Men with guns on the horizon far behind you,

The past tense threatening your presence.

I hear a concert of AK47s click, as thousands

Reload. The heat is tremendous – you have a radio.

But the sound of sand lifting from the ground

In the grip of the wind disturbs – you understand what is happening,

Not through sight but through the sounds.

I could almost hear you, your breathing

As you gave birth again, and another sister

Opened her eyes. Her wet face of sand.

In the drawing of this drama, the mist of mystery

Rising above the airwaves and heatwaves,

We have scattered around the world.

Revolutions between us. Implosions of conscience.

Corrupting earthquakes have split our family – between us

Swallows migrate above the Atlantic Ocean,

Pixellating the sky on tidal waves of heat

With such damnable ease.

And amongst the purple rain and stormy airwaves

Radio waves like flocks of swallows or the flamingos of

Lake Tana

That seem to fly out from the reflecting solar wind

Land upon both of us with feather-wing ease,

Bringing my world to yours and your world to mine.

And now that we meet,

The sand storm lays low.

Like a pride of lions

After the chase,

The sun rises, its golden mane shakes.

You tell me, ‘I heard a poem on the World Service,’

And finally, face to face, get to tell you

It was me

Tuning in through the hissing noise

To you tuning in to me.

Ricochet

Ricochet

A man shot a man who was a father,

The son of the dead father shot the father of the other son

Who was the man who had shot the first father.

Then I was born – I was told it didn’t matter,

’Cause time had passed.

But my uncle who was holding the pain

Of his dead brother – who was my father –

Said he couldn’t forgive because every year,

Every minute of every day, he loved his brother,

And consequently there was a score to settle.

I am living here because there was a revolution,

And some say this was why the man killed the father in

The first place – our family lost our property.

But I can go back – I am a man now.

The son of the neighbour who was the original killer

Was living in our house at home, said that he owned it now.

My uncle travelled back, to our homeland, but no longer,

No longer felt at home in his own homeland. He took a gun,

Which was owned by an old friend of the counter-revolution,

And shot himself. And the neighbour who was the son of

The man who I was told was a killer told me, at his funeral,

That his dad hadn’t shot first – that my dad had.

Email

Email

I shall be totally honest with you

And mean all that I say. Delete Undo.

Without you I am incomplete,

Less of the man I know I am. Delete.