Poems for Her : Episode II

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enough about the living

enough treading on eggshells, bleeding

one word leads to another

like musical notes at the opera

i picked up a fight, she picked up a plane ticket

the script puts her somewhere above the skies of Venus

cruising and crashing with her stellar coevals

the goddess in her slumber dreamed of this tale

the grit to see through the days is especially sketchy

everywhere is a buzz about what to put on for the occasion

a smile, silence or some flirting to balance the equation

nineteen lives ago i could have sworn i was with her

twentieth is cursed, i'll wait for twenty three or, er...twenty nine

one of these days i am going to stray out of my shell

she'll read about it somewhere among the stars, between the lines

my lies, they are saved as pdf or 'shut-the-f-up'

hello darkness my old friend, a relapse into despair. that's clichéd, i know

in this house we deal in words and numbers

in this house we feel and flee to stay hydrated

come, come, come, go, go, go, left, left, left

a dash here, a dot there; standby for transmission

she tests the waters with both personae

i text and wait, life will resurface

Poems for Her : Episode I

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the internet says she's just a text away, but

that might as well be webverses away

blimey, i can't even log into her heart

what with captchas & two-factor authentication

i have found a new voice in the sound of pain

when the night comes, i'll take to the stage

the dream i had was of a woman and the salt

she listened and nodded some sense

the salt does not mean to upset the cult

she's got a lover in a diary she planes smoothly every sunset

you could see me if you looked closely

the pattern growing thick, the rationale clogging up

my virtual presence pervading her space

but she does not know me

she does not know

she does

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Look here, I mean here

there's you and your shadow

there's light and no sugar

you can't blame me for having your best interest

at heart

but, how can you be sure

monsters don't have lead behind their sternum

surtout the kind of monsters you like

i am a man trying to love a woman

there's another man on the other face of the map she wants

i am not that man, déjà vu

a dread within a dream within a drink

this should be the last one down my system

home is waiting

at least read my eye movement, Morse code

pay-per-view, the foxy tone.

you here implies you, unlike in my book of tropes

'cause come tomorrow, i'll find you and i'll love you.

Happiness

Ah, happiness, that elusive state

i surf cyberspace but I cannot locate

i put up huts, thatched of smiles and style

the lady i saw this morning

perched on the far edge of her mind

swallowing life around and getting swallowed back

she got me thinking, of thinking and meditating

of life and its meaning

'i must not fear', the first line in my journal quotes Frank Herbert

i must not fear, huh! sure, death is not scary

i'll tell you what is scary if you will not get scared

i'll drown my worries if you will stay overnight.

now that i have your attention dear, tell me, what makes you happy?

my occult dream told me i could be loved too

but dreamland is way tricky and sure without mirrors

my half-lover needs a star out of Orion

when they are slipping away, they get very close

hearts touching, minds groping for a way out

my boss needs my money, a relapse in despair

my beloved, she knows me better than i know myself

now, that is scary, my friend. she can play me on her accordion

she can make me sing or whine, she can make me love like a runaway lover

she can bend me in folds to fit in her leaking jeans

my hometown has had enough of me, and some extra to give away

my deathbed hasn't seen me since this morning, and that is scary too.

My Dad, a Tailor

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In this country, a boss should always be bald and have a big belly. My uncle isn’t bald, he hasn’t got a big belly either, and you don’t realize, the first time you see him, that he is the actual boss of a big office downtown. I didn’t believe him at first, until he invited me in after school. All excited, I deemed it to be cubby, just like our living room or that of Keza’s but it was a whole of the world, with moving chairs and everything. Well, let’s pass that but it was grand and beautiful, I tell you. I wanted my dad to get there, maybe he’d see by himself what I always wanted to tell him long before that no tailor can make a big money. So I asked uncle if ever my dad has been here but quickly judged that I shouldn’t have for if my dad had ever set his feet in this building, he would have left his tailoring machine at our veranda the next morning and went out to search for a job, a paying job.

At the beginning of this academic year, our new teach Immaculé requested us to introduce ourselves. We were asked our names, our parents’ names and their jobs, where we live and so on. When my turn arrived, I said everything as it is and…

”But your father is a tailor, why do you say he’s jobless?”

Teacher having known my dad before time, I was convinced at the end of our arguing, when no one gave in, that she ought to defend him. But when you have a job, you are either a boss like our uncle or you have a boss.

“Yes boy, he’s been here on numerous occasions, why?”

“Well, nothing. I just wanted to know.”

My dad has seen this office himself? I was disappointed and a bit angry that he did nothing to get a job afterwards. But anger shrunk when I remembered that we are never hungry and that we always get new clothes on Christmas and, above all, that we go to school. Though until now I don’t understand where he gets money to pay our school fees. Maybe our uncle pays for us and we are never let to know about it.

Disappointment didn’t go anywhere though. How can a grown-up man feed his family without having a proper job? Do people he sews clothes for pay him? I doubt that because whenever he sends me to take their clothes to them, they don’t give me any money. Maybe he does it all as the Good Community Work we are always told at Sunday school.

“A man should always do good deeds for his community to claim his place in Heaven.” Our Sunday school teacher likes to tell us. Maybe that’s what our father is doing. He just wants heaven not us, but we don’t complain. We get all we need.