Nightwalking Listen to how a bird flees flutters above pole lines & grey ash sweeps air into leaves listen for the easy flight of the moon trailing stars finding home all walking is angry motion & aimless escape on moonless nights l walk out half blind pack up my body and thrust it out to a river someplace I’ve never breathed imagine Heaven mostly water and steady drift imagine all houses aren’t prisons pinned by light & my body an orbit of shadow I don’t feel foreign & swallowed & carved out as spectacle for fractured country walking like this all these nights the trees have learnt to bow joy or not & root out whatever guts me in the mornings face half-rinsed of tiredness day rolling out like a dirty white carpet everything stiff everything familiar
Poem In each future l love my son hard enough to peel off skin, take fishing boats out into measured sunlight; red and orange on wood, auburn on water; teach him the patience of loving a thing. It’s been rain for days now; white sheet and lonely boys chewed by cold. All the men I’ve known do not care for water; its shimmer and truth, how a naked man is more naked crouched by a red hole he dug by the riverside. I’ll admit; I’ve not been held enough times. When a girl touches me, it’s all fissures and lost skin; grey craters. For once, walk me past the easy rituals of love; apples cut on white kitchen counters; tea boiled in dull silver pots; my white ash dandruff brushed off my shoulders. Somebody set me alight. Somebody pick me up like the child l always was, punch holes inside of me, fill them with light.
Grace Somewhere, a man breaks out of his own Grace, like a doe burning out of a forest; Lays his father’s body by the silver side Of a river, both of them graceless. In The silence between laying the body And tearing out the night sky a blanket For the cold, the man pulls silver beads Out of his father’s mouth. All the decay The son has mouthed becomes paper fire Dancing in the night air; meaningless. The star studded river washes lice out The father’s hair, rinses off dried Blood until the father is all lightness You can touch; lighthouse. The father Is beautiful, at last. At last, the mountains They’ve carved in their fleeing become Stepping stones to God.
Poem There are ways to let life be light, but life is a spear arched above a sky, finds its mark. I clean each wound without complaint, fold tourniquets, stand in bathrooms tall enough to walk out straight, but life is life. I hold a body curved against my own ruin and still hold enough ash to hold fire, hold distance. Some things will come back to bite me and some will split me and some will fold me into fake warmth, white skulls, cause life is life. There are ways to let life be fun, but life is an ancestor spit hard from the sky, finds its grief fast enough to not leave. I pay amends for bodies l never touched, step inside without mud, but life is life. Life is
About the Author
Farai Chaka is a writer from Harare, Zimbabwe. He enjoys long walks and sitcoms.
Isele Magazine 