Our Revolution Was Stolen

At the dawn of one grey morning

We were called from our houses

To free our weeping land from the dark hand of

A black cloud raining acid on the backs of our crop

Our sons and daughters

We plucked from sickles and books

To feed Our Revolution-

Her belly bellicose and bellowing

Promising freedom, better times:

A life befitting Children of God

Battered by bullets and bombshells;

Limbs shattered, flesh ripped apart,

Our hearts trembled with the terrors of war,

But Strong We Stood

For we had Our Revolution-

Our blood would not be stilled.

Soon came the hour of reckoning

When ululation and jubilation rung-

Our Revolution marched into the city,

And our boots,

Weary from the burying of friends,

Returned to empty homes

To live like Children of God

                                     

But the price of freedom is dear;

For the blood of our sons,

The wrenching wails of our daughters,

The revolution returned in measure;

Cold beer, neon lights, radio, and tv,

But no drugs for our children, and

Junk yards and tree-shades for schools

Evening came

The revolution fattened…

The songs we sang

Now cobwebs in distant memories

Hollowed out into ghastly ghosts

Our hopes became ulcers writhing in our bellies

Our serviled palms mastered the art of beggary

And the black cloud with acid rains returned

Our revolution was stolen from us

Half Past Time

Half Past Time

Far outside the dizzying walls of city lights

-back pressed upon the soft, wet, mat

Of undefiled green-

I pry the ancient stars for signs,

Soul hungry for the kindling of visions

long hidden in the secrets of the night-sky.

Behind the yellow and neon coloured walls,

Onward, Onward, surges the charge of time;

Pressing forward. Ever urgent.

Digging up the new. Burying the familiar.

Till decades pale into centuries.

Vanity has cast her spell-

The city has bleached her face to new shades:

Where tongues once lit with fondness,

they hiss with plot.

Where lines once broke into smiles,

they furrow despair.

And laughter, where it once rang rich, and deep,

is polished to gasping silence!

All which is on earth may change,

But the night-sky is ever fixed.

Though Man is deaf to signs,

the footsteps of doom draw near.

Age is not Time’s fool.

Reminiscence

I am thinking of sunny days,

dropfulls of golden sun,

rolling hills and sprawling fields,

covered with ripened fruit.

I am thinking of forgotten songs-

warm meals cooked over wood fire;

the eye-stinging naughty smoke

that chased us round the fire, and the

riveting stories that salted its cooking.

I am thinking of forgotten dreams;

dreams of cow herds and goat hoards-

a little house in the valley, plenty crop,

and simple longings like

a quiet life sheltered by the hills-

tucked away from the stoic sepsis

of modern ways and their sterility.

I am thinking of rainy days,

dropfulls of dewy hopes-

the healing scent of wet anthill-soil,

and ancient myths and fables

Like the story of a sunny rain hailing

the birth of a leopard cub.

Round these parts it doesn’t rain.

It pours.

And I, peering up at a weeping sky,

wonder,

What story does each drop conceal?

The Graceful Ngata

The graceful ngata dances peacefully

Like a resting leaf upon a lawn’s head

She strides with easy poise

Her hips swaying from side to side

With tantalizing rhythm

Like a veiled pendulum

Beneath her tightly wrapped lesu

That betrays only an impression

Of what her true shape be

Her breasts bounce off her chest in song

Twin mysteries

Streamers of wisdom

Bedrock of passage

The beginning of life

The beginning of history

Her child sleeps silent on her back

His expression the impression of heaven

At peace in the calmness of her being

Soothed by the rhythm of their oneness

Calm and serene at a casual glance

No telling of the misery of her life-

The prospects she abandoned for him

Or the beatings she bears for him

He will grow and leave her one day

She does not deceive herself of it

But this bond

This pure little mesh she carries with him

He will remain hers to keep

And keep she will

©2007

Ode to Patrice

On a starless and sightless night,

Still and dark- not one drop of light-

A moon draped in garb, funereal-dark,

Mourned the doom of a dwindling spark,

As mortal drones of eye- soulless and stern

Broke the breath of our Nation’s truest son.

All giant mandibles, snapping and snarling;

A great engine, fuelled by greed so startling,

Pummelled its great metal feet into our land,

Smiting a swelling will which made its stand:

But then rose our Lion, to roar the gates shut.

Interred or interned, his name foiled,

Schemes of cogwheels by profit soiled:

And so begun a game, that marked his end;

On squares of black and white- where hands

Unseen- ebony and white, moved with malice,

To checkmate the voice, which cracked the sky;

But their pawns were no match- for Patrice.

His name is the drum that roused the ground

His feet trod. His faith in our hope never failing,

Our hope in his faith never flinching:

From all the winds of our great Nation,

Our children perched their notions

               In his firm fiery eyes;

For his voice was their voice.

And his words their dreams.

With pellets of their copper death in his head

His life he gave to the dignity of our children.

His lifeless shell, hacked to parts by drones,

Was ravened by acid in the dark of a forest,

To bury his name and mute their shame:

         But Lumumba was no mortal man,

         To fall by the greed of greasy men.

He was our dreams and hopes,

Clothed in flesh and bones;

Glowing like the rising sun in our hearts,

Guiding as the patient moon in our eyes.

On a dark forest night, an African martyr fell.

On a bright forest morning his legend woke.

The Reckoning

We are mere specks of dust we mortal men:

Plodding and plucking through the mystic dark

Of this abyss we call life.

We plunge headlong into the thaws of its belly-

Our fate to sate its blistering boiling ulcer,

Drowning in the acrid juices of its bitter bile!

We enter this world as babes;

Blind, feeble and vulnerable-

Groping our way through the dour corridors of life,

Our scopes blotted with obscure cataracts,

Our reach balefully blurred by veiled visors,

Each time we venture to lift our gaze…

The ancient lodestone has lost pull.

The paved path the once led to its sacred door,

Lies petered out beneath the barren sands of time.

The way of the truth is now but a fabled trail;

And buried deep in the bowels of the earth-

In realms lost to memories gone,

Dwells our only deliverance from

   this great-never-ending-fall!

NOVA

And when our eyes we strayed upon the night;

A mark of bearing beastly- espied in constellation-

Drew sign of a star sputtered with false light:

Our breasts, rattling, quivered with consternation,

For was this star not our own? She was in nova!