No One Lives Here
Anymore
on all the homes
that lie bereft
along the plains
that line Zambezi's shores
on silent farms
of extinct tribes
that nurtured yams
and coddle mines today
we found the hands and feet and
decapitated heads
that lay like pitted blackheads
on the turning cheeks of Africa
and know for sure
that no one lives here anymore
Requiem to a Document Unknown
I had scanned your face
but not the back of you,
whose gravely inked writing I glimpsed
as the shredder’s teeth gripped you,
and clawed you swiftly from my grasp,
and crosscut you, and spat you down,
confetti, to your grave
where you will rest in pieces
small and secret, pieces black and white
and inked all over with a larger picture
of a final testament unwilled, a title deed undone,
and a privy love affair that will stay privy now, forever -
just because that night I scanned your face
but not the heart of you.
what I seek?
a pouch that fits within a fist,
a going-home token
that drops six feet with me.
what I want?
for snow to fall upon a summer’s street.
I want our dying child to live,
and the skunk that thinks he is man to die.
I want the course of nature to reverse herself -
and o, I want to laugh again,
while reading people front and back and in-between the lines.
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