A Poem from the Dying

You know I wanted to be there
To hold you if you walk down the aisle
To hug you on your graduation
To play with the child you may never have
I for sure wanted to be there

I wanted to be there my daughter
To reassure you if your husband cheats
To tell you it is fine to date other women
I wanted to be there for you
If nothing else
To be a father
Your father

I watch you watch me
Blankly you blink
Lashes lightly touching
You afraid of closing them
Just in case you dont find me here
Once your eyes open

You know I wanted to stay
Just a little longer for you my daughter
But this pain will win me soon
And  I hope you will be gone
When they push me away in a trolley
Aluminium trolleys that have many before me ferried
Your mother, sister, uncle and a thousand strangers

I hope you do not see me lie there
cold, grey and vulnerable
I wish you dont see them cover my face
With this green sheet on which I lie
As if suffocating me to ensure I never rise
If I cant be there for you now
Daughter I do not want you there then

Perhaps if your mother was there
May be if your granny still lived
Or if your aunts really cared
I would not go so painfully
I wish someone would teach you
About menstruation
How girls get pregnant
For I worry about you
Even on my deathbed

Goodbye daughter
I leave broken, ashamed and weak
If you had grown a little more
I would have told you how I got here
But I will let you be the child you are
And when you grow up I know they will tell you
Dont carry my shame and agony
Let the world  afford you love

Down the Street

You walk the street for the first time
There has been an uncovered empty hole for years
You just did not know where it was
Until you fall into the hole
Its emptiness becoming yours

You walk the street once again
There has been an uncovered empty hole for years
You know where it has been and still is
Again you fall into the hole
Its emptiness doubling yours

You walk the street again and again
There has been an uncovered empty hole for years
You know the depth of its emptiness
Again deeper you fall into the hole
Its emptiness hurting yours

You walk the street once again and again
There has been an uncovered empty hole for years
You pretend you do not know its emptiness
But you still fall into the hole
Its emptiness swallowing yours

You walk the street again, again and again
There has been an uncovered empty hole for years
You acknowledge its emptiness
And push yourself to fall into the hole
Its emptiness embracing yours

You walk the street again, again, again and again
There has been an uncovered empty hole for years
You look at its emptiness
And decide to walk around the hole
Its emptiness staring at yours

Wishing you took another street
Smiling
Crying
Running
Aping
Wanting
Admitting
Acknowledging
Your emptiness
You are lost
But the voices keep yelling
Telling your emptiness
To pull itself together

Prickly Pears are not in Season

My grandfather loves calling me names
names with no particular meaning
of no particular origin
he calls me to make him tea
with the milk he didn't bring
to fetch him drinking water
even after the long drought
a drought that seems to move wells further
every
year

My grandfather loves to call me
to bring him a half burnt piece of wood
to light his equally half burnt tobacco
and often his half burnt index finger
a half burnt piece of wood
that he hit my grandmother with
on Sunday morning
burning her only church dress

My grandfather has been calling me often
to scratch his back for he has taken ill lately
there are so many of us but he calls me
not because he loves me I bet
like all my cousins he enjoys the bullying
but I will scratch his back today
may be for the last time
my fingers smell of death
a mixture of sweat and Vicks rub

My grandfather has stopped calling me
In fact for twenty years now
In this silence I learn he loved me
may be only now in his grave
he might have loved me one day
like when he gave me a male chicken
well more like lent me his chicken
bribing me to keep a secret from grandma
for a few days we shared a secret
i was the special granddaughter
until i found the chicken feathers
behind his little farm house
my grandfather ate my cock

And I have erased all bad memories of him
and wish he could give me something else
steal it secretly and lie it was hit by a matatu
and the only memories of him are those of war
the Sunday morning wars with grandma
the end-of-month wars with mum
my uncles
my aunts
his demands for his share of their salaries
wars he fought for other people's causes
for reasons he didnt know

BURMA, K.A.R, M.I.A, WWII, Germans

And in Burma he forgot his brains
came home with a lie about his brother
the Albino brother he lied to us was German
and these fucking prickly pears
that have stolen a half my grandma's garden
and things keep happening in halves
in my family
a half portions of food
a half told stories of fathers
a half schizophrenic aunts
a half religious uncles
and Woolies has the guts
to tell me their prickly pears
are so expensive now because
prickly pears are out of season! GASP