hugs closely to dry bones.
Their breaths are traces of death.
Lips are shriveled and cracked,
as the parched Gadabeji.
Tears suck soft gaze dry,
but silently they cry.

Eyes watch on plasma screen
while gulping down American dream.
Winds echo their plight – east, west, north, and south.
Tiny angels,
with innocent eyes,
stare through all our excuses and lies.
We pretend in God we trust
while we watch his angels die.

In changing seasons that old voice came,
as we play that humdrum Christian game,
pounding on ethics door by door,
saying – “Feed my angels and they will soar.”
Let them mount ten thousand skies;
give them wings that flutter when they fly.

Come lie down.
Beside me
there’s no other.
Push my firm words
inside your head,
my hard love,
‘cause tough love
crack tough skull.
You’re revolving on the rim
Come,
come down to me,
a stream of knowledge.

A woman was here.
Inside my head
I hold books.
She went with bungalow
and children.
Children are children;
like monkeys they mimic
Her every step painted in vivid green.
Come,
come lie down.
Beside me my story is.
The truth
is never a tale
spilled from sweetened lips.

Come,
come down here,
come lie down.
Beside me
there is none
that can whisper this chronicle,
my chocolate story -
bitter-brown -
composed with blood and feather pen.
Sculpted in her head is
her post-colonial self.
Come taste of the wine I’m poured.
Come, come,
come lie with me.

How broad can bald eagle
spread wings?
Over Gag and Magog,
to the east,
and the place of morning calm

When she is molting
a spot is unclothed,
New Orleans
in the south
Red China swelling in Asia
with great sway

An occult war
manufacturing frivolity
Mind control,
weapons of mass destruction;
a birthday gift
placed in gullible palms

Buttons are pushed
away from books
and noisy playgrounds
Slaves to the control,
mind control
Tomorrow’s men
are made in China

Mama, no more water whitlow, you do not scrub
Anymore, denim in zinc tub
Papa, paucity an’ bad choices are your end;
for years you hit hard rock with sledge-hammer

When flint stone split open eyeball
I bet you curse God in native tongue
You slipped out
‘fore Jesus an’ I
start healing them sick folks

Mama, no more, no more boiled banana water
You are two women
When bare feet …
cause big mouths to scorn the black boy,
big mouths like Limbaugh an’ Oriley,
you prophesied

When them nefarious streets looked at me,
like pupils fixed on them Arabs,
you barrowed broad shoulders
like a man,
but you are two women

Root fed branches
an’ leaves trapped sun light,
an’ create
so that root an’ limbs host
olive-throated parakeets,
noisy little broods

When the smell of mangoes went
I lost pursuit of purpose,
but now, there’s a morning fire
Mama, no more clothes to scrub,
just a sponge-bath in zinc tub,
in perfumed-scented oil

The morning sun hovers coyly
behind broad shoulders of the John Crow Mountain
before unwrapping petals of fever plant and Venice.
Mama’s countenance was far contrast to one so radiant,
so when the old Leyland bus went
shuddering along gravel road
first beam breaks through pinewood forest.

The old New Hampshire Red was up last night,
bamboozled by the plump moon,
but all was still in the petite hours ‘fore daybreak.
His first boast was far too late;
Banties have already blown their tops,
and warm rays long ago penetrated rabbit fence.
Leghorns proudly announced fresh eggs.

Beds were unoccupied and unmade.
Voices came, children in euphoria;
oppressors were off to nine to five.
Nightingale sang an encore
before morning forage,
and gaiety commences.

Brown skinned pickneys,
like the color of Balaclava clay,
with reflections of innards on innocuous visages.
The hoopla lived
until the Leyland snaked along treacherous drop
and the sun hastened to avoid mama’s air.
Chores rushed,
and mama voice ruined our names.
Tomorrow, at first light, we will be children again.

Most of us have heard of lands
where dogs licked their humans' faces
and are driven about in carriages, in nappies.
While we loathe our predicament,
some counterparts wrestle in grown-ups’ arenas;
innocence lost to palm wine and brown-brown,
and blood moves consciences far less than September’s rain.
Will tomorrow’s shoots be just children,
delightful progenies?
Let the bright sun shine on Sierra Leone.

David,
A bachelor?
Why,
when Mona Lisa is not taken?
Is he not drawn
by her amazing beauty,
and the innocence in her eyes?
Her closed lips silent,
never to lie.
Is he among those who laud her creator?
Tell me David, are you that guy,
Who love searches for
in her childlike eyes?
Did you vow celibacy
If not her touch?
Did she ever whisper:
“I love you so much?”
Why then David
Naked you stand,
Exposing life’s small measures.
Tell me Mona,
did he cause nature's electric surge,
or did he hurt is cause?
His posture tells his every word,
more than his lips ever did.
David you are aging.
Get your act together.

The first time witnessing the twain mountain peaks,
High above the echoes of our heart beat,
Erected I stood, in awe I stare, with eyes devouring nature’s beautiful souvenir.

Below the Twin crags fingers softly stroll along a sweat drenched path.
Inch by inch digits artfully tread around a shallow furrow.
Racing heart beats are like the wings of a thousand sparrows.
Down in yonder valley two fingers gently creep.
Skin shivers on the mound where the fescue freely grows.

Along the cleft, in the distal knoll, a tributary streams.
Near the wet land is a cave, a place of fertile dreams.
Desire drives daring digits to dive deeper into the warm unknown.

Tell me lover, tell me more about the birds and the bees.
How did the stork bring mother a girl like me?
Every time you’re next to me, what is it that I feel?

Blazing like a fire is this tension in my blood.
Enthralled me with your touch
Engulf me in your love.
Serinade me with these words: "I love you, oh so much."

Triped,
that’s me standing

Set on all three,
like three sides to a story

The one leg, medial,
is key to fruitfulness

and who would not want to enter,
of the host to whom this step is given?

Is there another door,
one from which lushness sprang?

Triped,
that’s me planting life

The third has more than delight;
it is to fashion a brood for hope

I tread so soft with one leg in a bag;
this is while bliss-searching

These streets we trod, amid treachery,
can cause a life of grief

Triped,
my blueprint to walk as a man

Am I my brothers’ keeper?
Oh yes I am, but not while this triped stand

White lies on branches like dry firewood,
stiff wind causes puffs that ripple to the ground.
white flies are lost in earth’s pallid spread.

The colors of birds went missing,
black ones go tree-hopping.
White reveals secret rendezvous,
my footsteps under her window.

Hearts alike
arouse fervor on frigid nights,
rekindling flames gone cold.
True love escapes carnal wits,
for truth is never untold.

Desire makes gestures
to the one who seized her flesh;
for him it’s care elsewhere.

The harsh wind tells a tale of a forlorn heart,
but reminiscence makes more sense.
That’s when I search for true love lost,
and found it there, with no pretense.

White coats camellia bush,
and my heart carries her.
This one time I will never wish
to be the way we were.

When white falls from vanished skies,
and the wind arrive with woe,
this love-sick heart will never listen
to a wind that whispers lies.
Her love is served to go.