[Untitled]
POEM As the world played possum, i gave my umbrella to a bronze
statue on his way home to his family.
i gave my umbrella away, because
a juju man foretold,
there would be an April shower: a fusilade
of poisoned arrows i must dance in
if i want to speed up my reincarnation— a reappearance in 1939
as a cancer cell in Hitler's brain.
but it never rained. & i'm at home, painting my self
portrait on a dimension: 77 cm x 53 cm
medium: ash, from the damp remains of another failed note mortem.
over the mole on my face, i paint a bullseye to court a warning shot.
in my desperation for a dance
with death, i cut off the tail of a lizard on my welcome mat
then, squatted, jealously watching its dance moves
in my skin, like writhing, convulsing— a star oozing through my mouth as foam, as
regret.
imagine two faceless dancers by a jukebox, barefooted
on a floor of broken glass & promises.
& god watches on. always. his seven eyes moving to & fro the earth
but what i need are his hands in motion; queching fires, smearing balm...
he won't, although he can: his fingers hatching,
in a split second, this prayer
beads i have fondled all these years
into eggs. each, warm with embryos
of migratory birds i dreamt grew & transported me elsewhere,
from this nest, free from the deafening crackles of forest fires.
promise you will not tell my mother i've stopped praying, to prey
on the right hand of god refilling mouths driveling what he tags forbidden.
speaking of deathwish, it can be many things. like, unlearning
my safety lessons:
i practice with my country's flag
as a pall: wave it at soldiers, hoping their headwind spreads it over me.
it rains, today— seawater leaking from the tear sac of the innocent
— men in police custody. men, whose embalming
will be on news desks, where the numb lips of a newsreader
are pulled by telephone wires from a government house.
these days, news hour, after my favorite show,
is when i remember to bury my hearing
aid under my pillow. then, stare through the TV screen as i do the void
called a 'thorax' in my human anatomy textbook. in there,
my kid sister says i'm losing too much weight. but isn't this the process
—a beautiful process of weathering, as with all of the beautiful things i know
in which god hides the rusty nails that held his cradle & an urn
of ash from his mother's portraits in a colouring book.
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