Thursday, March 26, 2009

Commemoration of the trans-atlantic slave trade 2009 March 25th


There is much more of him in me than a borrowed rib and a promise,
Caged into the faintness of fading saneness,
They really thought they framed this boat
from the surrendering of black hands and black faces,
But there is a more deadly Atlantic gouging itself out from under my eyelids,
There is a more fatal venom on my hands than the fluids of every induced miscarriage,
And there is nothing symbolic in the rites of this middle passage
where only a ghostwriter will be left to tell the story of my lineage and I,
North east trade winds soothe the outcry from
dangling spirits in silk trees and shipwrecks
and white-sheets on infidels’ beds made from cedar
and in the glance of every face reflecting part of West Africa,-
the temper of a black woman is not to be provoked into vengeance,
yuh never bite the hand that feeds you, your mistress or your children,
you should know better than to separate her from love..
so you will live each day to swallow the bitterness of
backyard aloes brewed with resentment,
flavoured by revolting taste of his absence,
until her very essence is enough to choke your conscience into breathing on its own.
This is where we have built our homes
On beachfronts and old ship docks with folding sand,
Building dreams and castles we somehow expect to remain standing-
Carving notches in each others flesh, to check time and so making
wounds without notice,
spending 400 years apart from you could have never made us so hopeless
that we cannot remember each other anymore.


copyright 2009

Sunday, March 22, 2009

meaning.

Love is not selfish
And I have long returned you to your freedoms,
Releasing you from any restriction,
And I have let you go,
not wishing your return.
I learn in the most unlikely of places
pledging in the sincerest of promises,
That I am only happy she has found you.
Because I have found him.
So this is the morning I breathe better,
The Zahir is laid to rest
And I am three steps closer to my
Destiny not of this soil.
Maktub.