Epiphany: A Poem from My Manuscript "Black Pathology"

You came from nowhere
at the night of a thousand gods
when in frustration of deserted Muses
I sat under my bed's dust
and wrung my inkless pen
around a naive housefly's hands
and invited him to play
I was eager to write
on a plain white paper
to fill my heavens
with countless palm trees

In eagerness of lost lambs
and talking drums
I pulled up the drawbridge
and opened the doorway
to my heart's hideaway
and there beyond a gossamer of fossil veil
shrouded in a mystery
of an eight-legged eight-eyed spider
was your vanished face
carved from the lonely river
speaking to me
to the depths of my heart's spirit
to the lengths of my mind's soul
drawing from the unctuous well...
There you stood
with bright eyes burning blue--
the lost lamb in lonely wanderings
wearing the scratches of countless foxes
yet you stood still
with your withering soul
cast in a shell of shamelessness
your drooping eyes piercing the wells of my mind
scooping to the last atom
the contents of my lost soul
searching and finding it
that which I sold to a devil two long ago nights
because you were not there to save me

Beyond the space between
you stood...
...standing still
...stooping low
...shaking wild
perching on the space within
covering the space beneath my empty mind
hollow as an undeveloped coconut
yet filled with your thoughts
like a brooding bird
or a hibernating snake
coiled over and over a million fold
and in its ramblings and entanglements
spat your black marble face to the surface
of the choked flotsam of my mind's wreckage

My empty mind, eager to fill...
The space beneath
The space within
The space between
shut the double door
(that ancient door)
to my ancestral home
and clasped you between the sheets of my petals
opening and widening...
widening and closing...
as a hungry butterfly with atrophied proboscis

Roaming within the walls
you were trapped
but still the gossamer covers your face
that vacant face of fear and death
sucking me into you
and in oneness of time and space
The space beneath..
The space within...
The space between...
dissolved into nothingness
and you lived in me
and I in you
and there you were no more
for I was there
and there I was no more
for you were there...
and like forever we hovered on the air above...

copyright 2006 by Nana Fredua-Agyeman

Comments

  1. and like forever you and she hovered in the air above. I like that.

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  2. Your report is very interesting indeed.
    Best wishes from an Estonian living in Italy!
    http://www.pillandia.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Pilland. I would definitely pass by your blog.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Truly exceptional and fascinating poems (and blog, my God, I'm just sinking my teeth into) you've got here, Nana. Thanks, btw, for recently following me through Bostonbibliophile. I've just done likewise with yours. I'm afraid my knowledge of African Lit. is ridiculously negligible and predictable, though I suspect in time, as I ransack these premises of yours, my knowledge to swiftly swell.

    Very best to you and your continued writing and poetry,

    Brent (a.k.a., "Enrique")

    ReplyDelete
  5. @Enrique: thanks. that's why ImageNations is here: to promote African lit on the net. It is the least I can do rather than asking why and complaining.

    I hope to continue writing...

    ReplyDelete
  6. I ended up here, don't know how, searching for inspiring quotes about theatre, but i felt this urge to let you know that i'd read your poems. They are...simply put: amazing!.
    A comment from Buenos Aires, Argentina. :)

    ReplyDelete

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