Old pots burn slow
and worn hearts have no glow.
I’ve had too much hurt and strain
To bear pain again.
Old pots are coated with soot
and hearts grow to be as dark.
Love is no longer the heart’s root,
It’s like a fire that lost its spark.
Old pots can’t hold water
And hearts see nothing to seek after
The pots slowly lose all they hold
And hearts lose all they behold.
Old pots have no use
And hearts, no power to muse;
They mope around tattered and torn with heads aground
And the pots, battered and worn, grimly bound.
Old pots carry many stories
And hearts are very wise
Old pots are where most flies flock,
and hearts are where ships must dock.
The Voice is trying to speak,
Listen closely, do you hear?
Too much noise inside your ear,
Yet the message is very near.
It cries, melancholy is her song,
Who can see her tears.
The cost of her pain is dear,
It has been suppressed many a year.
It whispers in the wind,
I listen in my mind.
It’s a voice that none can bind;
That only the blind see.
It talks in the rain,
But no being is taking it in.
The calm words raindrops carry,
Get buried deep in natures green.
It shouts, it thunders, it storms!
the few understand, the many misunderestimate.
‘Care for me and keep me from harm!’
Is the first cause to which man is bound!
August 2001
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She lay in his embrace, moaning a maternal pain, tossing her arms and working her legs. With his lips he swallowed her
tears and soothed her face; this was her husband. She held his thumb, so surely a bystander would have
thought he was her giver of life. He soothed her hand with fingers from his other hand whose thumb was not held. His
eyes guarded about and his eyelids kept blinking; this was her father.
‘Hold yourself, Moya,’ implored Yiddi her father, ‘our flight is far from its destination. The blaring and clanking are
done in pursuit of us. Death sees us clearer as we are tighter engulfed.’
‘Painful, Pa-Yiddi. My tummy will erupt,’ groaned Damoya.
‘Naught shall erupt in you, sweet child.’
‘Something shall. Tiny, many blades slice me within. I’ll drop soon and die.’
‘You shan’t, Moya, its merely a sensation of maternity.’
She groaned her loudest of the night, tucking her belly and kicking her legs. She fretted in his embrace, which made
him as fretful, her husband.
‘It’s aggravated,’ communed her spousal Zowdor with his in-law.
‘Let me handle her,’ Yiddi communed back, picking and folding her into his own embrace. ‘Relax, Zowdor, fret less.
We did it once on foreign soil and we’ll …’
‘Forgive me, Pa-Yiddi?’ she went on a wailing spree. ‘My
willful disposition has left you in grave agony.’
144 § Gabby Ozems
‘You are blameless, my child.’
She stretched her hand to Zowdor.
‘Hush, sweet Moya,’ implored Zowdor, caressing her hand.
‘Forgive me, Zowdor?’ wailed she.
‘Hush,’ both men implored.
Damoya rocked her legs off the embrace and they formed a slant on the ground. She spun her bust, swaying her waist
and sinking her head downward till the whole of her lay flat on the ground. The men each tried to offer assistance, but
she crawled backwards, swerving them in all their efforts.
‘Go away,’ she implored. ‘I’ll be the snare of you. Here, I’ll end my journey.’
‘We won’t abandon you,’ returned Zowdor, caressing her temple.
‘You need help, Moya,’ Yiddi entreated.
With docile faces and affectionate gestures, she was beckoned to calm, which beckoning she succumbed to, and
while her violence jumped to calm the men heaved, their faces elated. Suddenly, she tucked her tummy and wailed
and gnashed.
‘It’s crumpling my stomach,’ she said.
‘What is?’ queried the men.
‘The baby, it’s swimming down. I feel slippery inside. It swims. Believe me!’
‘We do. We do,’ assured the men.
‘She may be due?’ Yiddi whispered to Zowdor.
‘But she’s only as pregnant as seven moons?’ Zowdor rejoined.
Wails Damoya, ‘My soul is slithering out of my skin!’
Yells Yiddi, ‘Let’s lay her in comfort.’
It was happening on a street on whose flanks lay two warped footpaths. Thus, seeking to lay their daughter and
wife on comfortable ground, the father and husband
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Florence Nduku arrived at Immaculate Angel Salon five minutes after nine. Vexed that it was not nine on the dot, she hissed lewd expletives at the cause of her delay - her husband. She drove into the reserved parking space, allowing her car to roll forward until it came to rest on top of the pavement. In so doing she parked too close to the entrance, so close in fact that she left only a tiny space for pedestrians to squeeze into the salon. Even she was not spared, the car edged an inch when she wedged her way around it, her huge buttocks compressed against the wall while her enormous thighs buckled the bonnet of the Peugeot 404, causing the car to bounce up and down as she passed. Her three employees, waiting for her outside, ogled in amusement, exchanging knowing glances. She glared at them ominously, daring them to speak. Silence.
They’d learnt the moods of their boss. Maybe the fried egg was crumpled that morning, they didn't know that it had burned. If they had known, they'd probably have asked the day off.
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