Raconteur (The Storyteller)

The prolific storyteller weaves a quilt

of words and pictures on canvas.

Takes words and fertilizes them –

giving birth to a tale.

Her words are bred in a shade

behind the bamboo tree.

Nurtured under the beautiful sun on

mother earth’s warm lap.

Celebrated with the sound of the African

drum at sunset when the evening lull pays

homage to the streets and roaches start

roaming around like drunks.

Her tales come alive in the velvety dark

of the mischievous night-

provoking her thoughts and well hidden

memories to alight amidst the moon’s

gaudy evening gown.

 

She is an accumulation of stories both

grim and gory.

Life’s trusted narrator; a griot, thinker,

Spoken Word poet and painter of words.

She is the wordsmith without a portfolio,

the underrated singer and composer

humming “Les chansons de la vie”

 

Her words fly like a time machine-

opening a portal to a new world.

Enthralling adventures through

prehistoric times.

Witnessing evolution’s conspiracies-

drifting in and out of the world wars,

the civil wars and the industrial revolution.

Reliving the Harlem renaissance, grooving

with Langston Hughes.

Intergalactic journeys through planets,

galaxies, time and space.

Orbiting the sun, earth and moon- quiet

strolls with the milky way.

Globetrotting with meteors, comets

and asteroids.

Her tales of bravery, honor, loss and love

are christened by the ancestors.

Inbred with oral tradition, worshiped at the

bonfire in between marwa and folk-lore music.

Uprooted from the rich African soil and sowed

from one generation to another on a bed of

continuity. “The dead are not dead”.

 

She is the proverbial modern cave dweller

lodging in fairy tales and sauntering dreams.

She makes her way into the past, present

and future replaying history’s controversial classics.

Her words are engraved on her mental tombstone-

congregate at the junction of her mind and nestle

beneath imagination.

Stacked in libraries, bookstores and smudged

on literature websites, she hovers across pages

inspiring and educating.

 

So, gather around folks!– perk up your ears and

let me spin you a tale.

Allow me to take you on a mind blowing journey

through places both new and old.

I am your story teller today.

 

©FloetryC 2017

 

 *Marwa: Type of local Brew in Northern Uganda.

 *Griot: West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet and/or musician.