A Tributary In Servitude

is a myriad of shadows, dark wailing shadows—

A thousand needles hide by the edge of its eye

Shooting raining fire

as if I killed the Jew.

Sometimes, it turns serpentine with bra.s.s sinister fangs crawling speedily

Towards my future— a young ripening yolk terrorising me.

The raw calibration of earthquakes on the blood of my marrow may not baffle you when you come visiting

Tender as they are.

For they are not a tourist"s attraction;

my witnesses are the castles of human trade

The woe-road to the courtyard of h.e.l.l, the thunder slammed on the Richter scale

and a legacy of black wailing sinister shadows.

My spine

creaks to the weight of a dangling truth:

G.o.d speaks in forms and shadows I did not fall from the sky

or sprout from the depth of a sea.

I know my mother

my mother knew her grandma, and great grandpa was not an ape.

Remember,

there were splinters hungry long

before I was born by the crucible of a forge—

Saved from the alley by knives and "septic gloves which

still laugh at the strewn path on mother"s womb

But I will be ready for them in a blink

having read the truth in voices of the wild and garnered further lights for the testament of my soul.

II. I slaughtered many moons working miracles

with crisps of smoke.

Empty pans litter the fireplace mother, the sweltering-bone arched father, lonely in the absence of beer.

Pants were naked baskets, prayers were fixed deposits
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awaiting maturation at trinity"s court.

Turning towards our tragedy

we called the priest-diviner a fraud deprived the vultures of our mite.

We had scrubbed our home with indigo dye simmered the store with the first urine worms would not stop biting our feet—

Worms would not stop dredging our feet. A million shackled feet long to be dead, desperadoes gun for the porous border

Epitaphs outwit smiles at the home of friends, nothing has happened to the hungry schoolboys looting silver from the courtyard of the G.o.ds…

III. I had looked the sun in the eye when it was golden at its rise;

the sheb.u.t.ter wept on the eve of its shine

The vagrant salt lost its essence to rivers of affirmation.

I had pressed my lips on morsels of starch

Suckled till swollen my left fingers

I want to suck my right and conquer the bowls of oil and pepper.

I want to purge my sh.e.l.l

of wailing-wandering splinters to liberate my freedom—

To scratch a conscience of steel till it yields its blood;

I"m weary of convenience seals—

I crave the Patmos experience to sharpen my conscience;

I have seen the sea, dwelt on the lagoon.

I want to clothe my strength with your blue paraphernalia lion in the iron

So I may smash the medals

of their pride on the moonstone at Eden and stir up the G.o.ds!

They said I did not witness the baking of a night—

I cannot traverse without their moonlight

That their landmines

have claimed a million men who drew daggers at their wits.

They have forgotten they have forgotten they have forgotten

That like the scheming of a rat, like the scheming of a termite and like the longings of the dead

The tortoise has sown

all her beans in vain.

My heart rumbles on the anvil beating to the call

and since they desire a sign

In the neighbourhood

I"m the tree Akalaudo

and never shall shave head to the floods.

IV. Now man,

O man, listen.

Open wide your arrogant ears

My heart is a talking drum resplendent with soulful blues—

its message is rain, its message is sulphur

It is a quickening spirit

burying we-men on their knees beating the dumb"s tongue into sword.

Beats swifter than a weaver"s shuttle, who dare dance its beats?

A chance dance, a chance death

My gong rakes up your corpse— my fathers dance its astral beats

I can see them on the threshing floor

When they tire the vultures cry

I burn the bones of settled old wines for incense I sound my heart-drum— a proverb still

See how my mothers are stamping the earth it was a night like this that gave me birth; tutored my gaming

And nailed my suckle where it hung clockwise on frontiers to

sabbaths of white-light…

V. Let it reel— it is not this ocean

the tortoise will boast of damming for the irrigation of its sh.e.l.l:

Ultramarine ladder, step-stone, drifting border-post and none can claim its holy place—

the throne of my Father.

Offspring of a broad-blue-truth linking

the red soil of heaven to the black of earth— gleefully the river meets the sea.

The river, the river, which has no hands

the river, which has no legs, which draws no net the-gently-flowing-river-in-the-woods.

The river-snails will have their fill

the young palms shall not shed their leaves, the hills will swallow the laugh of death.

Here"s the food-drink, favourite of Obatala; coded hands will be red with cam prophets will be many in the land.

The silk-slippery-spring-in-the-woods distilling the lemons

with my sieve of sands;

Meeting the signatories

overwhelmed by far lines of the G.o.ds,

can you strike your head against the pantheon?

Vibrant, yet in a season of drought bubbling to music from

the khalam of the caller

You can sound my heart cryptically too I, the tributary in their servitude—

for I"m eager for the next act...