Testaments of a Seed: Poems by Siben Gerard
TESTAMENT OF A SEED
Wrestling in the dark
Wrestling with the death
Wrestling with these barracks made of stone
My destination islight Shooting everything in my way
I must return love and life to those who offered me death
Gestating with hundreds and thousands of babies in me:
Progeny of my intercourse with the rock.
IN A STATE OF DYSTOPIA
There violent vivisectionist of the plant's embryo:
The de-distancing project between the cradle
And the grave is perennial;
Every ambulance is a taxi solely
Heading for the world beyond, seasonally
Intercepted by the doctor’s paraphernalia.
Knives for the hecatomb are chemical,
Siren lights beam into divided marrows;
Those lights they say are sent by the gods of the
Deepest Nadir in acknowledgment of the sacrifice,
Like the pursued antelope they pounce not into
The permanency of heaven
But into an ephemeral haven boarded by seconds.
Al Jamhuriah, Falstin and Haifa
Close their doors to limping hope as
A contagion of a million spasms march through
The tunnel of a bone:
The porosity of faces is caused by the pelting pour of tears
But on the other side of the banner
The grimace is glaciered by the ascendance of
The Stars and Stripes.
Tomes in charge of history
Surprisingly inform us that the
Seeds of cataclysm lye not in the
Fold of human force: Tigris and Euphrates
They say will continue to squirm themselves
Towards the Sun’s glorious landing
As the crawling denizens of Baghdad go on with their construction.
THE RAINBOW IN THE SOUTH
A huge zebra has been wounded: it bleeds away its consciousness
The fallen angels have risen
The standing seven evaporates in the face of the sun
Black and white, like oil and water make concrete their differences
The dog’s vomit is served on a plate of acerbic aridity
Black lives are of utmost importance to the colourless capitalist
Corrugated lives placed in corrugated houses; square pecks in square holes
Floods of unmeasured altruism meander through townships
As Biko weeps not for justice but to be read comprehensively
Once more, the indiscriminate generosity of fertility continues to assure
The growth of all plants: including the wild weed:
Love has been caught in-between hunger and the grave: monsters of parsimony
With promise extending its stay in the womb: with hopes of making it its home.
MISS SIMONE
A black and wounded bear howling melodiously
In the whiteness of snow
Corking and labeling the travesties of a certain behavioral climate
Murdering her pain with gongs from the dark
A devoted member to the parish of catharsis
Beauty who could only talk by crying
With the scent of a rose, her soul embraced life again
By occurrence she chose to punch out her music from
A series of rectangular bars, re-echoing racial harmony
A fearless lantern, standing bright in the face of America’s darkest hours.
RESURRECTION
A re-composition of the carcass,
A journey through days and nights in the footsteps of Jonah,
To arrive at the surreal, reality must drilled to its core,
The dead of a man: the dead of a seed: the rise of mankind,
Anchoring the pillars of a faith,
Love must die to achieve its whole,
The hope of eternity sprouts from a tomb,
With the speed of putrefaction: the regeneration of an eagle’s wings
Activated by divine jangling.
