Where The Poems Are...

You ask me where the poems are

They lie with a thousand men in a field
Their souls torn to ribbons
Tangled in the boots of tormentors
Who fear their breaths escape to the sound of
La illah ha illillah

They hide in a cave
Listening to the drones and baby cutters
Explode barefooted children into
Particles of dust that settle in their mothers’ hair

They sit in the market place
In a boy vendor’s basket of bread
Listening to his joyous song
Fill the air with silence
As morning turns to crimson dusk
The colour of death

They waft in the wind
Filled with mustard
Harvesting through streets and fields
Its share of limbs and lives
Today and forever

They crouch in the midst of hopes
And dreams of a noosed rainbow in a western sky
Hugging knees in airtight tins of steel
Tipped in ferries on open seas
From hunger to eternal stranglehold
Drifting towards self debasement of
Body and soul

Where are the poems you dare to ask

Buried with a brother who didn’t say
Goodbye
A mother whose silken threads of wisdom
Bind every word as it grafts beneath my skin

I scratch and scratch

The bloody poems ooze on to the page
Blot and die.

Written by a wildy smart , very beautiful and totally humble South African Woman !
(who prefers to remain in the mirages)