When death will detract my soul from my corpse
Nothing shall I bring with me
Truly nothing will I bring with me
From across lashes and abreast irises,
subsequent tears shall do the dripping
Like that heavy rain that pelt ‘pon the bitumen of a road
And those who truly loved me,
palpebral shall not withhold the tears
They will not need to freeze their gaze
To redden their eyes when they will hear I’ve deceased.

My death will be a narration
Narrating that man for years
can be a feather aviating in the sky
But slowly & surely it will descend to the nadir
For no one really knew I was already at death’ door
While I was living. For every time
I repudiated breath from nostrils while I respired,
from that point in time I died for zeptoseconds
And resurrected every time I grasped back the gasp
But when this play is soon over
And that breath is gone for good in the wind
My enemies who portray themselves
As chums will cry and mourn
Cause they’ll have no food
To nurture their hatred and hypocrisy.

Dirges will be sang by the Greek women of Mani,
cause them they are true mourners
They mourn with devotion – Sincerity
Though they never knew me.
For rather be mourned by those who never knew you
than those who will just cry or remember
because they will no account to eat on.

When death hauls me away
An elegy will be written ‘pon my memorial stone
Stating “here lays a man who has paid
His debt to death, the creditor”
Cause death will indeed come
To collect with interest a debt that
Couldn’t be paid in a lifetime
When death comes, it comes
To reap what is ripe and what is unripe
For when we were in pact with life at maternity
We are with a debt that we can never pay for
until we lay back our bodies on the pyre of the tomb
like a coat hanged back in its wardrobe!

The dust, he that is also a creditor
The soil that made me,
Tell him he can come and take back his material
That has made me vulnerable before sin
I no longer need it, it made me a reproach to light
Unworthy to what’s worthy,
Unholy to what’s holy
With a shadow of obscurity,
That always stood beside it
Whenever I intruded the premises of light

When death hauls me away
Like the whirlwind that embarks
The dead leaves of Autumn to an infinite journey
Bury me with my poetry chapbooks
Bury me with the pen, I wrote them with
For he was faithful to truth
He never shivered when truth decreed its oracles
He was never an objector when I criticized
The mephistophelean deeds of the white man
Even he knows the white man is his maker
His ink never derailed
How many of my brothers objected
when I declared I dissent their bullying?

But if you see a raven elating in the skies
Fling him a stone
For he will be flying in the air with elation,
cause he will be ready to peck my flesh.
The grass at least they will have a soil
To pullulate upon
Place not a coin in my dead eyes like the Greek
Lest my soul brings along a dime of vanity
The trees and rivers, I believe they will asphyxiate
Because their poet has surely died
So here is my thanatos when death hauls me away

Cremate my corpse lest the tomb still encloses
My sins, adulteries, lies, treacheries, felony
Actus reus’ and men’s rea’
Let not the graveyard remember my chronicles
for I was once a man bearing
the weakness of the flesh,
so surely there’ll be a reproach of sin
but when death hauls me away
may Purgatory acquiesce me
In his jury though I know I’m a nugatory!

 

 

Photo by Matt Moloney on Unsplash