Days

Days are soldiers guarding us to hell

in these cities where boys

crave to kiss the face of death

love is a mystery 

only understood by death.

We’ve taught death 

to define love for us

The same way light asks darkness 

to prove it’s virtues.

At funerals our songs carry so much love.

We keep wasting love in these dirges we twirl

into air. Days are soldiers 

guarding us to hell

in these cities

where death teaches a child to love his mother

And love  teaches a girl to die everyday.

Days are soldiers

guarding

us to hell.
© Elizabeth Semende🌼

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Woman,

nomatter how inseparable the sea is 

never break yourself 

trying to catch it’s droplets.

Let this teach you 

How to wait for the tide

and break into it.

That is how you grab your water.

Wait,

Some men are different.

🌼

© Elizabeth Semende🌼

Learning to make homes

In these places where women come to die

My mother’s words take turns to hit my ears:

“When you find a man, carve a home beneath his pride and

 learn to make homes from nothing.”
Then I screamed: Mother this is not my home!

This is not a home!

It carries the weight of a man’s pride 

the same way  corpses carry the weight of tombstones​

In silence.

Mother did not listen.
She too found a home 

In these places where nothing remains 

but a swarm of men urinating on the flame of our souls 

She said: that is how we make homes out of nothing

By carrying the weight of a man’s pride

In silence.

© Elizabeth Semende

Of Home

In the game of Truth or Dare 

I asked a friend about his country of origin

he frowned and said:

Where blood parade the streets 

And the air, a home for the stench of faeces.

I remembered​ my home 

And how my mother would say: 

People like us seek peace in ways 

that resemble men seeking cities 

without mad-men.

© Elizabeth Semende