three poems

by MK Kuol

i window-watched gods making love inside cloud-glassed bordellos

after amirah al wassif

a million years ago, i was a feathered fish,

scaling the length of my father’s manhood,

while dreaming of home in a bed

boned with scented shadows.

a million years ago, i screamed vulgarly

until a finned ghost leaped out of my lungs

& lent to a disowned god his steeled voice.

i fancy imagining myself a squared star rinsing off

its wrinkled skin thousands of lightless suns.

a million years ago,

i used to fend for forlorn men who owned

not more than they were born with.

& back then,

i window-watched gods making love

inside cloud-glassed bordellos

edged at each of heaven’s twelve gates.

a million years ago, i was a thousand-mouthed fish

embroidering on the wings of wind

uncompassed maps of unheard-of worlds

this morning, i saw god twerking on tiktok

this morning,

i saw god twerking on tiktok

at his star-eyed concubine’s,

a headless toddler strapped

to his sweaty back with shreds of purple shame;

a toothless comb forked

into his crop-topped, flame-haired head

he was a plain-clothed, plain looking man

with a soul patch bushed with tiny skulls

& a plastic gum teethed with rust-dusted fingers.

off the scene, his star-eyed concubine,

with a rose-scented voice, cooed him

to her side the same way she coos him

to sleep every night. she was hunched

on a velvety sofa arched on the back

of women bent before him―god,

pleading to be unburdened.

he paused the music, pulled from

wind’s pocket a napkin fabric-ed

with shards of unanswered prayers.

sank besides her. pulled out his iphone

to film themselves as they french-kissed.

i charged towards him, snaking through

ranks of black-eyed angels

to where he was seated smoking the blooded bones

of the headless toddler, pulled out my phone

& showed him graphic photographs

of a seven-years old boy

sheltering himself from bombs

behind his parents’ ungraved bones,

his father’s skull for a helmet, in gaza

of a year-old girl, pulled out, unconscious,

from the flood of her mother’s blood in darfur

of other evidences of sins

the bible says he unpardonably detests

flush red with anger, he commanded

a sword-teethed angel to take me away

from his sight, the same way vile villains

do in movies.

the angel caught me by my ankle

& stoned out through the window

to a thorn-carpeted, blood-watered sea.  

see, god is too indulged in his own desires

to care about our own

& if anything, we must pray he forgets not

to awake the sun, his only divine duty

he still does without fail.

i watch my own becoming unbecoming               

everything ceases to be.                      everything!

the sun swallows the moon.    the night rolls the sky

like a prayer mat & strolls into oblivion’s mist

with a clear-cut smile. a vulture perform rituals

before devouring christ’s pus-filled corpse,

says who condemns a sin committed for survival’s sake?

everything ceases to be. everything…

i become the ash of my poems―only survived

by subdued commas―charred in time’s kiln.

a magician, with a penchant for order

parented from chaos, pulls a full-length song

from the eyes of a dead silence.

i river out of an obscure dream

into the open arms of a nightmare.

death calls me by my pet name

with the familiar voice of a girl i once loved.

i think of all those immature ejaculations

that left our relationship in a coma

& erect.

in this stimulated sleep, i am awake.

in this imposed death, i am alive.

a man―

with an eagle’s face―

leads me to the edge

of a river watered with mirrors

& with a muffled voice told me,

to watch my own becoming unbecoming,

to watch time with her hairy fingers unthread my blood vessels;

to watch time with her cottoned-teeth peel off my flesh

to watch time suckling me out of existence like many before me

now lost to time

i watch my own becoming unbecoming

strange as a snake

coiling into its own mouth,

i watch my own becoming unbecoming

with the curiosity of ancient philosophers.

the eagle-faced man shape-shifts into my favourite poet.

bedazzled, i sit at his feet & listen as he unwinds

esoteric poems stuck in wind’s throat.

then he asks me to ask myself

if i have been more than a name?

he asks me to ask myself

if i have made my mother proud

in her unmarked grave?

he asks me to ask myself

if i have been the dream my father

silently prayed i would be?

i try to answer him but i couldn’t

something has swallowed my voice!

i look deep into the mirror,

deep beneath the projected spectacle

of my own becoming’s unbecoming

trying to trace the roots of my becoming’s becoming

in the rubble of lost myths.

see, i trace my becoming

to the very becoming of becoming.

i trace my becoming

to the time before time

i trace my becoming

to the epoch before the unremembered epochs

i trace my becoming to the becoming of waters

i trace my becoming to the becoming of earth

i trace my becoming to the becoming of light

i trace my becoming to the becoming of darkness

i trace my becoming to the becoming of everything there is

i trace my becoming to the becoming of everything yet to be

i am time

i am history

i am the known

i am the unknown

i am the writer

i am the written

i am the moon

i am the sun

i am all above

i am all below

i am everything that is

i am everything that will be

i am the shine of stars

i am the song of birds

i am the depth of seas

i am the width of skies

i am the watched

i am the watcher

& now as i watch my own becoming

unbecoming

in this river watered with mirrors,
i tell myself to tell myself

to be calm well aware

this is how i became when i became

then before time became;

then before histories became;

then before becoming became…

i, mended when broken

i, built when destroyed

i, livened when killed

i, made when unmade…

Photo of MK Kuol

BIO: MK Kuol, a Self-taught South Sudanese poet, was recently shortlisted for A Proper Poetry Pamphlet Competition and The Wanjohi Prize for African Poetry. His work has been featured in Everscribe Magazine, Kalahari Review, ANMLY, Beach Chair and elsewhere. MK Kuol loves dark rooms, coffee, moon-gazing, folk music (Arizona JJ's to be exact) and conspiracies. He tweets (rarely) @mk_kuol14.