I came from the unknown
And have entered the world
full of complexities,
known and the unknown,
Seen and the unseen,
hidden and fully manifested,
unfathomable and
incomprehensible mysteries.
I have entered
the deepest path of the earth.
I did enter so that I might be
preserved till the end of time.
Sowed like a seed,
That I may sprout again.
Do not look for me here,
For I will not return as you know me,
But different and changed.
As a light waxing
stronger shall my soul be,
In greater duty of
a higher calling than this.
I shall now rest till
the sanctuary be cleansed,
And I will enter.
For the days of
my appointed time is near,
I will wait till my change.
Until then,
I will say,
God speed,
you all who understand.
©® Emeka Mokeme.2017,All rights reserved

there was a mirror in my room
with eyes that only observed.

its seen me bare, naked.
its seen me clothed, covered.

its watched me grow, become.
its watched me fade, breakdown.

and when i shattered,
so did that mirror.

I sit outside the piano-room door
and listen to you sing
because it makes me want to be alive.

I imagine myself dancing in the center
of a pearl-white key,
waltzing backward toward the string
that ties song to sound.

You lift a finger
and pause to breathe
and I fall a thousand feet
into the space between silence and noise.

If only your voice were never-ending,
then perhaps I’d fall more softly
or not at all.

I have two kidneys and one
broken tooth.
In grade school a pack of boys
stomped on me, like I was
the **** of a lit cigarette
and they were the rain.

Have you ever had a recurring dream?
One loaded image that cemented itself
in your memory with the force
of a freight train?

Mine is simple:
I am standing in front of a mirror,
nothing special, no indication of
time or place.
But it is me, and I am standing there,
looking at myself with stiff eyes.
But the eyes are not mine.
They are definitely stuck in my skin,
but they do not roll from side-to-side
or reflect any light.

The eyes are there, and they stay calm
as blood pours out from their bottoms
down to my lower lip--
and it is my lip.
But it is not my blood,
so it must be borrowed.

It might be the blood of someone I used
to know
Or of a stranger on the street
Or of someone famous
Or of my next-door neighbor
Or of someone not quite alien enough
to bleed a color other than red.

All I know is that the blood is there,
running out of me
And every night my tongue rolls out
to taste it, but its owner remains
unknown to me.

I am trying really hard to live in this body, but the rent is too ******* high
and the paint is peeling off and
I’m too tired to patch it up.

what have the fingers to say
with their anonymous scribblings when
I close my eyes and let them fly
thinking mostly with fingernails
on a chalkboard just letting them cry
I don't  outline my subject or have a theme when I
wash my hands stretch my digits out
let them loose to do their texting
watch dense as mercury on Mars from here
their words surprising the meaning come from behind
the aching tendonitis the arthritis spasms
those fingerprints on the keys of my worn off identity
I claim nothing
almost not me

I drink coffee like
I take
holy communion-
with eyes closed
in thankful
prayer.