Green Flash

She said meet me on the shoal
Where the red moonlight lingers
Where hot wind whispers on the boles
Bright waters glowing with green flash
She led me down to the banks of Mbini
She said my friend you’re so cold and dead
She wrapped me in her silence and then began to sing
While the shadows fell on my riverbed

We’ll lean on the soft machines
And make up rhymes to the sun
And drink tea over maps of islands
And drop foreign coins in fountains

The dust of spirits
Hums low malaguenas
Of painted landscape
Of broken circle
I’ve many questions
For the boatmen
Who haunt the shoreline
Of el Rio Bonito
I woke at dawn to the rattle of rain
When the mist draped over the thick yellow river
She caressed my skin with the music of whispers
We descended to the banks and knelt in the eddies

I said I can’t open my eyes
I said I’m hot and river blind
I’ve lain through this echoing evening
In dim purgatorial musings

Onchocerciasis
A swarm of insects
A backlit canvas
Of dancing shadow
I feel the light falling on swollen arms
The purging of springtime’s network of rivers
I feel the soft gasp of memory’s fading
Licking my wounds with her sweet muddy tongue

The locusts buzz and hum
I murmur that all is darkness
I’ve lost the streets and the cities
The bending hills of forgotten islands
I dream of Coriolanus
The doomed march of rotten heroes
I dream of airports and slums
The slow lap of waves on a rowboat