Ravish ...

This poem was written on the bus at 3 AM ...inspiration can arrive at the weirdest times ...

If i let it slip how much i need you
Would you come tonight
Slip into my room
Turn off my light
Ravish me..

Till i’m mumbling forbidden words
Till forgotten emotions tumble from my thighs
Till i can formulate the right name...
If he knew i was here with you
Would you enter my room
Ravish me
Maybe perhaps while she watches TV
Or does laundry
If she knew
That within me
We escaped reality
Would you enter my room
Ravish me

Love me tenderly , need me ...
Till my speech is cluttered with clichés
Like you complete me
Like you had me at hello
Like you are my everything ,my destiny
If you could taste the emptiness inside of me
Would you penetrate my room
Ravish me

Burrow through every layer
Until I’m exposed ...naked
The broken me ...the lonely me...
Waiting
For you to validate me...
Complete me...
Ravish me

Selfish thoughts accumulate in my mind
Words spilling over into actions
The victim of my own crime
As I put myself in your position
Would I forgive me...
Would I Take You
Ravish you
Voraciously
Till we are one delicious sin away from hellfire ...

Remorse but a mere memory ...
As we move swiftly
Fluidly
Regrets , guilt , confined to a seedy back room
Loves footprints left on the welcome mat ..
While we tangle and wrestle ...
Wrists behind my back
And you pin me ...
Ravish me
Complete me ...

Once . twice , three times...
I wanted you to remember my name ...
Now I cannot forget your essence ...
Hands stained like a hooker’s bed sheet
These same hands shackled to the bedposts
A trail of tears left across your chest
Broken Promises discarded in a heap on the floor
Old loves replaced by hurried kisses , fierce caresses
As you consume me ...
Complete me
Ravish me ...

Akward...

wake up thinking about you ....
Are you thinking about me ....thinking about you ... thinking about you......thinking about me ?
Some people ask for a penny but i would give a thousand to know that your thoughts consisted of me; to be assured that what is on my mind is on your mind.
Do I text ?
It’s been 8 hours 13 minutes and 37 seconds ...since my fingers left the keypad, my thumb still imprinted on the send button ... still no response ...
Do I Call ?
Wil i seem needy , desperate...but what is desperation . Is it that everlasting hunger that i have to hear your voice , is it the lingering desire, the yearning to feel your lips ...upon my lips...upon my lips...upon my lips ?
Coffee Break
Its been 10 hours as i sip the dark brown cup of hot chocolate... It reminds me of your deliciously dark brown cocoa skin...against my skin .. India really knew what she was singing about ...
03:05 am
17 hours since we last communicated ... My phone rings ..The uncontrolled beat of the tribal skank resonates through my lonely single bed... Conjuring Images of the Serengeti , of Simba prowling through the African savannah .. bringing out the Mandingo in me ..I stretch sensuously for the phone ..preparing my huskiest voice..I caress the accept button ..
Hello ? ...
Oh Hey Mum !
...Awkward

The Rescue that never came ...

1 , 10 , 100 , 1000 ,10,000, When does it become just a number ,
When does the totality of death becomes so great...
that it is as if we are counting grains , or seeds With which we Cultivate,
Soils that will never grow again ,
Mothers pour bed time stories into their children’s souls ...Souls filled with longing , with hope ...stories of western worlds ..warm homes..full stomachs ...
Of saints who will liberate them from the darkness
So the children wait ...Afraid to exhale ...
Waiting for a rescue that will never come

A hope so loud that only GOD can hear it
I grasp their small fingers and run ...leap into an uncertainty , more certain , than this certainty ...for this fall...this concrete...
Will kiss them goodnight in a way an AK47 never could ..
‘The Hutu should stop having mercy on the Tutsi’
Wave after Wave of hatred gush from the radios
As sons are obliterated by an army of hypocrisy ...
For we are the same ...we were always the same ...maybe different parents ..or a different surname Our country once broken by colonialisms hand ...Now vying for their attention
Waiting for a rescue that will never come

