So, here on my arms are marks,
Marks I have made,
With blades of my inverse self
For messing up my body
For making my temple a living sacrifice to my demons
That here is my testament, that I may confess,
That I stood on a bridge of dilemma
For the demons of darkness,
Cut out my heart
Right out from my mouth
With my blood tasting like corroded iron
And the taste lingers on my tongue and soul for years
That when I smile, I want to frown inside
When I laugh, deep inside I want to cry
Deep inside,
I want to burn myself,
Turn to ashes
Die and be free
For ashes are not dead men
But bodies, flying in freedom.

                                                             KEMBA MARK.
                                                                 2017.

arrows find rest in pillows of flesh
and pain casts a symphony of loss
– the song sung sweetly,
his word whispered gently in the bark of a tree.
great things have been taken: i’ve given for thee
three gifts of water, pious sacrament
kisses between two damp palms.

devotion breaks soil and holds resolve
and how it loves, and loves, and loves
– pebbles mirror a blanket of stars,
the impenetrable mass of fiery constants
you chew, swallow, receive with haste.
feet sink heavy in the holy mire
breath lies hiding in the roots of a willow.

when i die, i don't want a funeral.

i want a celebration of my life.
i want someone to plant a tree in my honor,
or name a new star after me.
my death should be conveyed through a form of life,
not through my body sitting and rotting in a wooden box
as people shuffle past me and pray monotonously.  
i don't want everyone i knew
to come and mourn my departure together,
comforting each other, wishing i'd had more time on earth.
i don't want people to tell their children at the funeral,
"you don't need to see her if you don't want to."

i want to be cremated, but not just sit in a jar over a fireplace.
i want my ashes spread all across the world.
i want my ashes to reach places that i could not when i was alive.
i want to be sprinkled over a volcano and dashed over the aegean sea.
i want my heart to be in egypt and turkey,
my arms to be in paris and new york,
my lungs to be in haiti,
my spine to be in greece,
my legs to be in antarctica.

i want to travel even when i no longer can.
i want my death to be the extension of my life.

-m. j. g.

Years later
Bathsheba's psychiatrist
Was analysing the tryst
Between King David
And her.


It was no tryst
Said she.
What a slur.
He was a ******
And an opportunist.


An amoeba would concur
Said the psychiatrist
That a shower screen
And being more demure
Would have been
Quite spiritually enterprising.


You cannot expect
Kind David to desist
From objectifying your femurs
And a cracking pair of amethysts.


Don't treat me
Like some calculating
Hormone Exchange Unit
You sexist misogynist.


You are not fit
To analyse me.


You say your name's Freud
But you're wholly devoid
Of any insight
Of what is amiss
Or my troubles might be.


Not one piece of grit
Have you put in my oyster.
You obsequious churl
I'm a girl you don't mess with.


I could have you hung.


But instead she dismissed him
and booked an appointment
With a certain professor
Who went by the name of
Carl Gustav Jung.