"amnion" poems
In Parsley, a Levantine munificence accreted together in Tabbouleh,
herbage that covers fractured bedrock in a poultice of healing.
Secreted within, lie igneous outpourings of bloodied tomatoes,
those solid affections that had welled through an ocean floor
as Neptune quelled Gaia's contractions, her waters seeking to burst
beneath the wrinkled surface of a salty sea. She, an underbelly of sky,
pregnant in the overwhelm of magma, sweating out her heart in fire,
muted like a moon of Neptune, in his retrograde soliloquies, yet mirroring
hers in icy resurfacings of skin. The God of the Sea, boils an amnion
to hazy mists, how deep will his trident plunge to dislodge those Trojan ships
of deceptions ? Yet, Triton blows a conch for Gaia, not for man's duelling
and his warring tribes. He soothes her feverish gnashing of thighs
labouring continents. Some fires burn in water, like desultory heartbeats
moving the pace of rocks through the ocean floor, spiriting away
to stranger places still, marking maps of memories in the beauty of
a stillborn magma. The limestone they say is no blood relation to such
alien fructification, those oceanic intruders, bleeding still, spilling
secrets in reds and purples. The acid tears spilled in lemons merely
neutralised in syllables, sedimented to a community of limestone,
that possess no archaic remnants reminiscing through dead bones,
an age of glory. Now beauty lies in herbage over once raucous magma
and traces of a salty sea, freshness of life trailing her veins, in fragrance of Parsley
Jun 24, 2021
Jun 24, 2021 at 7:15 AM UTC
Jou eierbeloftes word
In mooi woordjies
En trane spoortjies
Toegedraai
En ingelyf
In die raadsale
Van my helderheid
En my bekwaamdheid
Oor gesonde redenasie
Uit legio self disintigrasie
Ek bêre dit knus
In my eie kluis
Te midde my huis
Ń yspaleis
As ek dit bewaar
Teen die donker gevaar
Wat dreig uit elke
Oordeelsdag
Wat op al die ponde
en onse wag
Elke "ek het vasgeval in verkeer"
Elke "jou wanvertroue maak my seer"
Elke kode woord
Agter die slot op jou skerm
bly jou sondeval verstoord!!
Jou eierbelofte is ń kuikenmoord!!
Dan hardloop ek terug
En kyk na die dop
Wat my toe snou
As ek dit net stywer toevou
, minweted salmonella
En bylepes
Skuil in die amnion
En wurg die blou driehoek
Op ń voortrekkervlag
Eet ek daarvan sal die dood op my wag
Jou eierbeloftes
Jou akkideskak eer
Jou asyn rein liefde
Sal ek bly trotseer
Vergewe my tranedal
Want blykbaar is
Ek net verlief
Op my eie terugval
Apr 12, 2014
Apr 12, 2014 at 10:26 AM UTC
*And what you'll find is, your highness
Can paint a picture that is vivid enough to cure blindness
- J. Cole, January 28th*
And because they have never before seen a naked soul,
they ask me
if I am being deliberately provocative
with my pen.
And then I paint.
So that they too can undress
that mental amnion that has cocooned them
since birth; which itself became still-born
as it was followed by an undying funeral
of parental expectations.
And then I paint.
So that they too can reclaim
that aborted clay and mould their burial
into gestation, and shatter
their amnion coffins
from the asphyxiating breath of non-existence
to the respiratory lust of Being.
And then I paint.
So that I too can remember
that I am they. A victim
********** into the darkness of lost light,
dreams deferred at birth;
who still focuses his pen on this canvas
to cure his own blindness, to see
and paint his naked soul before me,
which we then call Life.
Jan 7, 2015
Jan 7, 2015 at 10:24 AM UTC
Yesterday, a cloud burst in mythologies
and the rain fidgeted over the retreat
of a tidal pantheon; deities swept away
by a current, and we stood awhile, watching
the moon elbow out the dusk. Breathing
is burdensome when cars float on water
and corpses leak out of cavernous
basements. Every tablet, etched, in the cold
heart of building code was read again
and then again. It wasn't enough to blame
Aeolian whim or the raging riposte of Apollo,
now that we had marvelled away Gaia's
ozone skirt. Her amnion always leaked
in folkloric floods each time she birthed
a parable. She once asked Noah to build
an ark so he could ride her waves
and we scrape the sky to impale her
in shards where her womb is soft and yielding,
as we sour the air and burn the water and strip
her of her emerald sigh and melt her hills
and silt her wetlands. Mostly it was the asphalt
plastering her yearning that calcified her veins
and arteries, as she died slowly under our feet.
