It's been a long journey, this

Moving endlessly

In circles

Leaving no visible footprints

Watching bridges melt before my eyes

I had learnt to swim

And swam across rainbow rivers

At the first border

Palpable fear surfaced

The beat of my heart too loud

Too fast

Sweat pumping out

Once across I became another person

Split between time

A before and a then

A stranger in a land of bright colours

Undulating mountains

A language that expressed itself with

The slowness of eternal leisure

I became a stranger-who-felt-at-home

I learnt the language and to laugh

In the music of the river

Winds heralding

An inversion of power came blowing

I was in there in the throng,

Adding my voice to

The Get Out Movement

I dreamt dreams of a life of free wrists and ankles

Unchained voices becoming a chain

Of resonant meaning

In that lustrous land of winter sunshine

Cries and machine-gun-fire

Ricochet..chet..et..t…

Starting to torment us

Echoes of cries within our eardrums

Bursts of hurt feelings in our hearts

Streams of rumbling blood that tug at us

To cross the border once more forever to do or die

Bruised

Hunted

Pursued

By bullets

And sniffer dogs

Because of this

I was no longer the stranger that-felt-at-home

Because my host

Was visited by cold fear brought by hot winds

From across the border

I understood the fear, embraced discretion to

Become at home

Up North I crossed borders

Chose the darkest spots in unknown lands

Occasionally travelling in circles crossing a border

Thrice in an attempt to breathe free

Once I met the Makonde who had traded

Mallets and chisels for AK47s

They carried me on their backs

Across another border

Once more I became Mukimbisi, a stranger

This time it was said without malice

Instantly I was-at-home

I carved with the Makonde

Heard the Shetani spirit sing in myriad voices

A tourist, a Nixon-look-a-like demanded

An authentic carving full of wild spirits

When he was told about these spirits

He changed his mind and asked for a ‘different spirit’

An old sculptor asked him to come the following

Week and his spirit will be ready

The spirit came in a carving of a man whose mouth was open

His tongue a snake with a forked tongue

Whose body traversed the body of the man

Its tail emerged as a giant phallus

The Nixon look-a-like loved it