AN AFRICAN NIGHT

 

It was that a dark veil was thrown

Over the face of the moon

As it smiled down on the sprawling savannah

But then was your beauty ever made more manifest

Nor has yet a greater glory revealed the face of night

The chorus of a thousand stars

Blinking in solemn acclaim

Of this rustic rapture on an ancient landscape

A cacophony of sounds in a crazy potpourri

The chirping insects and the owl's ominous hoot

Stirred in perfect unison in nature's boiling pot of

soot

Like a conductor would an orchestra

One and all a symphony of harmony

 

But suddenly quiet descends on all like a heavy hand

As hunger seize the night in a reign of terror

Trailing the musk of fear they stalk majestically

Their prey through the still frightened foliage

Soon they make their harvest

From the darkness that abound

Can I ever forget the smell of blood?

Mixed with the odorous aroma of the camwood forest

Tell me what other sound tests the stout heart

Like the growling of the devouring of a fresh kill

 

Danger soon fades away

In the awakening of the forest

As it erupts once more in a celebration of survival

The night wind pause its excited conversation

With the thrashing foliage

In awe of this surreal masterpiece

A splash of black on nature's canvas

Punctuated with flickering flames of gold

 

Under the moonlight in the village square

The lights of these fire carrying insects

Is reflected in the eyes of the wizened sage

Surrounded by starry-eyed children

As he regales them with tales of nights long past

The stories of glorious African nights.

  

 

BLEEDING HEARTS

 

With sharpened points and flaming darts

We have come to play

The game of bleeding hearts

Reeling from the mangling scars

I've received

With flowers and a heart full of promises

I come still

To receive forty more severe stabs

All fatal blows

 

Agonized screams and a heart torn apart

A feigned smile in the eyes of a seductress

The orgy of devouring hearts has begun

Drowned by a surge of emotions

Drunken on these dizzying feelings

On the day when tomorrow's echo

Is a frightening roar

In the arena of racing pulses and beating hearts

O! Cruel love you have slain me yet again

 

Armour of brazen hearts

Rent in two by the flash of a smile

A ripple of blood through a heart of stone

Somersaulting souls in acrobatic posturing

Flipping feelings in a tide of fluctuating fortunes

The draught of a season of frowning

In the famine of dry pockets

And a deluge of reined-in emotion

In the high noon of bounties

 

Still I come

To receive more severe stabs

In the Golgotha

Wherein I was crucified in the name of love.

 

 

THE WORLD OF EFFIGIES

 

In a world of effigies

Night falls as the shadows lengthen

In a world of shadows

Under the full moon of reality

Characters of clay dissipate

Like wisps of smoke they regurgitate

The foul breath of loyalty gone sour

Fanning the horizon

Inspiring debited devotion

 

Ring forth your collated chorus

Rousing the ranting rabble

Bearing banners of banality

Remember that a prayer

Before a tottering totem

Will be offered on mounds

Of mundane immorality

 

For the man that courts immortality

While groveling in the pits of life's crudity

Has led to the sacrificial slab

His shackled posterity

For a mount of the throne of brevity

And will be besieged by courtiers

With hollowed integrity

While dancing to the drums of infidelity

Chanting hymns to his deified sovereignty

Like flies pecking furiously at a rotten carcass

While buzzing with praises to its strangulating stench

With copious conviviality

 

Remember that the fate of a defiled deity

Is written on the walls of its crumbling shrine

For when a god loses its iron teeth of chastisement

There will be no more sacrifice of appeasement

To be deserted by the carrion eaters of fortune

When the banks of your faulted favour runs dry

You will inhabit the desecrated house of fallen gods

Playing host to the lizards of desolation.

 

 

 

POETRY

 

A tattoo on my soul

A sharp point, an acrid contact

Infinitesimally minute

yet monumentally bewildering

It is like sap dripping on

Green shades and brown glades

Still scorched and blighted

like a sparkling pond in the soul

Which overflowing turns an arid heart

Into a field of blooming rosebuds

It is a dream hanging

from golden tassels

A vision of heaven and gilded angels

Wafts of perfumed petals

Purifying, cloying and alluring

Absolutely stilling

Drops of poignancy

yet it is like

Torrents gushing from the mouth

Of a roaring river

All consuming, bewildering, all conquering

Life's mark on my soul

My identity in this crowd

It is my passage through this unyielding throng.