Bone dry and still, ice cold and grey
We lay as they embalm us, wash us and clothe us in white satin
Prepare us for sleep
Deep, dark sleep in a place where no man can wake us

Our loved ones lament our departure
The pangs of grief grip them relentlessly
It seems their pain not only rises from the reality of their loss
But they fear that we know the pain of death even in death
No, it has never been more far fetched
We have fallen asleep, no form of consciousness stirs within us now
When the last breath left all knowledge slipped away
No part of us lingers here to see their mournful faces
Or hear their miserable wailing
We do not know their suffering and cannot quell it in any way
As surely as the living live, they know that they must die someday
But here in death, we know nothing
We only lie in wait now beyond their reach
Even when the earth consumes us
Strips away all we once consisted of and the only remnant is our bones
We sleep in peace, completely unaware

Even so, a day will come when a voice will call our names
And we will hear it and rise from the depths and see light
A new life we will know and live to never sleep again

From a bang and a ******* hole
They say we arose
Hunched and furry and lacking cognizance
Grunting and glaring obscurely at the simplest of matter
That we are evolved Hominids
What an insult to so high and handsome a species
To the level of our intellect
To the stance of the master of our conception
To the grandeur of the Cherubim in-between which He dwells
To His creative ability

They go on with unabated audacity
To present us with ‘evidence’ of such theory
In an attempt to nullify the Word of His Lordship
Reduce it to but a figment of imaginative minds

They seek to re-establish the beginning
Subject the present to their will
And recourse the direction of the future
With an intent to dethrone The Alpha and Omega

For ages they have spurred violence upon the nations
While their forked tongues spoke for peace
Imposed the segregation of a race by physical demeanor
While their forked tongues spoke for unity
Instituted oppression of peoples
While their forked tongues spoke for liberation
And as they weave their intricate design
To hurl the world into confusion
Tying the loose ends in knots of theories
Which they fabricate basis to support
Then pass off as sense
All that remains is that there is only one truth
The truth that has survived interrogation and trial
And everything else is nonsense

In the wake of Poseidon we live our lives
Tossed to and fro as ships on stormy seas
Where the stability of land is nowhere in sight

****** into an invisible vortex
We hover about in a Bermuda triangle
And suffer our delirium

Ha ha! One way or the other we align to the moon
Her pale face resembles our own as we wallow in the throes of her curse
An incongruent blend of sanguine and melancholy disposition

And the crux of it all is how we cordially board
The vessel that sets us sail into the treacherous waters
Where sirens sing us to gloomy depths of emotional turmoil









Nellie Nkosi

Deep seated pain that pulls at the strings of the heart
Harrows the mind with grotesque music
Which mimics the voices of a thousand groaning ghosts
Reducing the afflicted one to a silent madness
Lost in thoughts riddled with the images of a life of twisted torture
And eyes staring fixedly into nothing, as it seems, as tears flow freely
To mourn a life that will not pass
Now craving death, could it be the answer?

Back and forth within herself the questions resonate
How will this end? Will an end of this be ever known to me?
And instead of answers she only hears the echoing gong
Of an unsoundly noise so utterly disheartening that
The emptiness of it gnaws into her spirit
Snubbing out whatever light is left to show for any memory of happiness
So that even the fleeting curl of a smile is but a hopeless longing for her face
A paling canvass etched with the likeness of misery

The day you slept I cried
I wonder why

My heart sat in my throat trying to choke me so I could sleep along with you
And yet while you lived I would have kept my distance
Kept far from your disdaining reach
Now I would have given anything to wrap my arms around your warm waist
To touch your smooth camel skin, trace my fingers on your cinnamon freckles
Or just stare into your hot brown eyes
And yet while you lived I would have kept mine lowered
Kept my gaze averted from your frightening glare

