He did not die that day
When the tale of the toll
Of the war was told
In the warmth of our room
My husband folded the sleeves of his Ronko
Sharpened his spear
Smeared mafoi on his body
Beat his chest
Spewed honey bees
The lion growled;
“I will die for your honor”
When the renegade came
Violence galore;
Looting my honor
Raping my dignity
Entombing my womb
He did not die that day
His heart pounds
Stomach of beehive rumbles
His Ronko and spear
Behind the door
Next to the bottle of Mafoi
Remained untouched
He shriek under the bed
As the renegades killed my honor
But he did not die that day
Yet he is dying everyday
For not dying that day
The Cry
Rage
Despair
Anguish
Pain
Congealed in the chambers of her soul
As she writhes in the holes of Bunce Island
From the torment of her soul
To the pain of her ovaries
A cry of anguish was born
The cry sucks strength
From the gall of her despair
Ebbs through the tides
Strikes her vocal cords
And explodes into the air
Drenching the cacophony of groans
The Girl slave pants
Like a mother in labor
In the slave house
Where the rape of her humanity
Gave birth to the cry
Her cry mingles
With cries of yesterday
Conspires with sand storm
To torment desert Arabs
The cry drifts in the wind
Unleashing storms
Across oceans
Lashing volcanoes
Takes a sigh in play grounds
Before charging to the Ruffian killing fields
The girl perished
The cry survives her mortality
Hers the Eve of cries
The cry of a century
Drilled though the ears of a poet
The poet packages:
The torment, the pain, and the cry
The cry a verse
The verse a poem
A poem of pain
The girl who cried
Died long ago
In the Middle Passage
Survived by a cry
Perhaps she was born
For just this cry
And the poet
For just this poem
Poem of things and other things
A littered mind
A disused thought
A muffled song
A caged bird
A pregnant mind
A failed state
A confluence of pulse
A metaphor of martyrs
An angry poet
An unwritten poem
A poet unborn
A blind bat
A rotten mango
A tethered cow
A fossilized dream
A roaming ghost
A dead hero
A hacked limb
A chopped spirit
A stumped monument
A fading memory
An embalm body
A mummified soul
A tortured child
An abused woman
A dead rat
A wagging tale
A stunted metaphor
A broken pencil
A torn paper
A maimed muse
A stupid poet
A lame reader
A dead country
Stone Breakers
A stone on a rock
A hammer sinewed on her trunk
Dreams wedged between rocks
Discordant melody of crushed rocks
Make an orchestra of agony
For the soul of the stone breaker
Piles of broken stones
Rubbles of shattered hopes
Debris of differed dreams
Piled at her feet
Every crushed stone
Is a mile without a milestone
She sits on a rock
Crushing stones with a hammer
As the sun drench away
The morning years of her life
Her stones build castles
But she sleeps with cattle
Dreaming of those castle
Built with her toil
A Bird
A bird whispers a song into my soul
Singing of bygone days
Of men come and gone
And a choir of foliage and bird
Now Decommissioned
The soulful song brings memories
Of days when the birds had a choir
But a forest of concrete
Shrubs of steel
And foliage of zinc
Evicts the choir of birds
Today a bird sings a solo song
In bald forest with a solitary tree
To men sowing solitude in their souls
