From Abor To Columbus

Gods of my Birthwaters I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my soul) I am never without it (anywhere I go you go with me) and whatever are my thoughts (you are in the thoughts) Gods of my Birthplace I have no life (you are my life) I have no future (for you are my future) and I have no dream of my own (for you are in every dream) where can I go without you (can the tiger deny itself the spots in its skin) I carry the birthmark of the tiger but here is the deepest sorrow the darkness I carry in my waywardness stranded at crossroads away from Home (and this is the root of the problem) I’m in love with macaroni-n-cheese (and I’m told that’s civilization away from yam puddings we knew at Home) and we are forced to drink stinging grief and smile calmly I have taken a new name (and it wrung my hands and killed my memory of Home) and turn my soul to a stone and under the dark veil (I have to learn to live again) it’s the he-goat that learns something when it loses an ear on the long running highways of blues how can I forget to pay my debts to ancestral Birthwaters when many stones are thrown at my last smile and the pit has become my solitary mast at the bay of the Master Termite it is the herring that said homebound is the last resort of the maimed goat maybe, when the northern breeze comes I’ll take the deep dive Homeward to where the broods eat grains of sorghum from scuffed pages of the mother’s palm and the sun’s last rays bring joy to dying lips walking this long dark road dancing to nowhere to call Home your tattoos on my soul shatter my dreams and here I sit holding to an albatross searching through echoes of yesterdays for a bright eye to see through footprints of frozen tears in this twilight zone I gather in the silence the will to sail on before the sun is gone from silence and the lighthouse eaten by the storm