While you existed I cried
I think I know why

My brains boggled in my head wildly so I could be unhinged like you
It seemed uncanny how the powerful, fierce woman I once feared
Had now become just a frail, helpless shadow of herself
Still spewing malignant insults at me from her chaffed mouth
Cursing fervently with force that would bend me again to her will
In your weakness your words still crushed me
Orders barked from your sick bed jolted me
As if the strength would return and position you to punish me if I didn’t obey

When you lived I cried
I know why

My body stayed in a constant state of swelling, bruising and wounding
So I could be scarred like you
It didn’t matter that I was innocent and needed your love
Only fist punches, metal rod lashes, finger nail pinches
Sometimes hair pulls, palm slaps, boot kicks and back hands
On better days the odd berating in public would do the trick
Yes, this was the only kind of love you had for me
The kind to pound me into the ground

Well now you’ve long been gone
All that you broke down in me, I’ve rebuilt
With tears and hunger and shrinking
The scars have healed and I’m whole
The love you withheld, I have found in myself












Nellie Nkosi

You rise to a clanging gong before the break of dawn
Halfheartedly trying to wipe the daze of sleep from your face
It hasn't been long since you put your head on the dusty ground
You utter a little prayer as you look down at your calloused hands
Maybe today you might not feel the stinging lick of a whip on your back
You heave and labor beneath the scorching sun
And your only drink is the sweat that trickles into your mouth from your brow
So far your prayer was for nothing as the overseer delivers lash after lash
Of his whip to your scar patterned back crying “faster, faster!”
But the weight of the harness on your neck and the chains
On your hands and feet restrict your pace
That doesn't count for much to him whose only joy is to tear your skin
With his favorite toy  
In the nearby estate beneath an old willow
Your sister is hanging naked by a rope
Her shrill screams cut through the tension in the air
And a midst every sickening crack of the whip against her tender skin
You only hear the pained desperation in her cries
But the assembly of slaves forced to watch this barbaric spectacle
Can only but look on at the torture and humiliation of one of their own
Their hands are tied by mental chains that hold them down to nothingness

Black child of the African womb
Once a proud and spirited youth
Who freely roamed over plains and mountains
And sang and danced to drumbeats in festivities around village fires
The brightness of your future shone white in your eyes
Your dark skin glistened in the sun like melted cocoa
Now you've been reduced to a beast of burden
Your spirit broken under a harness and whip
On another land beyond oceans from your motherland
A parched grey is all that remains of your once slick black skin
And a dull red stain of anger and pain now covers your once bright eyes
Freedom is a right you’ve been told is irrelevant to you
But somehow you crave it more than anything
Whenever you’ve tried to reclaim it
You were hunted down like vermin and subjected to unthinkable atrocities
Still you hunger and thirst for a day when the chains will crumble
When the light of dawn will creep up from behind the hills
And find you sleeping peacefully into the morning
When the day will be saturated with a pleasant awakening of senses
From the beautiful song of a bird on a blossoming tree
To the graceful dancing of delicate butterflies over a hissing stream
But for now you are a slave

Concealed and camouflaged in the long savannah grass
He waits downwind as still as a sleeping flamingo
Careful not to make the slightest sound
This valley is the richest in the land
Teeming with a mouthwatering selection of the most robust
Game under the African sky
He draws back his bow and sets his quiver aflight and with a powerful ******
It lands dead in the heart of the beast he has marked
The hunter collects his prize

Dinner was good tonight
The villagers dance around and adorn him with melodies of their praises
‘We swell with pride and plenty, we pride ourselves with plenty,
Plenty by the skilled hands of our most cunning hunter’
Only he is not at all present at this celebration for his honor
His heart and mind are fixated on a craving
That the liver of this buffalo did not satisfy
In fact it was as good as gall to him because the liver he longs for
The one which has him engulfed in a fog of insanity
Can only be likened to food that is fit for a god

Ah! He knows how the gods delight to dine
The terror of this revelation should be revolting enough to end this craving
But no
His eyes glisten wildly in the glare of the fire
Looking up they dart from person to person as he broods contemplatively
Over each one like a predator sizing up his prey for weaknesses
In their innocence the children rush to embrace him
Joyfully oblivious of his cruel intentions
And under the cover of darkness he slips away with a naïve child

