A name is the way to riot,

pressed between algae-patched walls

limpid water streaking down ancestral tress

where delphinium has wilted like winter into autumn.

Body takes the colour of that wall,

dilapidated in English sentences,

cysts blooming in a perfect dark
and ready to ovulate,

unfertile soil fiddling skyscape into tender feathery silhouettes, lathered at their hems with glass splinters.

A name is the day I remember I was good

and undressed with such briskness.

When I taste things such as redemption where there isn’t,

I fear that when the giver of name calls me mine,

I would have gone into many places

treaded in silence.

’tis a name tha ’tis a query.



"My poem "Carrier of Names" explores the voice of a black man in the places ridden by silence, the struggles to hear his own name and not be marvelled by it."