Shut your mouth

Shut your mouth
Shut it!
That infinite doorway
to the cancer in your head
You swallow everything
that should have brought good
and in great fluency
you regurgitate filth

You have eaten posterity
You have eaten their faith
You have eaten your children
Your vomit is a sore

Why?
Must you offend
my eyes, ears and nostrils
with your mouth?

Be content
with all you ate
Close your mouth
Hold your lips
with your fingers
if you must
And give thanks
to whatever you believe in
that my own mouth
has been sewn shut



***- 2011 and the parade of aspirants. Their utterances amaze.

Parts of me
still bleed
as I consider
what it means
to have you
stripped
from my
daily routine

The greyness
of this morning's
toothpaste
would be
subsumed
in the ridiculous
brilliance
of your first smile

So many
stupid
silly things
that mean
nothing
to no one else
have become
my touchstone

Great passion
produces
poor poetry
perhaps
that proves
my point:
You will never
be rid of me


***- Should not ever see you again

Your Absent Ghost

You have gained flesh
you're real now
one of them

No more do you haunt
these places of incandescent night
with me

Your absence is the hurt
of a promise never given but broken
nonetheless



***- Out late one night. Missed you.

White Cat Blues

I can almost visualize
on the low grey recliner
by the tv on the floor
a framed photograph of me
holding you
holding that silly white cat

I can almost remember
in the middle of the room
with you spread across my back
lying there breathing deeply
stroking you
stroking a purring white cat

I spend hours sometimes days
reliving a future that
belongs now to someone else
loving you
loving the crazy white cat



***- In loving (and warily respectful) memory of Stiggy.

I do not sleep but I dream
stretch your hand
outside, the rain
sizzles on the coal tar
and begins the journey
back to the cloud
and if you touch
this rain as I do
miles distant
our fingers will meet



***- Rainy night. Alone.

The unfortunate truth
has been shamed
into disrepute

Ill-mannered children
alone may speak its name
or the fools on the fringe
of affluence who forget
where the path to the centre
lies



***- May 29th around the corner, the mind drifts towards subjects political.

Brand New

Wake

last night is
a fading charcoal
sketched across
the forefront
of consciousness

experience
sinking into memory

Tonight
again, tonight

daylights' wounded eyes
sift the grain and grit,
the exhausted script
and often-told lies

waiting is
the spool of
slender thread
to reel the sun
below your neighbour's roof

And tonight
yes, tonight

I will see you

again


***- Anticipation, even though you see this person often.

Compromised

Beaten back
from the narrow path
at night
you find yourself
at the crossroads
with your soul in hand

The trade is negotiated
the bargain sealed
you wonder idly
did Judas
bite his shekels
to see if they were fakes?

The metallic taste
of yours lingers
on your tongue
reminiscent
of blood


***- Busy day ahead: things to see, people to do. Sometimes doing business can leave you feeling tainted.

You will not go
Your eyes
when I call you
they tell another man's story
But you will not go

In the morning
I come out of my house
and hear your voice
Did I say 'leave me'
Out loud
Even if I did
you will not go

Other people are working
Me, I went past your house
I did not see you
But I have said 'go'
Yes! I have
Even if you did not hear me
you will not go

You must go
Please
Go
And leave me
Alone


***- Could say a lot about it, but won't.

Ayilara 1980

Agama lizard -
orange and blue exclamation
on a concrete wall

Baking on asbestos sheets
Spread beneath our kite-stitched sky

A vee of egrets
fluttering fingers follow
white chevrons on nails

Palms slap against old rubber
Tyres race on broken asphalt

Dogs chasing the street
a tangle of arms and legs
marks our homeward flight

Sudden fright at the back gate -
A red hen has hatched her brood

Elastic moments
stretched before sleep
remembering,
Forty-Second Street

***-on the balcony, watching kids playing outside. Supposed to be working on proposal due on Monday...