I am looking for a poet

To tell my story

 

There are too many eulogies trapped in my mouth

And one by one

I want a poet who can untangle my silences

And ooze them out into a poem

 

And in this poem

I am supposed to confess and regurgitate

This dead thing out of my mouth and call it

A kind boy’s innocence being dragged into a battlefield

In this poem

I am supposed to explain why this playground is an open feast

That ushers the neighbourhood boys

To feel the need to beat my heart to death

 

In this poem

You will hear the blood speak

And the innocent die

And the children weeping

And the fathers killed

And the generations starve out of love

 

In this poem

My truth becomes their lies

Their lies become the truth

The devil becomes the prophet

The innocent becomes the guilty

And the guilty walks home to have dinner with his family

 

Ha

I bet you know what this pregnant poem is about, right

So many cooked-up condolences waiting to feed the mouth of tomorrow

So many framed-up names fortified

And statistics rising up and down like some tired prostitute

So many exterminators placed between traffic lights

Waiting to immortalise kills into metaphors

 

Let it be known

My body has become home

For your guns and knuckles

I know how to tame fire into my veins

And dress them up into funerals

How to play hit on the playground

Strike after fight after strike after fight

 

I have grown thicker bones on my fist now

Because I know I am almond-skinned

Because I know my timidness is the first weapon you see

Because I know when it’s my time to be loved

You see love goes out on a diet

 

Can’t you see

I have swallowed enough silence to kill me

Can’t you see

My tongue has become a sanctuary

Where the light meets the ending

Do you see why this voice is so fluent with grief

So poised that it can make death slip from my fingertips

 

My inability to swim in the water

Is the secret everyone knows, shit

Now I see so many drowned-up bodies

Questioning the ocean

I see so many mothers

Teaching their sons about masculinity

Than they teach them about survival

 

Almond skin

There is fire under this mountain

There is fire nesting under every soil I stand on

 

And, water surrounds me everywhere

So I bow my brokenness

To the mercy of this water

But this water will not save me

This water wants to drown me

Completely