GOOD GIRLS GO TO HEAVEN, BAD GIRLS GO EVERYWHERE

Friday nights
Are when we relive
Fairy tales
From an innocent age
We don?t need no charming
Princes, goblins and golliwogs eligible
So long as the broomsticks we?ll ride
To town are charming enough
We float to kokodome n cotton in convoys
Don?t have to be home by twelve
Seize our only chance to getaway
From the small boys who bore us
All week long with baby talk n
Crumb lined pockets
We flip the pages past
Lecture notes n dry weekdays
Poverty rations from home n restraint
To Friday nights where stories happen
In full color n we live
Happily ever after
Till next Friday night

MOTHERLY LOVE

we three queens
of orient are
clothed in loin
but our hearts
are naked
as our feet
browned by the sun
wading
through brown paint
someone spilt
on the sky
n our huts
in search
of our children,dissolved
as brown sugar
we will sieve them
bowl by bowl
till each bowl holds
pure child
gurgling
ma mi ma mi.

AIDS

Every trip to the neighbourhood
Barber is a death for me n
Every visit to the clinic
I watch syringes dangle
Above my head etching circles
Of death telling me I may be looking
At my clean blood for the last time
Why wasn?t I born
In the eighteenth century
When plagues wiped people
Out in the twinkling of an eye
This God-forsaken one kills
In slow motion, laughing
At heaps of tablets you swallow
From shrunk fingers
Stamps your soul with an expiry
Date faint enough for you
Not to decipher, then you both
Watch you waste