Life don’t always smell like roses,
and I’ve been going through the motions of life.
Life don’t always smell like roses,
and I’ve been going through the motions of life.

Thank God
that my father didn’t leave an abyss in my torso
to nest and grow and stretch
a wormhole eating me within.
Void inside from the lack of his figure.
The way my nature was nurtured
helps me relate to a person through verbal cursive.
The way I project reflects my father.
Yeah.
We’re the Lord’s masculine.

Thank God
that the ink ain’t smudging
from my teardrops dropping on a eulogy.
Washing all the verbs, nouns,
pronouns, and adjectives.
Looking for an antonym to synonym of ‘tragic’.
Grief makes the first language foreign.
All this grief got perception foggy.
Like
“What’s the point of a speech for a coffin?
Yours truly, bereaved lover”.

Thank God
that my sis ain’t got leukaemia
with me at her side,
pretending she ain’t rotting.
IV drip drop drip,
but it’s all in vain.
I’ll be breaking all those wish-list promises.
Lies through the teeth.
“It ain’t if, it’s when”.
Acting like she has a chance to push the end.
Making her believe she will outlive me,
knowing damn well she’ll be buried by elders.

Thank God
my tears ain’t dropping on the grass
six feet above my wife and my daughter.
Feeling survivor guilty
‘cause my bride never made it to a mother.
Cries in the wind of the newborn absence.
Whispers of birthday wishes and first steps.
Two-for-one special on the agony.
Lose one, let one free.
Catch deep double jeopardy.
Tragedy.

Life don’t always smell like roses,
and I’ve been going through the motions of life.
Life don’t always smell like roses,
and I’ve been going through the motions of life.

Thank God
I ain’t bothering my girl who’s at work
to go home and sign for my package
‘cause I’m sitting in the barbershop
and the barber been taking his time on a taper.
So I’m on the phone line pushing and pleading.
She gets in the car
speeding through streets
and rights and lefts
and yellows and reds
and bends
and hits little boy.
Manslaughter.

Thank God
I ain’t staring at the ceiling,
grieving my son.
My uprooted seedling was fetching his ball.
Why I got him into sports?
I thought I told him,
“Look both sides before you cross”.
My fault.
Why I had to be the cool parent?
My fault.
Why did I spare the rod?
No alcohol percent kills the proof in my thoughts.
I spoiled my boy,
now he rots as a corpse.

Thank God
I ain’t watching my spouse
with a blank stare at the table during dinner.
Infidelity’s the tip of the iceberg.
There’s a secret I’m keeping that I’ll leave with.
Yeah.
They found the body of my lover
hanging from a rope.
They didn’t find a note.
Since then,
my heart beats in fragments.
Now a voice is nails on a board.
When my spouse yaps,
I wanna switch their places.
Only wish is to switch their places.
I know it’s wrong,
and I’m ashamed of hatred.
But the hearts wanted what the hearts lusted.
Seething.
I can’t scream in the open.
Keeping.
I can’t grieve in the open.
Sneaking forever.
The adulterer forsaken.
Who would empathise?

Thank God
I ain’t weeping at an ultrasound screen,
not hearing “Beep. beep”.
This is now tradition.
It’s the fourth time.
Another unborn.
This is torture.
I wonder why this is repetitive.
What might be the medicine?
What might need the medicine?
What is the infirmity?
What’s the reason?
What’s the essence of the lesson?
Where’s the reason?
Where’s the essence of the lesson?
Last time,
we said we’d try again.
And now we cry again.
It hurts when she blames her uterus.
The carrier be feeling like the executioner.
I’m running out of ways
to get surrender through to her.
She wants to put her womb to use,
but our kids go from there to the tomb.
Maybe she ain’t destined to be called ‘Momma’.
I can’t let her take another dose of this trauma.

Life don’t always smell like roses,
and I’ve been going through the motions of life.
Life don’t always smell like roses,
and I’ve been going through the motions of life.

Thank God
I ain’t a 12 year old
scavenging the rubble for some food,
feeling grateful for crumbs.
Bombs been dropping.
Bombs over parks.
Bombs over playgrounds.
Bombs over schoolyards.
Bombs!
Smoke all around,
it’s a prevalent aroma.
Smoke all around.
What’s the point of our hopes up?
What is joy but an extinct emotion?
It was burnt for the smoke in my nostrils.
sniff
Dust.
Debris.
Engulfed
in
ashes,
dust,
debris.
Pilots just eviscerate everybody.
Population torched.
I don’t have friends,
I have bones.
Skeletons.
sniff
Smells so flagrant.
All directions only tell us there’s no way out
sniff
Left.
Right.
Forward.
Behind.
Look up in the sky.
Repeat has a--

Thank God
I ain’t shaking and shivering,
sweating in a field
with beads mixed with blood from the open scars.
With flesh peaking out at the hot sun.
Getting whipped,
picking cotton.
Us villagers turn into cargo.
The plantation’s where we all go in chains.
Scrubbing our heritage, washing our brains.
Massa puts hooks in the culture
and pulls and tugs
language from tongues,
melodies from drums.
Our happiness is hunted.
Smile and they kill it.
They see a piece of my tradition and snip it.
Culture crooks put their language on my tongue.
Pulled the culture out my DNA.
POV
getting scrambled and rearranged.
They killed it.
They snipped all the cargo from the village.

Life don’t always smell like roses,
and I’ve been going through the motions of life.
Life don’t always smell like roses,
and I’ve been going through the motions of life.