#ThursPoetry: Aubrey Sandile Manna Ncube – Sirens

#ThursPoetry is back this week, in partnership with our friends at Gourd of Consciousness, for brand new Zimbabwean original poems.

Aubrey Sandile Manna Ncube (29) is a filmmaker, author and poet, who writes short stories and poetry often. His literature works have been published online. He currently lives and works in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. His poem ‘Sirens’ came out tops in the Gourd of Consciousness National Poetry Writing Competition under the theme ‘addiction and recovery’.

Title: Sirens

Ambulance sirens
Dominate the cold November night.
I am sleeping in corners.
Eating my own salad of pills.
Attenuated women start walking
Inside walls,
Looking at me.
As I scratch myself, like bugs inside my veins.
Who is close to the grave?
My mother asks.
I don’t even remember her house
In the nooks of the township.
It could be me in another life.
All along, I have been drifting.
In those days, when I used to walk to meet trouble.
But came back alive.
I am exposed and Lonely
Hiding in smoke and powder.
Cold rooms have become my companions.
Hoping that some new type of high
Will carry me to where I belong.
Breathing darkness, home of my imaginations.
Mother’s prayers, I hear them like sirens.
I look at the broken glasses on the floor.
Shattered mirrors of my mother’s once beautiful display.
Blurry reflection.
I don’t remember her soft face.
Like I don’t know myself.
But how can I tell them?
I am also part of the darkness.
The lurking violence.
My screaming mind.
Seeking embrace even in cold streets.
Even those silent corridors,
Of days of drifting.
Serving a god of chaos
Having conversations with nightmares.
So I have decided to run away from home again.
They will find me again
In the tall trees.
Mother’s tears recede in my tears.
The ambulance sirens are knocking.
I finally wake up
As Peace remains in my memories only.
In a cold stretcher tonight.
Will I die or live to see another day?