This Holocaust...An ideology repackaged ... Jews Morphed into Africans...Hitler morphed into an African...
There is death Here..We are dying here ...We are dying here ...
Twa, Hutu, Tutsi ...Printed..Then separated..
the beautiful hills of days gone by covered in ruins
Here where children frolicked and played
Are places where vultures roam , call home and now feast
Converging on human flesh ...humanity..lost somewhere between the eye of a gun and the swish of a machete ..
Where rape is the rule and its absence the exception,

A horizon littered with skulls, torso’s ...fingers,..those long fingers with which you once caressed my cheek and gave me mornings to rise for ...
A Mothers bosom complete with scars where her children were torn from her
Mother Africa lay bleeding eyes still open ...oozing despair, disappointment, realisation
That help was never coming..

"To be a Tutsi they said was a crime for which death was the only suitable
punishment. The Hutu that refuses to kill is not worthy of life. As an
accomplice he must also die."

With these lies you move forward ,
The eyes of my brethren replaced with the hard eyes of a killer ...as you dispatch ...dismember...disgrace
The triumph of an evil extraordinary...

One day you will die ..
and Even your coffin will swell with fear for you and as you fester ...like the faeces of a depraved animal .awaiting your fate ..
I pray that you will remember your doctrum .your slogans .your mottos..
And As my eyes roll back in search of a peace consistently denied , I will also recite Our Motto ....
"Unity, Work, Patriotism"
And hope that this will be remembered the way my death will never be forgotten...

Civil War

Sunrise came and ushered in a new anarchy...
With the arrival of the rebels and their enforced liberation
The sound of mothers weeping in Soweto, in Rwanda, in Congo echoed in the fields of Kailahun*...
This Open wound...Infected by corruption ...like a dying limb needing to be removed...
As you smile and ask me ‘Long sleeve or short sleeve?’ as if the right to choose is a privilege..

My countries course re-written by history’s white hand ... in a language used to oppress us...
This brought the technology used to suppress us,
Only to have my own people repress us... in a language that has come back to hunt me...
Incarcerated in this false patriotism and emancipated by our people into the boundaries of slavery, held hostage in my own country.
How do you look into the deep brown pools of your own eyes then shoot ?, then hack away at your own humanity... while hands and feet fall to the floor ...like shards of glass this window is broken .

As I wonder through each lonely street clay, dust, earth ... eclipsed by blood, the smell assails me
As I crossed borders you were here ... in there ... corroding out of existence ... I wonder if the smoke got you first ... or the heat ... the intense flames ... or did you die from sorrow, despair, the completely overwhelming hopelessness as you watched your legacy part ways with a world they barely knew ...Nyanje, Nyakeke, Nyadegesya, Kainya, Mother, Father, Brothers, Sisters, Uncle ....each and every last one taken..

Souls drop to the floor as the darkness shrouds us... Harmattan encircles us with fear... the thick dry taste of Fear and then tears
These furious hot tears ...as we wait ... heartbeats, rustling of leaves, the sound of machetes slashing through nature’s womb...
The familiar chant of the ‘Soldiers’ clad in Khaki ...encased in oblivion .brown brown* blurring the lines between depraved and sadistic.

The ... spine chilling howls escaping the corrugated iron roofs , mothers, Sisters, daughters torn open their innocence stolen...Like Déjà Vu my village is swollen , infested , congested ...bursting at the seams like the huts, schools and hospitals where they burnt my future ....

As sunset seals the windows of hope i wonder after ...48 bitter years, of endurance , of violence, of intimate poverty , of Independence .. If we could start again should we have chosen dependence?

Kailahun- A town in Sierra Leone
Harmattan – Harsh African Winds
Brown Brown – A mix of heroin and gun powder

GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM !!

