What you left behind follows you like

Shell Afrika migrants; it whispers

In your ear secret of your longings,

Its wishes in your skin warmth of the sun.

It’s in the mirror, your fathers face

Big nosed like elephants of the forest.

You know it like your mothers breast

In fainting memories, you believe it

Like your fathers voice faraway.

It cut across your vein that ‘Black Life

Matters’ you didn’t say it because you know

The future, that you are African

That you are the future.

Across the Mediterranean

I saw mass of apparitions paddling

With their breath on the Mediterranean,

Their oar of hope broken into mystery.

Faceless like shark feed dangling on aquarium.

Their boat like train moves upon rail

Of bones left behind in the benthic.

Mystery coil around them like python

Around its egg in nest like boat.

I hear them above the rising waves

Cursing the land that vomited them,

But my tongue if it be plenty like

Women’s hair cannot tell tales of

Afrika migrants on the Mediterranean.

Willow Warblers

We fly across seas to winter forest

But we shall never forget our nest

Under the Africa sun

Across the pathway many are shot

And their feathers scatter across

Lands of foreigners like songs of

Unknown language. Many are caught in cages

Like volcanoes in paintings.

 We must fly for better life says young birds;

But we remember our nest,

Where we hatched and gaze at green fields

Squawking tales of ancestral plumage

To all migrants the world is home but home

Is where we first grew our feather fore flight.