I am alarmed at the alienness of each morning.
after a rude awakening called ‘home’,
a location for so long unknown
knives the characters in the script of my dreams,
and silently exits the scene
after its double-shift of planting screams.
On such mornings,
it is as if the side of the bed that life slides over,
has a permanent blind side
and that as it swings its disinterested thighs,
it accidentally meets with a child’s toe on its way down,
and that child’s scream is the largest vase
with one’s last tangible breath held inside
and that if it crashes and breaks to pieces,
whoever hears it will catch the secret
that you were not alive all this time
and that the porcelain dreams television primed for the willing
were really made from the clay of our banished skins
and that both of us, the absent and the remembered,
have long been dismembered,
and that we have long been wrapped up for our winters
inside a big, bold coat of lies.
Also by this poet:
Mbonisi Zikhali comes from Makokoba, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He is a spoken-word artist, story-teller, youth mentor and grassroots community organizer. His stage name is Zomkhonto, which happens to be his bloodline’s totem. He is currently based in Canada.