“PHONETICALLY SPEAKING” To reflect the fast pace of world news, my blog is probably best served as a stream-of-consciousness text. Fast and unadulterated. With this approach, and on first encounter, text might not seem to scan. This is because I am dyslexic. Instead of keeping the proof-readers busy, I would rather let my blog updates of my visual work stand as a record of my experience of dyslexia, which I am keen that you now get to enjoy too. Unlike some news outlets, I hereby excuse myself the need for a ‘corrections’ section! The excitement of a new language is something I’m quite familiar with, and it is with this ‘joie de vivre’ that I am delighted to guide you through my thought and work processes, more phonetically (than fanatically) speaking.
Sand and Tears
No water here, no humanity either;
only footprints our mothers made
crossing the Sahel into Gaza where
men are pained by long memories,
and women plot their return to die.
Wind, weeping all night, made my
eyes dry, yet when I saw yours
I remembered my name, and I was
determined to reach out for
the moon and ride her back to the
beginning of our dreams, my hand
trembling in your firm grasp,
above the last dune where my
desert abruptly ends
and your maps out a continent.
For a refugee from Mali