Dubai Days manuscript

Honeydew



14th Dec 18


There must be more to you than this.

These manacles are a mistake and remiss.



You’ve shed yesteryear and care now for other
tenses
Where you see the poison ivy despite your
honeydew lenses.









This is a detail from a painting by the Nigerian
abstract expressionist artist Yusuf Seidu Okus.

To learn more about his exhibitions and to purchase
his work, please visit
http://artbyyusufokus.blogspot.com/







How to Hold a Human


th
29 Jul 18


The blind intrepidness of insouciant youth

Blinkers reality and makes for brave fools.

Bored of paradise, hell starts to look seductive



I have come to detest everything that I once adored

And those I once loved, I now abhor.
I no longer care if I’m what you wanted me to be.

Your sacred cows are my burning effigies.

















I Acknowledge My Ruin



26th Nov 18


I acknowledge my ruin.

My empire, built with broken back,

Has slowly dwindled to crumbling remnants.

My face is withered

And by body bloated

And distended with greed
And lethargy.

My fortress has been laid bare,

My lot has been plundered

And my fortune squandered

By the perdition of others.

I acknowledge my ruin.













I Drink to Forget but it Reminds Me




Apr 17




I only drink to forget

The blood let,


But it only reminds me

Of the boy I once was


And the shadow I later became.

All the faces and names


Come rushing back

As the vodka flushes the cheeks redolent


And the teeth clench and hands grip

and you let your senses slip

In the hope of forgetting everything.



I Speak the Truth to Me



Apr 18


I speak the truth to me.

What you have to lose

Was never worth having.

That half of that moon

That you don't see,

Cannot be missed.
You reminisced

About your past,

But your part

In the sludge and slurry

Is in no hurry

To be remembered

By posterity.

















I Was a Stranger and You Did Not Take Me In


Jun 18


The mother of exiles

Was executed today.

The tired and poor,
The homeless, the tempest tossed

Are now forever lost.


A small child

With terrified eyes
Bawls

As she watches

Her mother being body searched,
Her brothers being caged

And her father hauled off
In handcuffs.



Wrenching images
Speak the words

That fail us



When
Man's inhumanity to man

Is made flesh.


The huddled masses

Come over the river

And Lady Liberty
Welcomes the weary

As bleary-eyed refugees
Are incarcerated

At border patrol.


A nation howls with horror.

Another horror of horrors.
A heart of darkness.

A moral crisis.

A shameful chapter.


Rafts of people
Under cloudless night skies

Wonder into their doom

Looking for boon



In the land of the free.


Alternative facts are offered

To justify
The atrocities.

The brutality

Of hurt people
Hurting people.

Immemorial



19th Nov 18


Stone Age temples

Where strange symbols

Sit silent.

Religion

Becomes significant

And what was previously deemed myth,
Is dragged now as tangible fact

Into startling light.

The cosmic wheels turn

In God’s pocket watch.

Burn them.

The fire is cool.

It will protect your prophets.
Brahma of the Hindus,

Aba Ra Him of the Egyptians,

And Ibrahim of the Jews and Christendom,