In my garden, the only place I thrive
there lives a tiny bird who keeps me alive
If others enter, little bird flies away
But near by me, he seems to love to stay
He makes a sound like a click on a switch,
took me many days to tune to his pitch
He rests tiny feet on wire tomato cages
or on bamboo poles that gather sages
He seems to be telling me little bird tales
about cabbages, carrots, and dark-green kales
There are carrots and radishes almost grown,
and peas from seeds most carefully sown
Beans are blooming, cucumbers are crawling
toward any stick where they hear the sun calling
My garden will feed many of us through the summer
blessed by a clicking bird rather than a hummer
Categories:
kales, bird, garden,
Form: Rhyme
He is a porcupine
Armed with lethal quills
You massage his butts
Butts from which comes atomic bomb
He fumes and shoots himself
Apparently a terrorist attack
He is a wild domestic bird
With a spiky beak that pecks not on faded pupils
Eyes of a wild cat
His hands bleed with honey
He tastes it not
He is a scorpion of the plain
He stretches his wrinkled tail
The tail which is lethal
The tail which does not retaliate
It only stings his back
His face is the mighty warmth of the Sun
Warmth that does not melt ice
His face grows kales and cabbages he tastes not
See stalks of sugarcane on this dry spell
Do guard this gezira from the iceman
He spits beer and spirits
He indulges in them
And urinates with his belt
His mouth is a heap of tusks
Which earns him no sterling pound
You iceman with coded language
You are the cradle of dismay
Your footprints are mass graves
You laugh when he removes his trousers
And orders it to enter his wallet
Are you a wizard?
You call him a jackass
To cry beer and spirits
Before he scavenges on his own carcass
Yet you fracture his bones and suck oil
You wizard must die of asthma
Categories:
kales, anger,
Form: Epic
Prayer after Food …………By Peter Onyancha
And –
In your wisdom you covered it for sacred peace
And there is a secret piece of the sacred peace!
If only he could see mine transparent
And I saw his transparent
The truth could cut deep!
There:
A big bone lying across, like a dagger
Roasted meat, coal deep beneath
Dripping wine from the leaking roof
Bubbling belching seeping upward
Listen when he burps!
Here:
A green-house effect of shrubs
Voluntary velvet of kales
pushing the former layer
Round pebbles of cold ugali, supporting the green jungle
Water for soft landing, sprinkled with salt
Tight valve to vet what must leave
Insulting data!
And my brother will see
And I will see
You see!
Categories:
kales, allegory
Form: I do not know?