-


The ballad of pain

The ballad of pain, I sing with a heavy heart and a light tongue. My heart is weak, how can I carry the burned of love? My tongue has grown weary and my feet bruised and blistered. What is this pain that the essence of sage cannot rub away? If I had a means I would run and leave everything behind, but how can you run away from your own shadow? My soul is beyond salvation and redemption. My pain is beyond herbs and essences. Why didn’t they who had love never told me how hard it was to lose it? Why didn’t they warn me to keep away from it? All I have now is daydreams filled with teeth and nightmares draped in soft pillows. Kill me softly, I pray, but I am a goner anyway aren’t I? I am lost to the world and my senses, waiting to explode when the end comes calling. I thought I was a hero out to save her soul but I lost mine instead. Why can’t I love my tears of acid? Let them burn my eyes away so I cannot see the sun rise tomorrow. Let my heart break, nay shatter so I can pour ash all over me and mourn like a young maid widowed on wedding day. Save me not from my fiery furnaces of guilt and blame, for I do not want to feel the soothing relief of waking up to her wispy touch. Why should you stop me from singing my ballad of pain? Why shouldn’t I sing my ballad of pain?
Why am I reaching out for what now seems so distant? The half moon has never been this far. Thirst parches my shrivelling throat and the sun hits my scalp harder but who am I to quit? Who am I to leave when the pain has just begun? Let me revel in it because it is all I know at the moment. Let me roll myself in it because it is the only emotion that cares how well I am doing, that cares about how I am faring on. Let meekness be my weakness and rudeness my strength. Let silence be my enemy and loud ranting my friend, because who begs for sanity when insanity is consolation enough? Who begs for sanity when it is filled with memories of bitter words and actions? Let me drink from the cup of bitterness and taste from the giant chalice of falsehood and pain. Let me smart from the sting of the hornets and the bites of the tsetse. Let me swim, let me frolic in the rivers of the past, drift off to a place where I don’t know, maybe distance will make the heart too fond for comfort. For who am I without love? I am just but a lump of soil, crumbling in the rain and cracking in the sun, a writer without a text, a herder without a herd. The heart is willing but the flesh is weak, but isn’t being weak my strength right now? Pain will win in the end, so let me sing the ballad of pain, and play the instruments of anguish, dance the dance of sorrow, for what is better than dying, crumbling inside just to be numb to the pain outside?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

-
If we must die If we must die, let it not be like cows in the slaughter, walking willingly into the bloodbaths, too meek to resist and too trusting to argue. Let us die like buffaloes in a lion chase or ants in a midday march. Let us die like termites in search of freedom in a hostile world. If we must die, let it not be like birds caught in storm or a deer by a hunter’s spear. Let it not be like foxes caught in traps or flies landing on fire. If we must die, let our death not be told to those with faint hearts and loud wails. Let it not be known by those women who know not to keep their mouth shut. Let it not be told to those frail and on the brink lest they tilt over. If we must die, let the news be hushed and kept silent. Let everyone be told that we refused to be vanquished, that the flame refused to be extinguished. Let them be told that it is not graves but a mound full of seeds and flowers. Lord, if we must die, let us waft out into your presence like sacred incense. Send a ch...
Read more
-
Where did you go? I am a walking carcass hoping for a wind strong enough to carry me away, a rain harsh enough to dissolve me into a lump of soil. If I could erase all these memories and go back to the days before I met you, I would. But how sad that I roll in torture during the night and burn during the day. Tell me, old friend, you who made me feel special and important, where did the wind take you? Should I cry for time that conspired against us or should I let you shoulder the burden? I have been reduced into a mess of tears and regret. I have lost my trust and my confidence, come to me, you who gave me strength and take me with you. Tell me I was dreaming and tuck me back to sleep. Smother me with the pillow so I will not wake from this, for what is life, when she that I adored and loved in equal measure walked out on me? Look at me now as I wade knee deep in mud and slime, look at me as I stretch my hands to take you back but oh how far away you are. Come messiah, before...
Read more
-
I see in the news everyday children in tattered clothes walking the streets of Somalia, Burundi and even South Sudan. They look at cameras with their yellow jaundiced eyes, all a picture of pain, hunger and sorrow. And yet we choose either not to care or ignore their plea. Fat men and fat women sit on their tables heaped with food they don’t even eat with the television to keep them company yet, back in those countries, men lay dead in the fields, women walk around forlorn and forsaken. We see a child running up and down screaming and crying looking for their parents among a pile of bodies. We just sigh and change the station, and that is just about it. I see men with mucus in their noses and shuffling with sticks due to their amputated legs, their eyes etched into the distance, hope a very foreign word for them. We claim that Africa is held together by bonds of brotherhood. Which brotherhood or Africa for that matter are we talking about? I see a continent operating on whims of...
Read more