Pull it out of the teeth, the everlasting sigh of a dolphin escorting the sun into the cup of the horizon. Drink my lips for the music that it promises . Sitting on that rocking chair, my grandfather's unknowable face. The facade of night stretch taut across the afternoon of another continent. I feel the need to board a boat, stowaway in the bowels of a sorrowful botswain.
There's hunger in the pot & the room stinks of sauced leavings, cockroaches & poverty. It is written in their faces as they shamble about in their hobbled dreams, downcast eyes counting the distance between hell & water. The river of sweat flows into the bed & dies there.
My grandfather's children are mirages now, they exist on the edge of sight, waiting to be called into being through libation & kolanuts, cockerel dying choke & pounded yam marinated in a soup as tight as a cask of beer. When they begin to weep the slow tears of the weary, I'm dry eyes, owl eyed, waiting for sleep & food, sex uncleanly done behind the eyes of my mother's concrete face.
The tides wander about the beach searching for footprints to steal & there, a blunt in tow, I drink the water of the universe, try really hard to remember why the stars continue to survive beyond death, beyond the fire in their brain. The night coalesces into mist, the myth of creation encountering the very real degeneration of created. I kiss the stones, toss them into the river for luck. I dare to toss one into the eternal hunger of the maw carrying the grandfather I never knew but my many uncles wild with grief are there.
Wake me like a bird in the best, a nestling worm in your break, the sour taste of yesterday lingering in the kiss. Sweet mercy is not what I will get. The drugs in my veins take chances on my liver & kidneys & I pray to any god that will listen.
There on the counter, near the chipped flower vase, where the sun fingers the warm surface of several empty mugs, my lover thumbs through her skin for lice, seeking to understand why her skin does not fit her soul. I stumble into her mystery like a Mungo Park. I almost name her but she replies: I knew my name long before you came. Gods I must be too drunk to suspect that this river drowns. Her eyes are dark with fire & her lips are full of old wind. She prophesies even as grandfather lowers his frail presence into the earth; a child will born a child & each will find its door locked to salvation.
The burning was swift & when my grandfather had exited his tired body, it was my job to gather the crime & give it a name for the press. I am the namer of names, the one sitting between two different paths. They will come at night with peace offerings & promises of death. It is the way of the cruel. I wait for the darkness to shudder. I name it dangerous with teeth & claws, an angry bear tired of running.
The blood was a dream spattered on the rug & I swear grandfather just arriving at his newest abode chortled in glee. They fled, the carrion eaters & the women too. I was alone until morning swept into my room & on my bed, the urn carrying the voice of my singular ancestor shone brighter than burnished bronze & I loved him as much as I loved myself until I started with the razor blades.
The truth is there's no one to love me as much as I want to be loved. Kiss me, pleasant wind. This is better than nothing. I am breathing into the tube, the mirror is naked with my body on it. My ribs play the slow monologue & the nurses are happy to see my white smile. I have curses for all of them.
When the night comes I dream of long ago. I dream into the past, change that parallel universe of possibilities & in there, I am not my grandfather's grandson. I am ultimate, something unfettered, freer than the wind, Wilder than the horizon, greater than all the galaxies. I drop the blunt on the sand, rub the bit into the wet sand.
In the compound where too many people like me survive with lies, I find my grandfather & his pipe smoking each other drily. How is the dream? He knows. He knows. I nod & sit by his feet. He wears his gnarled body like a royal robe & i, undefeated in my misery suffer his gnarled bones to claim my scalp for his fondling.
Tonight, I say to myself. Tonight , the gods will be merciful & take me away.