The roasted liver melts in his mouth like fat in a hot cooking ***
He savors every morsel of it, indulging himself slowly
So that his immersion in this little paradise might last a little longer
No thought comes to mind of the little girls terrified whimpers
As he slit her throat and bled her before extracting her tasty liver
Only the splendid musky sweetness of it now has him in an indulgent daze

Now that he has found the desire of his flesh that eluded him for so long
Weeping and keening will echo through the village and those beyond
Women will wane and sing of loss and sorrow
Old men will dull with woe as the laughter of naïve children slowly ceases
Young men will search far & wide in futility for the monster amongst them
Yet they will not find it
And until his fall the land remains afflicted by the wake of his craving

Jumping, bouncing and swinging from tree to tree
In a sparse forest just outside a village on the outskirts of Antananarivo
They adapt to the changes flung at them and strive to survive

On the ground a troop leaps sideways side by side in a straight line
What a comical spectacle
However solemn their purpose, they must find a home
The little one abaft of the line
Takes one last glimpse at the home he leaves behind
Oh it’s up in flames now and bulldozers knock down his trees
Beyond, just yonder
Over a hill further down south, the prospect is in sight
A new forest with new opportunities
It’s denser; it hasn't caught the eye of encroaching villagers
They forge on towards it in that spectacular procession

High up in the trees they mark their territory
Males call out to females and they howl in response
The young ones frolic in the underbrush
They mate, they eat, they thrive

Another forced migration
There they go again in that sideways march
More deforestation for infrastructure
There must be leeway for civilization one way or the other
One must wonder now
What future lies in store for these that have no place in government?
Their trails fade away from the Malagasy ecosystem
Their lives hang in a balance at the brink of extinction
Will our grandchildren ever get to appreciate
The extraordinary feats of agility they display
The gymnastics they perform from day to day
On the trees and on the ground in the jungle everyday
Ostentations of dramatic optical presentations
In their furry coats of monochromatic patterns
Perhaps they will disappear and my son’s sons may only get to
Read about them in the has been list of the annals of history
At this rate since erecting urban jungles
Of tar roads and skyscrapers is the order of the day
They might even be able to catch an obscure image of the lemur
In the form of a costumed trapezist mimicking one
Or a twisting contortionist in The Cirque Du Soleil









Nellie Nkosi

If night falls while my eyes are still fixed on your back
And wanting to trace my fingers lightly against your broad shoulders
Is it wrong
When I swell between my thighs
At the mere sound of your voice calling my name
Am I hedonistic if I yearn for your chiseled cheek to rest on mine
Is this asking for much

How long should I wait for you to hear my keening songs
Of how I need you to need me in the tormenting way that I do
Just as the moon pines in daylight for the night to caress her glory
Do you know that I long for the night so you can ravage my decency
The way I would like to scream and squirm
Beneath your hard embrace
I want you to know what agony my body knows

Will you succumb to the pressures I apply
And unravel before me as you have unraveled me
Tell me if you will leave me wanting and grasping at nothing
Or will you hand yourself over and let me tear at you
While you intoxicate me with your venom

What will you do when I want you


Nellie Nkosi

Above all logic are your ideals
Beyond reality are your philosophies
Your mind yearns for what is not
Only the surreal is what you see
When will you forsake this guilelessness?

The serpents bite you blatantly
As if the flocculence of the flowers
Did not contrast with their suspicious scales
How are you such a walking tragedy?

Blindside after blindside has been dealt you
And still impending affliction awaits you
Because your feet tread where angels would not dare
The light of wisdom points your way
But you falter sightless in the mystic darkness
That is the cloud of fog wherein your head is suspended

Day dreams of knights armored in shining amour
Riding in to save your battered bleeding heart
Might not unfold my dear
Remember that the knight may be another pillager
And his slick armor just another Trojan horse


Nellie Nkosi