DISGRACED, POEM by Sagati Gichoro

Genre: Sad, Angry, Family

DISGRACED
by Sagati Gichoro

He soiled my childhood.
Within this safety of my mother’s walls
He preyed on me, a low hanging fruit
Discolouring my childhood with his ugly, stinking, grey matter

In this single tiny room,
With mum yearning for his embrace with her loud heavy breathing
Thinking that his hardness is directed at her silent mouth,
He takes on me and tears me down like spring chicken; chewing my bones

Now I keep thinking that
My beautiful protruding breasts, like sprouting plantain shoots
Have ploughed a path for familiar squirrels,
Now I remain
A tendril too tender yet
Squeezed between his old tough, cracked lips
A crushed tuber sneaking out of the ground.

I listen to the teacher espouse the beauties of working hard and being something one day,
And I recall how my mother arrogantly nests in thorns, poisonous thorns,
That’s the only thing I remember in today’s lesson for I have already become and the teacher can dream on;
I can almost visualize the god of conjugal greed chortling in his victory as I quiver homewards
To become daughter and wife in a night,
My mum sheathed in layers of cowardice remains deaf to
The cries of her co-wife and daughter, in one piece.
For we both know that she has surrendered me to keep spinning in the eye of a storm,
Allowed my step father to roll his tongue in premature honey until my cheek is dry and cracked
To stop not until no one is left to dance with me when my muscles are strong enough

So when our husband and my father strides in
She avoids my glance
And I know that her shyness yet today
Condemns me to my partial death
As night covers us
It repossesses my innocence and the smell of wasted childhood swarms into my nostrils like a stinking sewer.
So this continues?

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Deadline for POETRY Festival – Get your poem made into a MOVIE and seen by 1000s. Three options to submit:
http://www.wildsound.ca/poetrycontest.html
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http://www.wildsoundfestival.com/april_2015_poetry_readings.html