Dreams of My Ancestor, a (dedication to my mother)

Death of A Combatant

Last night, another war comrade died,

He fought in the struggle for UHURU.

The veteran died a pauper

And was buried with clenched fist slogans

Amid propaganda chants

His cheap coffin was draped underneath a torn rag of the flag.

And the presidential frail eulogy was read in absentia

Parliament did not adjourn

HIS epitaph was bluntly carved by another distant combatant,

Another living cousin of the struggle

At his death, we ate stale bread and drank stale  politics

We munched our poverty and sipped the tea of death

At his death, there was no flowers

We sang a tragi-comic parody, dancing spiritedly to the paradox of our country

At his death, we wept tears of blood,

His befitting reward was a parade,

A national anthem sung in discord by drunken comrades,

And graphical eulogy by another half –baked revolutionary tyrant.

We sent him off with an old song, a struggle song

A poetry slam, an impromptu poem, a parody

A blood -soaked clenched slogan,

A solid fist, another song, a liberation song

An ideological sonnet by youthful comrade griots chanting violence

Dreams of My Ancestor (Nostalgia), A dedication to my mother

(1).

Our village rondavels sat on the peripheral fringes of Dayataya,

Dayataya, the elephantine mountain of home.

It cracks a fervent babyish glee every dawn.

I enjoy the beauty of mist  that lingers onto its forehead every night fall.

Birds sing incessantly as if answering back to the echoes of ever- yelping baboons.

Monkeys face –booking onto tree –branches, enjoying the glee of the beautiful sun

Rock rabbits jiving diligently to the discord of laughing hyenas

And wild hens cackling in their gossiping tenor

In synch to the soprano of ever-gushing streams.

Mothers armed with peasantry zeal

And stereotypical loyalty to   their matrimonial daily rituals

Thrashing and grinding millet in wood mortars

The aftermath is the brewing of a delicacy,

A beloved village beverage,

traditional millet beer( Ndari) or (mhamba).

Scumbags drank the brew to the dregs,

Their stupor oiled hymns succulent with rhythm

And turgid with reason.

(11).

I lived along with the rhythm of my village

Chirruping of small birds over soot- clad rondavels,

Alto of doves as they triumphantly imitate angels of light towards dawn

The trotting footsteps of the sun as gigantic rays walk over the creased mats of horizons

In their triumphant march   to the promise of the day.

I cherished those mountains, when dressed in grey gowns of mist at night

And awed by pastures donning the heavy green military combat after blessings of rain

Baritone concocted sounds of barking baboons

Above the fontanel of red hills of home,

Beat of rain and the echo of thunderclaps,

Stitch of lightning bolts onto the gyrating earth,

Stitching together valleys and mountains on the pleats of heavens

I loved the smell of fresh cow under milk concocted with fresh steaming cow dung,

Scent of fresh mud after a thorough whipping of the earth by incessant downpours

Rondavels of Poverty   ,dedicated to my rural villagers

I)

See, Ideological tutors discarding their dignity in crank jugs

Comrades dying between rude stitches of hypocrisy and conspiracy

Father’s phalluses chopped by cyber- punk slang,

Mother’s cotton tuft -hair wisdom castrated by hard pliers of poverty

Liberation euphoria fading with the whirlwinds of corruption -seized cartels

Poverty THRASHED mothers, scratching lives out of the barren red clay earth

Daughters groaning under the grind of forced intercourse,

Their sorrow soaked lives trembling against nights of death

Owls singing satirical verses of doom,

 Hyenas reading page- poetry of gloom

Spoken word verses throbbing alongside the frail beat of bald –shaved red hills,

Burning under the depressing   charcoal of hot summers

Red glow of fire shimmered over the roasting earth like an expiring day

Shame -creased faces told rending story of hunger

Rivers are motionless skeletons of dry sand,

Droughts folded their legs onto the doorsteps of our land

Silence, graveyard silence, silence of decaying mass, a dying mass

Rondavels drenched by rituals of grief

My land is a sorry tale of sufferance,

Its manhood deposited into hot pants of PENNURY

Heartbeat of this land throb like the crack of a broken drumbeat,

Crushed between hunger and disease

Mothers enduring under the weather like determined cassava roots.

ii)

A country once a revolutionary granite,

Now, exfoliated by political scars and moral sores

Super -human autocrats spitting out rotten gospels of freedom,

Their combat clad, steely booted green horns, toyi-toying

Their high- kicking liberation dance, jabbing the ideologically spoilt wind

Napoleonic kings of the land   , sloshed by hypocritical revolutionary hymns

Indoctrinated by the pseudo- socialist political lingos,

Nights of death pounced like stray baboons over village- rondavels,

My mind suffers from nostalgia,

A disease, an ailment

A disease of memory

Memories of yesteryear

Memories of red dagga and pole huts farting beautiful smoke,

Aroma of fresh cow dung, dampness of fog under our cracked feet

Jiving and chattering of mother monkeys and cackling of wild hens

Domesticated dogs howling to shadows dancing under guise of moonlight

Owls singing their baritone announcing the black veil of the sleeping earth

Doves hooting their morning poetry slam, celebrating the rays of a renewed day.

Rhythm of black villages

 Forty Years After Dawn

We burnt drums and exiled the drummers

Still holding cows for other villagers to milk

Undergarments of the banks stink like garbage

Forty years after dawn

State plans still dressed in torn overalls of the parliament

Bullet speak louder than ballot

Forty years after dawn we discovered no totem of truth

And flowers of freedom never bloom

Forty years after dawn

Blood smells more toxic than pesticides in the lungs of the cities and nostrils of the villages

Letter To My Daughter

this poem reshuffled cabinet
the rhythm resigned the president
its metaphors adjourned parliament

my daughter
awaken sleeping patriots eating peanut in slogan darkness
rise dozing voters in the warmth of political acid
awaken struggle heroes in graves tired of wrong epitaphs and fake eulogies
awaken fat cats puffing zanunised and mdcided propaganda burgers in slumber

rise green horns drinking much talked herbal tea of change
grandfathers of patriotism to bring back
truth drowning in potholes of grief
god fathers of change to bring back my vote choked in drums of new renewed
corruption

bring red hot charcoal to roast political bedbugs sucking our blood in daylight
bring a word scientist to burn the justified injustice in poetic sulphuric acid

my daughter
this poem reshuffled cabinet
the rhythm resigned the president
the metaphors adjourned parliament.

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