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

OF WHAT COLOUR IS LOVE

For you lovers in this age and time

Take this skeptic to task and tell me

The price I pay?

Conviction for faith eternal

And maybe keep this flame burning forever

Or imprison those hurried whispers

Ever so ephemeral

Of what colour is love?

Is it red?

For the supreme price of loyalty and sacrifice

So then I may intone

"I shall share a lover's fate"

And with a smile approach heaven's gate

Is it blue?

The colour of dreams

Sailing down the calm blue seas

Charting a course of destiny

Under the wide blue heavenly skies

Nestling safely asleep in the serene arms of romance

Tell me if it is black

The angry skies, the rough seas

The dark end to a morning of promises

A sad tale of lovers gone astray

Wet tears on lonely nights

Or even two lost souls together finding their way

Under the dark curtain of bright stars

Or green maybe

The fresh promise of a new birth

Of health, sustained growth and longetivity

Inspired by nature's benign elements

Or green still as the green eyes that see all evil

Bought emotions, weightless still

Despite the weighty pockets on which it is anchored

The hollowness of materialism

A heart's dereliction for an empty bank account

Is love as bright

As the sun's glowing rays?

The glorious rebirth of a golden dawn

Or the dove's purified plumage

Of peace and tranquility

Brightened hope and a renewed zest for loving

When life could hold more promises

Than the colours of the rainbow

Of what colour is love?

Tell me that I may know when I meet it.

FACES

These faces I often see

As forlorn as ships on boiling seas

What nature's glorious art has turned to be

A mask of pain and anguished pleas

Grooves traced by tears a thousand miles

Wrinkles of worry like valleys wide

And hollow tummies are reflected in arrested smiles

Blank stares and haggard hides

Drought ravaged bodies and hunger-crazed eyes

Staring out of hollowed skulls

Gaunt souls bent double by the scourge of affliction

Wearing the skulls of poverty like a common identity

Are these the faces I'll always see?

A race of oppressed beings

Memories of a harassed humanity

The tribe of the dehumanized

WHEN MEN PLAY GOD

When men play god

Men die, the skies cry

And hope is the beggar round the corner

Dressed in sores and rags

It's all hail and blitz

Hell and no bliss

When men play god

Peace is a bargaining chip

Pushed across polished oak tables

By podgy fingers

And life expectancy

Is the heave ho of laboured breathing

In solemn and awe inspiring halls

The clang of an anvil

Resonates round the exchange rooms

And the echo is heard still

In the inflated tummies

In distant and unheard of lands

Five million children lie dead

In a valley called depression

When men play god

The spark of life is extinguished

By a finger - no!

Not the finger on the roof of St. Peters

But the finger on the button

The writing on the wall spells

Calamity, annihilation, doom

Bombs, missiles all go ka-boom!!!

I look in the mirror

And I see two or more of me

Dolly's bleating is a merry sad song.