अ पोएट'स MIMESIS

A POET’S MIMESIS:


Magnification

I was a small bit of blood in my mother’s heart and womb
I was not larger than a cherry plum but look at me now
I was born a poem.

Perpetual genesis

I can form a composite of genetic suggestions of me.
I can form a new kind of mimesis----,
I can form a poet’s something else sloughing away from me---,
which could have been something.
I can form a sum of all the things that I might have been.

Biological invention

Only faint vague shapes, which were once human,
remain on this collapsed foaming greyness.
A bit of red streaked bone, bones holding the form of checks and brows-
Very poor material to shape a new poem.

The sun of understanding

I am the middle of my own poem looking inwards because I know where it is that I live
I am the middle of my own poem looking in ways no inner eye,
no inner voice cannot see and cannot say.
I am the middle of my own poem looking in ways I cannot share.

Now I am this

The only thing that I truly understand is that I know who I am
and what I was, for once I was a child----, and now I am this.
And all the rest has been lost in shadows of memories, hidden,
all gone away.

I believe

There is no ceiling over me but only an open sky so full of changes.
And my moistures are channelled into this sky.
This sky is now an opposing synchrony that threatens me with turmoil

I am a mirror image

But the outlines of me are still there because I have always diverged.
I have never had concurrent points but echoes of bones and joints.
See my shapes, see my curves, and see my insides-
For I am shinning through your eyes.

My Mortal immortality

I have denied myself form so that I would remain formless,
hiding but not finding myself.
My life is now dominated by mystical caprices-
that relentlessly consigns me to a speculative realm.

The scattering

But I still have a connection here
if can only find my scattered bits before others have found them.
But I would let them scatter, run and hide anywhere.
Even in a poem of their own choice.

The choices

Let them, but I did not let them,
because I know that they would carry with them the seeds of their own survival.
that would make it impossible for me to find their centre:
Not to forgive.
And I am always fighting against this tide:
Never to forgive.

The time of the stomach

In the time of the stomach the words of my own poem precipitates
into crises unanticipated.
Maybe that’s always the way it should be.
But I always carry with me water when I leave the universe
of my poem-
because out there, there are just some few dewdrops
hanging on damp Acacia- leaves.
Each always a promise of pain.

Destiny

To the east, waits Nyanga Mountain and to the west there is Nyangombe River.
But one foot ahead of another I have always moved as I have.
Not trying to match anyone because I have my own destination.

Perseverance

A plodding perseverance would deliver me-
Thus I would create my own supernatural.
and sensing it at every turn by the sheer power of my own will.

I am a poem

I am a poem, a slanting shadow, a thin rope,
a crumbling bulge!
I am a poem, a tiny lip of rock---, here
And another over there, there.

And when this poem is not long enough then it is not long enough-
and any other way of thinking is not as long as this poem is long.

Climbing the mountain

I am a particle defying gravity, a finger-hold here---, a toehold there----,
clinging to the rock surface.
I have known what it is to be a poem with various, momentous meanings-
Look at me now!

The world of no birds

In a world without birds I have always invented my own poem-
to link one piece of time to another and when I have passed,
I would never be the same poem again.

The world of birds

And In a world of birds everything that I am drops into a no sound,
and I have created a common catastrophe that binds the decorations of my poem together.

Decorations, what are?

Decorations, are how we prepare for our own sacrifices.
Decorations, are how we refuse to reject,
and regret for what cannot be.

They are the decorations in all the poet’s poems,
and all their imitations but they fail to stitch together the essences of a tomorrow.
And all our inventions fail to fuel this tomorrow’s diesel engines.

I was born a poem

But life has made me whole yet I was born a poem-
like a mirror of my own life striking a river.
I would never die the way I came,
Plunging into the mystical and dreams of termination, no!

I was born poetical

And between the usual poem and the unusual poem there is very little space
for my own poem to be immortal.
And it is always poetical to thank yourself for this little space.

My dream, the collective I

A dream inhabited by glimpses of silver-edged things in water-
shimmering in their greying colours like trout,
Igniting an ancient memory of silver-flesh dazzling my appetite,
in a banquets of the uninitiated hungry.

My soul

A spangle of shattered flesh
attempting a butterfly design,
my soul, my poem---
Digesting its own experiences.
Not answers, not questions,
for it is time for conjectures.

The language of If

“If I had only----- “
It is only fools who prefer living in the past or even the present
‘If we can only---“
Immerse ourselves among these fools,
their past and this present.
In a time of pure alternation.

The present and the past

Unless if you are trapped you can’t built your future out of your present---,
a present which is not even existing.
But as if it were rows on rows of eyes with senses lost,
like eyes of a gasping fish squirming in pain.
It is a future furrowed in this present and the past.

I was there

I know-
I was there---, at the instant that has left you.
I want to assure you that it is forever out of your reach.
And that there is no substitute of this instant and time,
Time as an alienating device.

There is no time

There is no time---,
just a little bit of time to shape the edges of the weather-
which always have square meanings that stoutly refuses arrangement.


The patterns

These patterns, this poem in my mind,
conducting the waves downwind.
And the wind of the south hungering for empty spaces.
The wind’s fingers sifting through the clouds---,
driving dark clouds toward me.

Judgement day

That the cloud-darkness of holly judgement might appear?
Silence threatening hearing, and anything-
And everything else is possible.
For it is not silent in my mind and nothing tells you apart from me.
If you were me you would run too.

orientations

ORIENTATIONS


We are these cells, this soul, this being.

We are the choice of our own awakening.

We are light that pours through the generations.

Innocent little children dancing to the rain song,

For a season of green to atone for our wrongs.



We are a hunter caught in his own snares.

We are a tidal wave in a sea of broken dreams.

We are flickering whimsy - a breath’s laughter.

The sacrificial dove, the hooting owl, the forlorn falcon

“O, those surreptitious angels in their sweet anger!”

Muttering of dreams lost, deep in our own silences.



We are haunts cries in the aftermaths of battle.

We are fine theatre made out of lost relics.

We are a spider’s webs, a tender weave of time.

Over here the wind blows, over there a story told!



We are dry leaves in this intricate whispering.

Augmenting to a morning of silent conversations.

We are this pen conversing to these sentences.

Lighting the threshold to that wordless portent

And if we turn, what do we see, a river or a shiver?



Or had we bitten more dreams than we could chew,

And we are now waiting for someone who never comes?