Running From Love

When the night is clear and the star’s up
Black skies, the wind violent enough
I sometimes call her the devil
Cos whenever I see her from afar
She comes racing arms wide,
shining; teeth grinning
Black braided hair flowing
Her oval face placed on her perfectly curated body
Hips-thighed intimately inviting me for a meal
Her eyes: milk and brown
piercing right through my dusty old soul

And when she somehow catches up
I, sweat pouring down like a donkey working hard for evening hay
Her scent, intimacy propelled
My young heart crashing head on,
barely any beep-able tune heard
She casually leans onto me and boldly whispers
her voice softly dragging me out
“You are mine, dark skinned boy,” her red full lips words out.
“What in heaven’s gates do you mean?” my eyes asks her.
Another grin and she bares all.

So again and again
when the sun’s just ripe
enough to fry egg
My bare feet on modern paths
I take race, back into the incoming sunset
She, I’m sure, amused,
watches that “dark skinned boy with his heart intact, running away from any signs of death”
Or love she might call it.

Diasporan Blues

Another immigrant
washing away leftovers from plates
He might have flown over the seas
or she, across the harsh desert
Over and across, don’t matter
Tall fences blocking aliens away
Long stretched out rivers.

We are all the same,
uniquely shaded for the sun
We of the gun-shaped origins,
eyes all crisp with dimly lit hope
Look into these voided pupils
Past these migrated dreams
Through these walls of memories
where our dead loved ones lay still
There, we of the African beginnings are stricken to forever hymn
an ancestral continental song called
“another day to build and create.”

Authors of our Destiny

The word was written
into those chapters from the Bible
Survival guide inscribed for us
Now we write
All words and emojis
for another time, another people

Don’t Play With the Devil

On the road to sin city
Drenched in full gold
Call the door man
Cos I hear the devil’s coming through
Watch the deck
Up high in this tower of babel
Lost souls, my people cry: lost souls
Burst them stars out
Pour more shots
Vodkar’d out

Red eyes, I see the devil now
Watch them, all them devils
Coming out, watch them

Red eyes, see the demon in the devil
I know, yes I know
He too fears for his own soul

Simple World: the southern Queen

The smell of freshly mowed grass runs through me and like a herd of belly hungry cattle, my desires for green grass deepens, forming into my voice which hurriedly writes out
“How I’ve missed you, Southern Queen
Your arms wide and stretched far
across your green lands”

My cold skin from the east coast gradually shedding away as the evening mosquitos of the southern heat suckle away my now fading winter memories.

Southern Queen with your ever welcoming grace: of your dwellers I have no immediate recollection but of your skin I have smelled before. With your pace defined, I remember your open roads.
My ears retuning its canal back to string played guitars and crooning voices telling tales of southern love and bar-fist fights.

Southern Queen, your open arms full of unforcing love; memories of the old days I spent with you comes flooding back.

“Stop right here,” you whisper into my ears.
Lost in the country side, only blue and green I see, of sky and of earth. Distant, across the fields where black cattle graze and brown horses pretend to fly, a small wooden house shaped like a hut made of clay sat amidst dog barks, chicken feather flapping, rattle snakes crackling. All melodies of the beauty within the bosom of your care.

Southern Queen, you know well the difference of highways and red sandy paths. Of tower-like buildings and hills of old tress, the difference you know well. Though of your dwellers intent I fail to remember but of your thickly formed heat, I remember well.

Southern Queen, in the heat amongst the low cut houses, you sing to me: pleading I stay here with you. Here away from the maddening mechanical ways of the east lands. You tell me of a place within your heart; full of water wells and ripened maize.

“Give me your labor tears, be you boy, girl, man, woman. Give to me a lake full of your pore-dripping sweat and to you I will reward with land to call home and plants for food. I ask for your sweat, only so I may refill my fountain during the conference of the golden sun and the coarse land.”

Simple World: dreams of the growing ocean

And in that dream, I saw myself right at the edge of an ocean, looking across the lavish blue water body. In the light, the sun providing me an ambiance of humid energy. I, then saw myself at the steps of a brewing river. Across, there the land of the red rested. Smells of the evening preparations lingered in air, mothers giving incense to firewood, stirring earth secrets and leaves in clay pots. Round and round. Milky-eyed children on bare feet, grain of sands entangled in their little toe-nails, pranced around their mothers playing the growing rhythm of life.

