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.
......
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 . . .
......
Flour and oil are running out
So are bread and butter
It’s been one pestilence of drought
Which causes wizened grass to flutter.
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.
......
Behold the white rage in the voice of
this thunder of
this January rain
Peer well through the window;
you shall see the fatted rage that wakes up
the somnambulist
The rage is distant but distinct,
escorted by bits of frozen clouds
......
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
......