Within my own axis,
It did not slant
It did not drizzle.
The void shunned the grey clouds.
Lightning was rare.
Thunder turned mute.
Leaf-tops shook with the sleepiness of
Shameless drunks, casting ghoulish shades,
Causing affrays among wild species.
Rivulets rippled in hunger and in thirst,
......
Flour and oil are running out
So are bread and butter
It’s been one pestilence of drought
Which causes wizened grass to flutter.
My breath is heavy from the clannish dusts
Inhaled at midnight when the clock strikes late
With the tone of severe darkness.
I hasten to the atmosphere of languor,
Capturing the scene of the rise of harlots protesting
The breach of wayward contracts.
Theirs is a shift so late and confraternal that owls
Wince loudly from hate.
Mirrors I glimpse at show images of blackened
Eyelids, strife, and the silhouette of drained saliva.
......
Within this rattling of the metals above
And the heavenly grumbles, the grey void
The waterholes, frayed, loosened, dispatched . . .
Now, silences lose their grips.
It rains and there’s deep slumber
Tents’ pegs are mocked by watermud, recasting
Shadows of the primitive nights on days’ weakened rays
Silences, except for the rhythm known when it rains.
......
I should have grinned when morning came
Atop posts of gaping day, with lunatics
Humming dirges of a broken world.
I remained glued to my gloom.
Rising from the pit of hell, I held
Concupiscent cats hostage.
The course of their waning speed of flight
Harmed my precisions.
......
Florence has warm blood
and cowrie teeth that seldom clatter,
even in the chilled, fluttering dance of July rain.
She’s an element of Shiloh
in weeping quest of a promising Samuel,
and for this,
walks through long and clammy paths in July rain.
July, a month of sacred yams,
......
Within this rattling of the metals above
And the heavenly grumbles, the grey void
The waterholes, frayed, loosened, dispatched . . .
Now, silences lose their grips.
It rains and there’s deep slumber
Tents’ pegs are mocked by watermud, recasting
Shadows of the primitive nights on days’ weakened rays
Silences, except for the rhythm known when it rains.
......
Flour and oil are running out
So are bread and butter
It’s been one pestilence of drought
Which causes wizened grass to flutter.
They rise and fall
With the madness of seasons
They harden and decay
According to the wretchedness of harvests
Wars and stumbling markets harm them
They are like waking and slumbering
Sunrise and sunset
The palpitation of the heart
Rise . . .
Fall . . .
......
The world came together as one —
Or rather, acted as one, like in the
Days of Noah, in the first lockdown
Following the first pandemic of flooding.
There was the smell of a virus.
Thick and heavy, it held the lungs hostage.
There was a confraternal mass, and between heaven and hell
An iota of odour, bigger than the sinking sun, hung in the stratus
......