The Gift
You have a gift, a shining castle of words
Somebody told me, and I was naked in the night
How did you get this gift, this weave of tongue in flight
I am jolted again, to the time I was thirteen
Hanging from my father's death
On a long, thin silence of fear.
Memory is a rising sun in a bitter sea,
Hear me now, the heartbeat of my drum
Since the stag had bolt me through the woods
I fathom no reason, except love of solitude
I head the lead wires in my hand
It was our favorite past time and the season for roads
They cut through rocks to make them everywhere
Nothing got the votes like roads
And only politicians drove cars then
So after the dynamite had destroyed the familiar
We were left with broken bits of wires
Every child knew how to weave them
Into something beautiful
I was always making baskets, completed none
So I would not have to worry what to put in them
I wove with my fingers to incubate my words.
So here I was amidst the bush cries of birds
Covered in ripe naseberry aroma from the eyes of the stag
Of course I heard the thunder, saw the black clouds too
But I am not afraid of rain, there are trees to shelter me
That was when the lightning fell
Sizzled on my wire and danced right up my arm
Gbonka, it was not you, I know
I would have been burnt or dead
It was Bwana Shango
Telling me to sing, telling me to dance
Instead, I ran
But he was swifter than the stag
Went home slept, woke up with a song in my heart
A peeling joy for justice
Bogle in my left ear, Garvey in the right
A novel sense of freedom, a willingness to fight
And that is how my gift came
My pen is double axe and flame.
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