Butterflies before an acceptance speech

 

Butterflies before an acceptance speech

If madness strikes me

Seizes my senses right on the dais

Shakes me out of my habitual lies;

If I spoke the truth just once

dropped this calculated elegance

Bared these teeth of a devil!

What then!

 

‘Ladies and gentlemen

My name is Mheshimiwa

Your new legislator, your future tormentor

the ultimate evil, second to the devil

My sincere gratitude:

Thank you for each vote, each that I bought!

 

‘I enjoyed your little cockfight

was beside myself with pleasure

said hurray and cheers, then  shed tears

at your mass burials and all memorials;

I blamed my rivals.

As for the troubles I caused

I regret not whatsoever

Proud of my affluence

I hide not this protuberance

I lied, now you know!

Thank you for each vote, each that I bought!

 

‘Why wouldn’t you study my eyes, see the lies

The ways in which I had strayed clearly displayed?

But lie or no lie, your votes came my way!

When you look into these eyes

Do you not see the emptiness of promise?

‘I guess you wouldn’t look, won’t look

Wouldn’t care, won’t care.

You wouldn’t vote Jesus,

if he drove a simple car;

You wouldn’t vote the Buddha

or any simple traveller-

but oh, the next thief

who drives a fuel guzzler!

 

‘Well, I promise verily verily

I will neglect my duty

All your laws I will defy!

I will spawn your stress,

you will never self-express

If you sue, I’ll deny, I will keep my lie

and my fat pay

will harass my pockets

all the days of my life,

And as I grow old, set me free

From financial cold!’

 

But it wouldn’t change a thing

Coming clean, truth-telling;

Some cars just have a liking

For rough driving!

Straight Tool and Miss Last Nail

 

Straight Tool and Miss Last Nail

 

Was once a tool

Real sleek steel,

fine for new nails, or fixing a few rails

or just about anything the crew wills-

a fresh prince for the price of fish-

free!

Free like love.

 

So, Straight Tool met Miss Last Nail

At the last corner, where the owner

Was making himself a banister rail.

Now, Tool was just about to drool

The charm in little Miss Last Nail

was too much for Tool-

’s experience and factory advice

and last-minute over-the-counter tips!

Smitten with love and bold of steel

He bowed his clawed head.

But just before he could kneel

a curtsey for little Miss Last Nail

she blurted in pretended disgust

‘After all your playin’ with all other nails, now

You aim to push me down with a little bow?’

 

Straight Tool was taken aback

Humiliated and feeling out of luck.

He flew

off the handle

Was out of use a month’

had picked a depressive dent

and one claw went bent

 

After the encounter

Was just one way to go-

Down.

down the repair road.

Down.

 

If you looked closer

He isn’t straight no more

and can’t tool so well as before.

His handle’s broken

Where love most was.

He don’t look so swell

‘cause he never got cleaned too well

Or touched nice with oil.

 

Now he don’t swing so bold

And whistles no more in the air

For his heart’s gone cold.

And there’s a twisted sense where

used to live Love or warmth or care.

 

When he falls on a nail

Rusty or new or other

He hammers all alike

On and on-

Wishing not for rescue

Promising not

The return rescue of love-

Since that last fall

he fell for little Miss Last Nail.

Death, thou art loosed!

 Death, thou art loosed!

My head is full

Of sounds of a shovel

Of sands shoved

Of rocks moved

Of ground punched

To sink a necessary grave-

Unnecessarily too often

Too close to the last

In too dry a ceremony.

 

The people I’ve buried

Graves I have filled

In song-less haste

In war’s pointless waste

Death is born.

 

I grope in the past

And my past is lonely and vast

Furnished with misery

Well washed with tears and worry

Ventilated by gusts of terror –

my past is packed to the ceiling with

memory upon memory

loss upon loss

too often in this war-

Stacked atop each as if

they were trophies.

 

My past is a place

famished then abandoned

By friends and the sun and the wind.

 

My past is this place I can’t leave

This home I return to

This prison that shadows me

No matter the borders I cross,

This windowless trap

This smothering grip,

This past so vast

Acres and acres of evil in my mind

Poisoning where I walk

What I think, who I meet-

poisoning.

 

My past is a memory

the smell of blood of kin

stinging pain of singed skin

the sound of a flaring flame

of a flame crack

the harrowing fall of my life.

 With my hands I remember

burying

people I had encountered

bodies I had entered

The hearts I had warmed

In the season of love bloomed,

Lips I’d tasted; the bonds now tested

By death broken, I buried.

 

I remember

That I have lost to soulless sands

To silent earth

To rocks that clatter,

then roll and settle

to graves that cover

my friends whose fatal

End is an endless bother

 that I couldn’t shrug at all -

this memory so lonely and vast

Is a grave that covers me

For since then, I've been dead

Though I walk-

Thought I walk.

Rickety Riot

 

Rickety Riot

The theatres come to town

at corners and turnings and straights

pavement and kerbside and where else

you’d care to look-

is a dead show

of bones- rackety rickety riot

in streets

A Hunter’s dilemma

 All these dear darlings of

Fat rounded sides

Skins of golden shades

Basking in the splendour

Of the western sun,

crowd his vision.

Heaven and earth

I need to find love, to catch it and hoard,

To check-mate it like a king on a chessboard;

I need to fly blind like an arrow,

To free-fall for someone, like...oh,

Like the sun needs to rise tomorrow

 

I need to run crazy, look straight stupid.

Yet in that abandon find favour in cupid.

And I want, oh so much, to be found

Like a falling leaf needs the ground.

 

I want too to succeed, to lift my head above

Like the boldest bull in the herd;

In my time I want to have conquered

Popular opinion, fame and political love;

I crave to pause where I leave my mark

And like Ozymandias say, “Look on my work!”

 

I hope that in the cycle of time I have risen

From wherever my soul's been a denizen,

Through gleaming gold, dirty iron, forsaken earth;

That the past is punishment and this, my final birth.

I wish in time to run free- a spirit

Unbound in form and loving it,

I want to be with the best spirits I can find-

The high, the gentle, the forever kind.

 

But then stronger grows my hunger for money

I cheat and play low tricks on you daily, honey,

I kiss you with my lips and my hands pick your pocket;

I swindle and sell friendship for a one-way ticket!

 

Oh but I want it all- fame and fortune, peace and quiet,

To escape without a scrape and be the hero yet!

And like a camel's love for pasture here and heaven there

This relentless wanting wears my soul bare!

Devine company

 Devine company

Homeward I walk in the night

On a path by fire flies lit,

underbrush licks my ankles,

castor seeds feel my under-feet