I saw a dazzling rose,
Whose red petals cast blinding hues upon me.
She shot her cupid arrows from the Kabaka’s backyard,
And punctured the cocoon of my innocence.
My heart burnt for a feel of her spangled petals,
My ferocious passions lost their sturdy grip on restraint as
I, like a pollen-famished bee, sniffed her whiff;
I gorged on her rosy scent, like a Don Quixote.
Then, I plucked her off the tribal bough;
And navigated the Nile River with her,
Tacked in the valves of my heart,
For a cross boarder allogamy.
What a welcome from my kinsfolk!
Furrows ridging the faces of my kinsmen,
Spittle of disgust masticating the hungry soils,
Grey beards wagging and waging a silent war;
Alien!
Categories:
ridging, lost, lost love, love,
Form: Free verse
With palms so chaste and a grip so pure
She wraps her fingers around the mallets
Letting them sit in the space between her thumbs and first fingers;
When she makes her first few strokes
Hammering smoothly up and down,
There is no other sound but
a breast of ribs whose mopane mellows the ear
And a throat of cigarette paper
whose hum somewhat bellows unto the heart;
Then she sings a ballad of two lovers whose clans forbid it,
Soon the astound trees rustle in accord,
Her voice is a wrench that loosens the valves in my eyes;
Tears collecting with the first few words,
I wish my lover was here with me.
After thirteen stanzas, my lonely eyes leak with homesick-tears ...
Deep in the ridging belly of the Zambezi valley,
A lily of the Kariba has found
grace in her hand with the xylophone.
17/07/17
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Categories:
ridging, africa, nostalgia, poems,
Form: Free verse