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Africa: 1860
she had listened
to talk of acqusitions and mergers,
fashions and the foibles of others:
lesser mortals who dared to live
a little out of their means,
and how the servant girl had fumbled
and so on and so on.
the arrogance,
the obdurate coldness of heart
all the long long impossibly heated day..and the gin and tonics
finally got to her,
it had been two years
and she could not stand their talk. Their attitudes -
they had driven the roof of her patience down untill it was crushing the breath out of her
allowing no in breath
along with her stays giving her pain
and the ridiculous hat,
designed to keep her skin transluscent,
which now kept falling
ridiculously
over her eyes.
the sweat, her mounting anger,
the screaming of her blood in the heat,
all urged her drunkenly forth:
drunk but very clear...she poured
and poured all the shocking truth out
and out that had been waiting
in ferment in her poisoned gut,
her eyes swivelling around to
direct each glaring tirade into
each shock opened mouth,
into each petty,complacent heart.
she lurched away
into the dust and haze
grasping the silly hat in one hand,
the bane
of her tangling dress
in the other.
further down the road and out of sight
she stopped to tear the restrictive hem
of her pink and white icing dress,
tear off her shoes,
and throw her hat far far away.
the fragrant african night found her dancing
around their fire
called by their drums
into her trance
where she flew amongst the trees
and featured in their troubled dreams
laughing at them
with fire shadowed, sweat streaked face
nightmarishly free,
nightmarishly right.
the fragrant african morn found her curled,
quiet as a nautilus shell
half buried after the tide's abandonment,
in sand
while meaning lapped in wave after wave after wave at her feet.
unpublished mother of two in hippy alternative town amusing herself with poetry
tanya-cherie
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