Bomblues

The Hotazel Review publishes my poem Bomblues in volume 3 of the journal, 2024.

Griet van der Meuien (South Africa)

let the buleador bull

eloquence

batter the night

the beat the drums

like innocence's a bastard

getting pounded on nighttime

radio talk shows

where people age with grief

in a wrinkled country

left to smell of camphor

and menthol senility

manspreading quicksilver sultry yet

steep

as the depth of withered faces

collapsed by doctrines

-expired due date shock

a slimmer view of paradise's lost in economies

the lacklustre times sunk hard

in the skin inglorious

teeth of hunger lost lands

delighted bomba

in the production

of time and oblivion

in sounds

of blues brambles barb-wiring the heart

on the loss of those who blacked out and melted

in infinity

and those who merely leave a country

that once tasted sweet as baked potato yams

spread the syrup of night licks

pigments from our skin milled in the trapiches

poems are harvested out of the loneliness

into cauldrons of light and anger and pain

Original post in the Hotazel Review.