Phillis Wheatley Chapter

Darkography

I walked into a forest

Of many colours

And found myself in Satan’s world

And there's a voodoo priestess,

playing hopscotch

between the yard of a charcoal seller

And an avocado tree

Under silver moon,

and in a trance,

she played monopoly

with a variety of flying camels

Just a mile ahead

there stood a temple

watched-over by a crawling soul,

to whom many swore eternal affection

Through tempest and whirlwinds

I tasted bile and granite

I sighed

I went on

Beyond the temple

a crook of ravens

who seem to suffer from bulimia nervosa

were hovering

and preying on

what looks like a goldfish

While on the carcass,

they looked very much paranoid –

watching their backs in mistrust,

as if I was a scarecrow

But I turned eastward

And an unknown spirit met me
where I paused

He shook my hand

We communed in arithmetic

He gave me what belongs to Caesar

The rest, he blew into thin air

Sleepwalking

As shadows trespass
on the foetus of the sky

to sprout forth the moon,

We step on seaweed and sand dunes,

off the tidemark.

And wallow in the Mediterranean Sea,

transformed!

We cheer and smile

And the waves of our smile

beam at the celestial lights.

We are the Mediterranean
And the Mediterranean is us

In our utopian errands,
we wield some majestic force

– we flow; smooth, crystal, long and wide.

And all along,
we see the pillars and arches of Venice.

And compare, in our drowsy psyche

– that, they had sprung up overnight
like Cape flora.

We are the Mediterranean

And the Mediterranean is us

Sensual, yet so soon

we walk back our regal persona

against the roller-coasting role,

beyond the eyes of the shore.

And at a wink...

we are still a mite of mildewed brooks

scattered on a green land.

We aren’t the Mediterranean And the Mediterranean isn’t us