Go back to where you came from !!
What Kings College Hospital yeah ?
Because as far as I know that’s the place where I entered this world...
Or do you mean back to where my mum’s from? ..
Because she entered through guys...
Which unfortunately for you is still the same borough? Is that not far enough?
I sense that you might mean
Africa
Well personally , I’ve never laid eyes upon Kunta Kinte , or Simba or Tarzan and no I haven’t seen the colour purple or read the jungle book ..
Or any other stereotypes you force-feed me so that you can feel tolerant ...
I’m proud that you look into my eyes and see a strong ebony Zulu woman dancing in celebration or a Majestic Masai woman hunting her prey ...
But I’m just a black girl in Peckham running for the bus...
And yes I’m proud that my grandmother can m ake 27 different meals from one cassava But if you take me to Morley’s I will still order the same £1.99 2 piece chicken and chips ...drink optional ...

It’s ironic because, it’s you who brought me here ..and maybe you didn’t buy my plane ticket or smuggle me in on a derelict ship ...But you cursed my people ..to wither within a cycle of poverty, corruption , debt and interest..
Its your ancestors who crippled mine in the great battle of gun versus spear...
The same people perpetuating the notion that £2 a month can save an economy...
Adverts which strip us of any civilisation or are just clips of our bloated bellied children chewing crumbs...
Africa ...where every sentence has connotations of aid...
If its not The AIDS then its Live aid or Band aid or another commercialised event made
So that every westerner can sleep easy
breezing through life guiltless even though it cost exactly 3 souls to put a diamond in that necklace you just had to have...
When your watching the news complaining about how us so called foreigners have taken all your jobs and are the cause of this recession remember us so called foreigners were content in our foreign lands ...
Praying to the sun or what other tribalistic religion you think we believe in ...
It was your people who rounded us up like cattle and herded us out to every corner of every continent..
Then traded us out to every country in every continent... then sent us back to fend for ourselves two centuries behind with colonialisms apology...

So how about you go back to where you came from ...
or where it is your probably going..in other words ..
Go to Hell !

A Piece

A piece of me died today
Not the melodramatic all my happiness has ended you’ve left a black hole inside of me piece
But a real piece
A my vision is blurred piece
A my edges are frayed piece
A Psychotic what do I do without you piece
Id even reprint the bruises on my body
if you would come back to me so that my piece and your piece could find themselves again.
I would stencil your finger prints back onto my neck and squeeze myself just to feel you..
to feel anything…
But this dull ache..
Even your exhausting pain
A glimpse of your fingers as they curl into that all too familiar fist.
The casual snap as my body crumples into that eloquent position where you know its gone too far
The Violent monotony of our lives seems but a wistful dream against this morbidly silent reality
At least you loved me .. brokenly..but loved me .
Even when you screamed not so sweet nothings into my soul at least someone spoke to me ..
The way you would furiously strum on your guitar strings as precisely as you would pluck out the strands of my hair .
Creating your soft melodies ...
Mood music for one of your angry rants ...
where your words would unfold me .
Then shred me ...then mould me ...
Into someone I didn’t recognise.
But ...
If you asked me I would mould myself into anyone you needed just so I could take a shape...
In your sinewy arms i found solace..
Out of your depraved lunacy i found an organised chaos..after ten years I remain stationary ..
A groan escapes my lips
my ribs are still broken ...
I miss you

Poet ... ?

I don't click my fingers instead of clap ..
I have never invested in Afrocentric head wraps...
My voice battling itself ...
Lost somewhere between a pretentious whisper
Or an ostentatious growl
But I do write ...

I don’t need to change my name ...
Or Perch on a soapbox and proclaim ...
All that is wrong with this world ...
To assume that all that is right is Poetry
As if a metaphor from me
Will stop knife crime
Or end poverty ...
But I do write ...

And if no one but me
Should ever see
These letters ... these words ...
That escape me ...
As I type furiously ....
Fingertips bleeding
As I write ...
As I write ...
Past the applause
Past the commentary
When all that is left is me ...
I will still confirm emphatically
That a poet ...may not be me
But I will still
Write...
Emotionally
Beautifully
Intimately
Until all that is Left is me
I Will Still
Write ...