During the settling of the sun, far-east, warm-red attached itself all over the land giving meaning to its current dwellers. Mountains and hills providing shield, the people of the red peaceful ways living right in the center unaware of the many things beyond them.

In that dream, first my mind opened, then did my eyes. In that steady floating motion. Slowly paced. On wings I flew beyond the blue water body. To a flowing waterfall sitting at the edge of an old hill, I placed my gaze, pouring downwards from the waterfall was water and specks of stars. Both combining, forming into an overwhelming, overbearing light. Up, this light rises above me and the surrounding trees and sky creatures. Up, past the epic blue sky full of moon-colored clouds, deep into the holdings of space, the light reached and finally settled. Another beaming fire of the universe conceived from the deep wells of our own earth.

And in that dream, right at the moment before my eyes was to awaken and my mind back into the shadows of sleep. I, now guided on the wings of an ancient phoenix, around me soft sounds of breathing clouds played the keys of blue and green. There, I saw the ocean growing in width, length and in great depth. Its wide arms stretching out to the land of the red. I saw the earth, trees, leaves, birds, blue, green, grazing herd, mountains and last the voices of the red.
I saw them all, awakened, freeing up space and air. The ocean rapidly increased, growing in length, width and from within: the earth’s innermost crust. Arms continuously stretching, reaching further across the ends of earth.

And in that dream, suddenly I was no more

Of a distant love, I was told

Of an old folk tale, I once heard

Back in my days of young

Eyes glued to the storyteller

Ears up, attention undivided

Mind settled properly to soak in folk tale

Of an old ancient city, I was told

A city bathed in pure gold

Streets glittering shiny yellow

City walls all covered by sunflowers

On the balance of clouds,

The city of gold rested

Behind its walls, inside the ancient city

On a certain cloudy summer time

Of a princess born with an infinite beauty, I was told

There above the dreamy summertime

Of her sparkling smile, I heard

Her flowing hair full of sunflowers

Of her eyes reflecting dreams, I was told

Her dress made of summer green

Lips pure with love untasted

Of her heart troubles, a tale was told

Of her love for a man, I think it was

Outside the sunflower covered walls

Below the moon-colored clouds

Of a certain summer, I heard

On the fields of a southern land

Of a man and his horse named Hercules, I was told

And in all things, I was told

Of his undying love for the princess up in the city of the sunflower

Of an old folk tale or so I once heard

People of Zion (Patience)

The beast with its eyes gorged out

Roams the streets, hungry

Feeding on the naked threads

The real ones continue

Cos the tower has fallen

Marred with dirt

Nature has cleaned its sins

And left us to search for our own roots

Our hands in sand, so we dig

Through the rocks and flowing fountains

We must fight

Stop, clean the puddle of war

Break the hate

For the beasts has bitten our throats

Blood spilling from the machines we create

Patience has the key but man has the eyes

So we look with our one’s and two’s

Consuming information without an effort to build

Mystical stories formed to create diversion

Fearless are the ones who go the other way

They drink from the wisdom hidden in gutters

Helping up those hooked in the red red ditch

These ones have forgotten the tongue

That holds the people back

So with a quest to roam without fear

They wear faith and show sword

As their flags, with the moon passes through

We must join them and form a pyramid

A union uniting all lost brothers

We must know that to be has its breaks

Also called seeing without looking

Patience is the key, you know this

Discover the city buried in time

Uncovered through our unarranged rhymes

Read my thoughts, and I’ll call you the devil

For my path has refused to stop for blackened oil

Phase in, breathe out

For the key is locked into the ways of patience

Withstand it, and the beast will break your neck

New Message

I was conceived from the mind
Birthed into my thoughts
Finding gravity to walk on
Grew up calculating my mistakes
Now, another platform exists
One I must use to survive
These boxes requires a constant gaze
Barely looking up to the stars
Leaves no room for a divided attention
Always peeking at new updates
while on the highway, driving
I pray there’s no traffic on 95 south today
So this eternal torture may be easier to take on soul