Don't Look Into The Neighbor's Dumpster Poem by Sarah Mkhonza

I have been breaking the rules
My mother gave me to carry me
To the future like tennis balls
Thrown at me by the couch
And me letting them fly away
Untouched by the racket
In my untrainable hand.

Line by line we have combed
Through my deeds supplanting a few.
She kept warning me like an erasor
Going through each sentence in
The hands of a scribe from heaven.

Like a prophet of old she
Went through each one of my
Deeds cutting and pasting
Onto this wall called my brain
Rules and proverbs passed on
Woman to woman as we put together
My trosseau.

Of all the rules my child
This one never forget even
If you forget then all today
Never look into the neighbor's
Dumpster.

They will know by the look
In your eyes if you have broken it
For your eyes will not lie
And your shoulders will slump forward. As did those of
The disappointed night for
On its face remainef a woman
Carrying her load of bad deeds
That darkenef the sky and
Left the neighborhood in the dark.