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CHARIOT
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I
believe in the Sky
I believe in the power of time
I am what my mother dreamt
in the chariot of her mind.
My father named me Naima
(the one...who is victorious)
The one…who is praying.
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Naima Bint
Harith
Jesus,
are you lonely without
me?
Every since I came to this country
I have wanted to die.
I cannot find any dolphin to dream
about.
For here...the words of the children
are never children's words.
I am taller than the people here.
I am darker than everyone.
I am not beautiful in the songs they sing.
I am not Mohammed here.
This is a wedding cake, this country.
Stale and dusty.
No veil on my face, no Arab locust,
no husband to enslave me.
No one cuts my vagina here--I am not
accused of witchcraft here.
I am not naked on my dolphin here. There
is no Nile river here.
I have no mother (water) to bleed in.
There is no Blood...over here.
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*The
poems on this page appear in Kola Boof's classic collection Nile
River Woman and are available in the United States.
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BLACK
BEAUTY'S TOTEM
I
wish to find the swell
of constant waters
…and the death of the locust night
I wish to find the anguished heart
of the blue blackened earthquake
and lay my minkish head against his
armoured chest
To bless him with full, swollen lips
and behold his darkened portholes
drinking my softened flesh…oh, but yes
I wish to die as spirits then…
droplets
lost and swishing forever
deep within my purple folds
sweet
like birth and no regret |
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Beautiful
Ones
Conformity itself is an axed black limb
Yellow
Brown
butterschotch nut
Mahogany
roo
If the song doesn’t come to me
I don’t sing it.
I cook for anybody who feeds me.
And on the Nile River, some of us
are whores.
Not because it’s fun, but because
it used to be a religion.
It used to be a religion
to be virginal, to be naked, to be
“The Sacred One”
chosen to take the dicks
So that the other girls could someday
be the sacrifices given over to
the thing called love – the Volcano,
the Sea, the Pit.
Mother’s fat love, ashy fat asses blessing
the watching eye of the one eyed snake.
0 sacrifice.
The burning pit of his stomach,
the lava of sperm
drowning African girls
beneath gargling, lung fulls of blue sky,
drowning.
Sweet burning flesh, crackling bones of
the Gut
smoking fire.
And back then, that was considered
beautiful
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I
Can Die
I can die with you.
Everything I love.
I can leave.
I can give up on rain
and breezy sensuous seas.
I can yield to a burning sun
--my flesh naked as the
wrinkled withering
of veils.
I can go without evening.
Everything I love.
I can die.
Like moonlight creeping into lavender.
I can wear anything beautiful.
Once.
For you. |
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There
Is Slavery In Sudan
The lonely war imprisons even the sun.
Licking at the scrotum of an Un-Godly Imam.
Charcoal children chained to the back doors of
Arab households.
Charcoal children fed like prison stock
from doggy bowls.
The lonely war bestills all Gods.
But I am the future. I am love.
I am that future of my open scalp's freedom.
Traveling.
I fear not Satan
nor his brothers, nor his religion.
Selling Sudan.
Dinka girl...raped and sold for fourteen dollars.
Nuer fathers gunned down in the marketplace.
Shilluk mothers, tongues removed, sent to Palestine.
To be slaves.
Lost boys...living it up in the Pet cream of America. |
KING
OF THE SUN
God is a Black man, but his sons
are half
devil
For this we named it war.
We...who still know the names.
We...who memorize the faces.
We...the inward floors of the womb--where lives
the garden of time.
buk:
protect my son
let there be the Nile
let there be my blood
let my cattle bare him goodness
from Sun and Sky
I chant down father's birds
protect my son
Stand him up!
Stand him up!
that he and his brothers Unite
So that Kush rises from Anuk
and my breasts feed these kings
In her name
Our mother, the Goddess Sudan
Her Black face
both Sun and blood of All Man.
*Kola Boof wrote this poem to honor the SPLA....Deng Ajak...Dr.
John Garang...Kurbino Kwanyn...Ngachigak Ngachiluk...Arok Thon
Arok...Dr. Riek Machar...Yusuf Kowah Mekki...Nhial Deng Nhial...Daniel
Awet Akot...MAGEBA. With love, Kola Boof dedicates this poem
to each of them.
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All poems are
reprinted with permission of author Kola Boof. Any use of said
poems without permission of Kola Boof's copyright are prohibited
by law.
For more poems
by Kola Boof visit here
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Chariot
page prepared by Nafisa
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