Nick Makoha's poetic eye bulges out of this debut collection and refuses to be blinked away. The images line up like skittles but fall with the grace of leaves. Extract: from The Light The city clings like skin to the back of me,/ like summer sweat, my oils mixing/ with the humidity of the night./ Sleep the language I am speaking,/ every move mimicking death./ My body leaves a signature/ in the sheets. I rise; my feet touch the carpet’s canvas/ cooling me slightly. The window spilling moonlight/ into the room. Artificial light born from the TV mimics/ the light of the sky. Voices like my vision, blurred./ My hands snakes to the remote to mute the sound/ that brought me to sleep and in this moment awakens me.
Interesting themes... A kind of style and expression that provokes thoughtfulness, asks you to sit a while and savour it, to listen."Not this morning," I'll say. "Sorry. There are things I need to go and do now." I'll come back and reread it, someday, hopefully. Perhaps by then I will have forgotten the tears that were in my eyes every time he mentions silences and scars; I'll have something new to drag my thoughts away from the page.
This is a collection that makes you aware of its empty space, its fracturedness. Don't get lost in it. I feel that these are poems that want to be listened to; give them time or else they'll wash over you like a shower in spring.
P.S. I hate the way reading poetry affects the way I write things afterwards. Oh la folie de l'homme.