You stare into the future your eyebrows

Lined with the eyeliner of hope. You are in dire need

 

Of a miracle, like everyone in this burning city. You want

Every scent, every ounce of your past to be scratched off

 

With the claws of extinction from the chambers of your aching skull.

Once, you saw a Black lanky boy riding his jaunty bicycle down

 

The gut of this people-mourning street— a fragment of your past encroached

From behind like a thief repainting on the canvas of your mind the image

 

Of the day you almost cursed God— when on this same people-bereaved street

A cluster of wayward egret-white boys like scavengers lessened you into an item of ridicule

 

Because God— the most wise, most just— painted you Black. You are in need,

Like someone suffering from hyperglycemia, of insulins concocted with fierce reasons to live,

 

But even love— the universal lord and saviour— can’t suffice in your case,

For your figures on the scoreboard of compassion ranks you first in the file of love’s infidels.

 

All you want is the morbid rhythm of your past to be forgotten

On the wanton lips of history, you pine for going to bed every night

 

Without having your street of thoughts flooded with the bones, ashes

& the cold faces of everything you’ve buried but failed to remain dead.

 

On Rejections

Of course, I want my poems out there

In the so called big journals, first class magazines…

In between the jaws of those big literary pitbulls.

But lately, even the so called small dogs: struggling to bark, fledgling stars:

About to make their first twinkle:  aren’t even proud, willing to offer my refined truths

And well cooked lies altars to propagate their gospel.

I’ve just completed my debut chapbook manuscript, I know I am supposed

To say the title next and maybe describe the intricacies of her entrails a  little,

Say for example It’s a book of poems about so and so…, before trudging on

On the slippery road of story telling. But I won’t!

I will have you know, she’s suffered a handful of rejections

From both crude and refined surgeons and I am sure those brazen jabs

Won’t be the last to her delicate throat.

I am not complaining, neither am I calling you to book for my woes.

So don’t feel sore for me.  Shouldering my woes is my responsibility.

Of course, it’s sad to admit this, but I have to,

I am afraid of sending her to another literary surgeon, another hospital,

Another press in this city and offshore for diagnosis.

I don’t want to be shredded by another :

“Thank you for giving us the opportunity to diagnose your precious daughter,

We are sorry, saddened to inform you she doesn’t stand a chance of survival out there,

In the vast world of literature.”

Troubling! This may sound, but one day, when I am done redressing the gashes

On her delicate throat,  I shall offer that delicate throat of my only daughter again to the scalpels

Of other literary surgeons manning the decision-making  theaters

In various literary hospitals and presses.

It’s a free world, of course, you can place under scrutiny the quality of my fatherhood.

Say what kind of father keeps sending his one and only daughter to the mouth of sharks.

I will tell you, a great one. Who wants only the best for his daughter.

And as always, after dropping her off at the glassy emergency door of the hospital,

I shall be waiting outside, under the shed of a towering tree or in the back seat

Of my Mercedes Benz GLE 450 in a nearby car park, sipping patience from a blue mug,

Expecting the usual and with a glint of hope the not-so-usual response.