Eve is tempted

Honey voiced sooth sayer
Speaks like seraphim do
Curling itself amongst branches,
Undulating body throughout leaves
And amongst stars slips its tongue
Into her ear as she sleeps
Making her itch for something,
Making her miss what she does not know.

Apples           Apples             Apples
She dreams of her fingers lacing around
Red shiny skin,
Her teeth picking at its' flesh

Apples

They haunt her, and a snake
Calls her to its branched haven
And her tongue is at a loss
To voice what she does not know.

The almost sibling

An almost brother,
Or maybe sister,
Perches at the edge
Staring down
Searching for me,
An unknown brother
Save for short peeks
Between clouds,
And wonders of the almost life,
The almost love,
They could have found
Amongst us.
But the love was taut
Barely enough
For us to be sustained.
I’ve heard mom speak to you,
While clutching herself,
Asking for forgiveness
For taking your almost body out
Before a body could be.
I hope you know,
Crouched there watching,
Though I never met you
Or knew your almost self
I still love you.

Eve awakens

Cushioned by a garden
Her lungs took breath,
Opened up and expanded
To air,
Unfolding she stretched
Outside of herself
Felt dirt, grass, flowers,
Silent on their names.
She let her fingers
Reach down, and she shuddered,
A gasping of breath,
Let her hands run up
To her lips,
Forcing them open,
And whispered
Eve.

A History 
 
As I watch a bead of sweat 
Swim down the outline of your spine
I wonder of the stories it holds
And the history it knows and I never will,
Who else has made you sweat like this?
Who else have you laid beside you, 
And over you, and locked in your arms?
How many have held you like this,
And how many more will come after?
How long will you hold my essence
In your lungs, and let my smell linger 
In your pillowcase and bedsheets? 

After these feelings come to pass
Like seasons do, swelling like tides
From this to that, will you think of me
As I do of you? Will I be more 
Than just beads of sweat collecting
At the nape, treading down your back?
You see, your name leaves through my lips
Familiarly, like they were made to whisper it.
Maybe it's not insane to let emotions rest
On my tongue and leap off my lips
Like I have let them do in front of you.

Will I be more than an abandoned name,  
Or is this all that this will amount to,
This final moment of desperation, 
Of drops dancing down my shadow
Marked so finely against your back?  
My fingers slowly  blending them 
Into your shoulder blades, drying up the past
And absorbing the possibility of this, of us,
Burying the future into your pores
With my eager, hasty fingertips.

You are marble mouthed.
I used to curl my ear
Around your lips,
Conched in, to hear
The delicate manner
In which you spoke of me.
You coddled my name
On your tongue, separate
From the others held in there,
Pressed tight against the cushion
Of your cheek, so that
I'd never have to find them.

Sharpeville, 21 March 1960
"The native mentality does not allow them
to gather for a peaceful demonstration.
For them to gather means violence."
- Lieutenant Colonel Pienaar

1.
We went with wrists ready
For metal shackles
To clench
Their cold grip
Onto fire hot skin
Boiling with white rage;
The appropriate rage.

This situation has justification
In the predications they hold true
Where to some
Human is synonymous with
******* nature,
Dangerous and hungry for
Light white blood we
Must be caged
To prevent the massacre
We could create.


2.
A child’s body is not a hurdle.
But when fleeing,
Feet pounding on dirt paths,
Black with dark blood, leaking
From shafts of taunting revolvers
And throats of the permanently
Silenced,
What do you do but run?

5,000 bodies bound together,
Melding flesh with flesh,
Fusing unhinged bones to bones
Still cradled in their skin,
Line the street where
Puddles are forming next to
Concaved skulls emptied
By misinformed bullets.

Last thoughts and worries
Are forever splattered on faces,
Tracing red lines
On skin
Sooty black,
As dark as nights will be.

3.
Sixty-nine lay dead.

A rock they said.
When interrogations
Took place
A rock they said.
Empty hands laid
Palm in palm
But a rock they said,

This, they said, sparked
The worry
That made it right for them
To make bullets fall
Onto us like metal raindrops
From an angry heaven
Hungry for black skin
And black blood.

Hands digging into earth
For retaliation,
For blood they said,
But everyone else said,
The rock that flew
Was in hands white as light
As bright as the day was
They say.

If the rocks they said that,
Spurned uniformed egos,
Flew from ground,
To air,
To gunned men like they said,
Does it justify the dead?

Coddling the past
“I am accused of tending to the past”

How can I lift my hands
To reach forward
If I cannot learn
To let the past run through me,
Gnash it’s teeth
And bite me
And fight me
Until I can make it succumb.
Don’t urge me to forget her
Cause she will slumber
Until she is hungry
Enough to leap out
And ******.