A poem

I haven't posted anything here for a while, as I am concentrating on editing the earliest stuff, but I wrote this as a diversion from all that, so here it is...

'1700 and Rising'

Lord, deliver me from bad juju -
the legacy of a shirt infiltrated
by a conspiracy of patches,
with neither the original's end or beginning;
a police-enforced programme of 'relocation' -
from the slums to the breached sewers
leading to collective hyperventilation.

God, if that bullshit is not enough,
the price of mealie-meal keeps going up.
AIDS smacks its lips as it feasts on families,
driving children to beg and solicit their bodies.

In a land where even the millionaires go hungry,
I cannot obtain the fuel to flee
the machinations of
Robert
Gabriel
Mugabe.

From the Ndbele to the Shona we all know it's game over,
but for Jesus Christ's sake!
What difference does my protest make?

The opposition is divided, demonstrations brutally dispersed,
neighbours cowed and the West uninterested,
but what is most shocking,
is that the Old Man rises every morning to direct our destruction,
while his wife Grace, goes out shopping.


Sometimes the ole red leather armchair, and sometimes an aeroplane, 23rd - 31st March '007