We could hardly fathom her sorrow for the tears
rolled off her torso like an oil slick
and rode far into the subway for sewers.
Sep 15, 2021
Sep 15, 2021 at 4:29 PM UTC
Oh yes, but this song is for empathy. For the grasses'
leaves' greens being yellowed. For when winter
says, "Hello": A song as this might add to its start with an opening
chord or two. Oh (yes), but this song is for me: Hello.
A greeting is an affirmation of one thinking thing
to another. I greet stones. Tie them to my feet when
I jump into my own blood. Drown for a bit. Wait
for a response. The stones don't say anything. Flowers
do sometimes, inspiring a heart to do a little lilt
within itself. So much to speak of about flowers: Thick yellow grasses
swirling around like the sounds swirling within a severed ear.
That's a good painting.
But that painting is yellow. Blood is red. Water is
blue, or the sky is
blue, or our minds make them
blue, so where should I jump? Upwards towards the birds
or downwards towards the fish? If human embryos look like fish
then wombs might be oceans, but amnion fluid is yellow: Like
sunflowers. Was Van Gogh a yellow man if he had a gun? And am I
blue because words
sometimes sing?
Dec 28, 2018
Dec 28, 2018 at 11:18 AM UTC
You are black
Your mother is white
You emerge from warmth and safety
Into the cold winds of March
Amnion clings to your coat
Shiny, bubbly
And you struggle to stand
On the soggy field
Searching desperately for milk
Your legs give way
But you stand again
Close against the chill of the cross winds
A cord still connects you
And while your mother grazes
You drink
You are together
United by birth
Life
And this spring afternoon
Mar 29, 2016
Mar 29, 2016 at 8:14 PM UTC
You very nearly arrived in the caul.
When I reached between my thighs
to touch you for the first time
without a barrier of skin, muscle, and water
I felt taut, soft, rubber instead of the
slick velvet I’d come to expect.
It’s supposed to mean things, keeping
your 10 month membranous home around
you as you enter into this world from yours,
bringing your planet to us.
Good omens and seers and a symptom of
sacred luck.
I like to think the way you splashed into
this existence was just as auspicious.
You quietly keeping to yourself until
the very end when the bag ruptured and
poured right before your crown, like
you knew you deserved a headdress or chaplet
of dauntless liquid and warmth.
No jazz hands here, just the crowning
of a soul who decided that the quiet but
relevant ordeal of the amnion was too much
and the rare gush or early trickle of
water was not enough. So instead you
chose the in between:
Kept your foggy sheet wrapped
tightly around your body until the last second
then announced your arrival in a burst.
Bringing you to us, but also claiming
your quiet possession over yourself.
Sep 5, 2013
Sep 5, 2013 at 10:09 PM UTC
I sit betwixt the laughters,
The margins in between,
Moments unnoticed,
Those easily ignored.
Attention is drawn to instance,
But must be dragged to dereliction.
Worming within words woven,
Cowering in the safety of kissed teeth,
Solace secured as someone scrutinises how to silence the silence,
Grateful for the respite.
Squeels from the pit of my stomach,
Causing only echoes back from my tongue,
Trickling crude treacle, trawls south back through my throat,
Finding no refinement, reclaims residence in my centre.
Waiting to rejoin the cycle and another all clear for launch.
Traceless transaction as interactions lapse,
The regenerative amnion of your “awkward silence”,
Perspectives polarised,
Unwittingly burying me in the hole you endeavour to fill,
Unable to comprehend the precipitous crevasse simple shovelling could not plug.
The ever exhausting pantomime,
forcibly cast.
So I take shelter in intermission,
Where no one need pretend,
At peace in my own trenches,
As unpleasant as it seems.
No need to scale the embankments for a fool’s run at no man’s land.
Though still a subterranean prison,
The siren call of Stockholm glistens in the gloom.
My magpie’s eye lays yellow bricks forward,
Through a self destructive syndrome,
Easing the path with each retreat.
Remortgaging contentment,
Time and time again.
Addicted to appeasing that tidal will: subconscious.
Welcome the bailiffs later,
To collect debts of regret,
Postponed event horizons,
When I’ve no injunctions left.
If only absence bellowed as loud as laughter.
You would hear me.
Apr 11, 2019
Apr 11, 2019 at 4:48 AM UTC