Yaki Marqua lies on a bed of reeds and rushes treated with sweet smelling palm oil. His wife Mimi Pa and their young daughter sit by his side. Mimi Pa soothes his fevered brow with a damp, natural sponge, a gift from the oceans.
Yaki Marqua has not spoken for many moons, not since the paralysis had robbed him of what was once a most melodious voice, full of passion and wisdom.
This will be the last night of a very long life that Yaki Marqua will spend on this earth. With no sons, to which tradition decrees ancient knowledge should be passed, generations of Kobi teachings, the secret messages of plants and rocks, of earth and sky, will be lost forever.
On a dark rainy night, as thunder rolls in the inky black heavens and lightening tears the sky asunder, Yaki Marqua’s secrets will fade away with his last rattling breath.


I am a gentle breeze that travels across vast oceans


Silently it slinks down the tree lined avenue. The sun shines off its sleek black coat like sunlight glinting off the blackest of oil patches. It doesn’t bother looking up as it passes.
The two boys, twin brothers as alike as mirror images, watch as the cat struts by. As one they see the angry splash of red that mats the animal’s sullen muzzle. Their eyes travel down the street from where the cat came. There, shadowed under a lightly swaying palm tree, they see the tiny bundle.
With youthful vigour they are soon by the rapidly cooling bird’s side. They wonder at their first real sight of death, a tangled tapestry of feather, flesh and bone.
With anger in their hearts and heavy stones gripped tightly in their clenched fists, they chase off after the retreating murderer.
They do not yet know the often cruel machinations of nature’s fickle hand.


I am thought and memory travelling back through the ages


‘Now don’t come out of here until nightfall,’ Jenny’s father whispers softly to her and her little sister.
He bends down and lightly kisses both his angels on the forehead. Standing up, he places the false wall panel back into the recess, concealing the two girls from view. The last thing he sees as they are consumed by the darkness are silvery tears tricking down his daughters dirty cheeks.
Both girls jump at the sound of the apartment door being kicked off of its hinges. They hug each other tightly.
Through a tiny crack in the wall Jenny sees the Nazi soldiers grab her father violently around the neck while another quickly searches the small room. Satisfied there is no one else there the guards push their father towards the broken doorway shouting, ‘out…out,’ as they go.
Whimpering in the darkness, Jenny’s sister lifts her small head to look into her eyes.
‘We will see papa again won’t we Jenny. Please say we will.’
Jenny knows that her sister is too young to understand, to know the truth. So she says nothing.


I walk along silent corridors. Silence broken by the sound of new life.


The baby, slug grey and lifeless, slides from within the safety of its mother’s womb. Separated from its mother for the first time since conception the child, a boy, is snatched away, and the fight for his life begins.
The baby’s father, standing helplessly to one side, fears that the infant is dead. He rushes from the dark delivery room and flees through brightly lit corridors.
His father finds him sitting in the smoking room; he can see that his son has been crying. He sits down at his side.
‘It’s alright,’ he says placing a hand on his sons shaking knee. ‘The baby’s fine. They just had to clear his airway that’s all.’
He leads his crying son out of the smoking room and together they head back up to the maternity ward to see a new born son, a new born grandson.
A brand new future unfolds before them.


I am the minutes passing in one violent hour.


8.15am

She sits in the corner and cries. The war zone of smashed furniture, of broken glass, surrounds her. Her screams have long since faded to muffled sobs.

8.24am

His voice filters in through her pain and her weariness and she starts to tremble all over again. He is back from the liquor store, back to end her brief respite.
‘So you didn’t run then you stupid bitch. Thought I’d finished with ya did ya? His booted foot feels like an anvil being dropped on her stomach and she knows now for certain that the baby growing inside her will not be born alive.

8.46am

Blood pools around his prone body. He reaches out towards her with a trembling hand and blood drips from his fingertips.
‘Get help for Christ sakes,’ his voice is barely a whisper. The puncture wound is deep under his ribcage and blood fills his failing lung with each laboured breath.
She stands over him, the long bloodied kitchen knife held in her right hand down at her side. With her other hand she holds the telephone handset to her ear. In an emotionless tone she tells the operator what she has done.


8.58am

The paramedics arrive with the police but they are too late. The dead mans face is pale, leeched of life, and the patrolman covers it from view.
‘She’s in shock sarge,’ the young police woman says as she guides the woman towards the door. ‘Judging by the look of her he did a real number on her.’
With a patrolman’s thick jacket wrapped around her shoulders she sits in the back of the police cruiser. Her mind is broken.
It will be many months before she speaks again.


I am an alien life form searching for sentient life

The crystalline pod hurtles through the black void of space. No material hands steer this craft nor do eyes of any substance plot any course.
The shimmering vessel is manned by thought alone. Ancient thought from a galaxy unknown.
For centuries unnumbered it has searched for signs. It will continue to search for it is a patient race, untouched by the passage of time.


I am the beginning of time and I am the end. I am birth and death and I am decay. I am hope and despair and all things in between.
I am with man and woman, with child and wild beast. Nothing is hidden from my eyes.
I am the promise of the after life; I am the reality of oblivion. I am all that ever was and all that will ever be.
I am the universal

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