GUEST POST: THE STRANGE ECHOES (A POEM )

Hi, it’s Saturday and again, (as it has been for the past two Saturdays and the next) this is a guest post by Mthulisi Ndlovu aka King KG.

Today he blessed us with a poem he co-authored with one Lenet Beden of Kenya. The piece is a metaphorical expressions and explorations of the African spirituality and beliefs.

Here goes:

I hear these strange echoes,
Mummified gibberish tones taunting my soul.
Horrors of the heydays chanting ‘heys’,
Whistling winds blowing the sail,
through a dark hole headed for the bittersweet hives.
“Chin up and face your demons” i am told,
This fear; tuning me to hiss-and-tell.
‘Gentlemen don’t kiss and tell’, they say.
I am crawling enchanted by these strange echoes,
Mulling in fear I am seeing hell.

The echoing silences of the gloomy nights,
Squeezing the juice dry out of my guts-bowl.
Scared to death, my ancestors must be yearning for another visit.
Joyous gongs and ululations from afar,
Gasping for breath,
as my heart is galloping helter-skelter.
Mama, is this a sign?

For this is an inevitable divination!
A sweat breaking hell loose,
and spiraling down my goosebumped skin,
like a stream from a bubbling spring.
A shiver emanates from my appendages,
descends down the height of my stance
and resonates to the tip of my head follicles.
My feet freeze numb,
so I wobble to the steel structure- throne of premonition.

As I slump on my desk,
krik krik! The furniture squeaks
and breaks to a wild dance, with no drummer,
parallel to the slithering of my quill on paper.
It’s only a fortnight back
when my ancestors rumbled,
like a wind roaming the sea
with a message of abomination.
So, tonight,
I spit the revelations of a lone poet,
whose demons travel in the night,
marinated by these strange echoes.

©️Copyright 2020