Sleep

 

Sleep

a tsetse fly
drinks its next meal

amazing shrieks
the sun, newborn crying,
is sky ilk

under
a maze of feathery canopy;
the Bandundu forest,
gives birth to a
litter of bananas-

grass covered savannahs,
stubborn windblown maize
yearningly sways
to the river, where

water walking fish farmer
casts a drowsy eye
on a school of tilapia
playing in his bamboo den;

a kihuta viper opens
its razor mouth
and belly,
fresh meat
wafting through
endless horizon;

while decadent sockets,
hanging by swollen neck,
sway
as he is carried to the garden.

Burial grounds
burn slowly
like an old antelope
pulses, waiting to slip
into its last coma,

palm stem walls blanketing
the mind's catacombs
while your planted carcass watches
a tsetse fly
drink its next meal.