I Will Not Fall
I did not fall
when my mother died of insomnia,
when our street stumbled,
steeped into concussions of red
like a stop light.
I did not fall when my father died
and I was boiled like pig’s fat,
foaming on a fired frying pan,
my soluble skin spread down,
shaken together and apart.
I did not fall during the pandemic,
when fear was swishing swords,
along our narrow streets,
his brain bleeding in the light
which the afternoon sun threw up.
Love grew into a truant,
the ghost of Frankenstein
with a long, black robe in the distance
streams of blood leaving a trail,
and grey dust whirling in its wake.
Sometimes I wish I were there,
where the moon was my mother,
where dead souls discussed their living,
and I was a rebellious son, lost in its mystery,
falling when it falls, killing its inevitability.
I did not fall in the days of troubled nights,
when each day was bound to violence,
a thousand years of peace
grounded with one fell swoop of the mind,
one ferocious fall of greed.
I was lost fondling the loins of grace,
not knowing what I was running into,
a forward clock, a warm duvet
an opaque shield, a little wrap
keeping me on my feet when all are falling.
When the flood arrived,
like a swashbuckling pirate,
with clanging ankles, iron hats,
devil’s beads and rings on his wrist,
I did not fall, nor ever will.
• • •
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah is a returning BoomerLitMag poet and Pushcart-nominated poet living in the United Kingdom. His poems have been featured in Unleash Lit, The Pierian, Propel Magazine, Atticus Review, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets and elsewhere. He won the Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest in 2022 and the Alexander Pope Poetry Award in 2023. His first poetry collection, Blame the Gods, published by Kingsman Quarterly in 2023, was a finalist for the Black Diaspora Poetry Award in 2023. He was the Editor’s Choice Prize Winner of Unleash Lit in 2024. He was shortlisted for the Minds Shine Bright Poetry Prize 2024.