CASSIOPEIA AT MIDNIGHT

N.L.SHOMPOLE

Copyright
© 2013 N. L. Shompole

All
rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-0615903729

ISBN-10: 061590372X

Also by N.L. Shompole

Twelve Names for
December

Heaven Water Blood

love,

CONTENTS

It is your tenderness that haunts me

When
my bones crack they whisper your name,

I
lost my hearing before you were born.

Prometheus

I want to remember,

how
the end felt like chewing a mouth full of burning coals

and
the beginning sparked as if you stole fire from the sun and
buried it at my core

I want to pour your face on paper, take it out of my head, and
take you down from the pedestal my body erected for you

I want to make my skin forget how to prickle when you walk
into a room

or
the way my name sounded in your mouth

I want to forget all my secrets,

that
I am addicted to the fire in your eyes

November

I dreamt of cities with walls covered in gold,

gates
the color of the sea in mid-November gleaming in the sun

Cities with walls covered with handprints and Gods name in
ten thousand languages

where
mothers name their children after silent prayers,

 
“
mungu
akubariki
”

 
“
no
other god is greater than my God”

 
“May the light of the
Lord shine on
you
”

When the sun rises it turns the eastern wall ablaze

silent
prayers catch fire,
 
millions
of dreams are consumed leaving spirits wandering among silence ridden bodies
that once belonged to dreamers

When the sun sets each shredded dream finds its wailing owner
with aging bones sinking into stone beds that may as well be tombs for the living.

If I were to pull those words, stretch them into lines, place
sentences on paper, they would wrap around and spell your name backwards and
forwards and inside and out
So the darkness is a blessing even though I
don't need eyes to know the shape of the letters that spell your name nor do I
need ears to know the sound of your name whispered, strung along shamelessly at
midday

I only write in the darkness, when my mouth is brave enough
to say your name.

You watched me give birth to five stars on a Sunday, named
for each corner of my heart.
How can you not believe that each time you broke
my heart a black hole formed inside me?

How many midnights has my soul counted?

Whispering between breaths as my bones listen for the sound
of your name

My heart counts darkness and the spaces between it.

Without the rhythm of your heart,  

mine
has forgotten how to
beat.

The
Fast

On a Tuesday morning

I burned candles,
and flowers

I burned pictures with faces I
once knew

I burned words laced with silent
prayers

wishes
that
were too heavy for a heart to bear

I burned a future with you.

Carnivore

The words to describe you are stuck between my teeth and no
amount of picking would get you out.

Now that the air
is cold between us

my
mouth wants to keep the last of you to itself.

Ivory

If you let them
they will start with the silence, rob the meaning of your words as they leave
your lips.

When
all that is gone they will pry open your mouth, pull out your tongue in
search of the secret to the light behind your eyes

They
will mine the glow from your skin and make strings of diamonds to wear around
their necks at Sunday dinner

The
ivory of your bones will make rings worn on fingers counted like the age of a
tree that was chopped down before your mother was born.

Names
of things

Tell
your heart its coldness makes my teeth ache,

and
my eyes burn with unshed tears.

Tell
your eyes to stop calling my name,

 
my
heart responds
every time