Poetry Bulawayo

After 30 years together, Carol tells me late one evening in the manner of a quiet wife that I have yet to write a poem about her, something she will never understand in light of all those other poems she says I wrote about those other women before she drove North. And so I tell her once again I wrote those other poems about no women I ever knew the way I now know her even if I saw them once or twice for dinner, maybe, and a little vodka over lime and ice. Near midnight, though, she says again in the manner of a quiet wife it's been thirty years and still no poem. When morning comes I motor off to town to buy a paper and a poem for Carol but find instead undulating in a big glass case an apple fritter, tanned and glistening, lying there just waiting. So I buy the lovely fritter and a single long-stem rose orphaned near the register, roaring red, and still at full attention. I bring them home but find Carol still asleep and so ...

Government: This local stone And that diasporan stone Together can build a House of Stone From diaspora please come with a construction stone Diasporas: This diasporan national And that local national Should both build through making a choice In all polls why are we denied a voice? Government: The nation is now a secure nest Our Government now wears a colourful zest East or west, home is best In mealie meal please come home to rest Diasporas: A hare can’t escape Alsatians twice Through the nose we paid for the greed’s rice With our life we can’t dice We would rather adapt to spice Government: We have since called all professionals back home Why are you not coming back home? Why are you not sending investments back home? Why are you not sending your thoughts back home? Diasporas: The Party Forces are still wearing army boots Investment laws still wear Party boots Leadership still has no majority roots Constitution-making to diaspora is...

A Métis Indian lady, drunk -- hands blanketed as in prayer, over a large brown fruit basket naked of fruit, no vine, no vineyard inside -- approaches the Edmonton, Alberta adoption agency. There are only spirit gods inside her empty purse. Inside the basket, an infant, restrained from life, with a fruity winesap apple wedged like a teaspoon of autumn sun inside its mouth. A shallow pool of tears mounts in native blue eyes. Snuffling, the mother offers a slim smile, turns away. She slithers voyeuristically through near slum streets and alleyways, looking for drinking buddies to share a hefty pint of applejack wine.

Memory. The for- gotten name. Pain. The lost kiss. In- side the miraculous air & the people & The Pacific Ocean. Her human & divine face. Eyes such as I have never seen since nor saw before. Lucid with love for me. I lost her name & the names of her shadows that followed her. Time has been trying to play tricks of forgetfulness upon the palimpsest of my psyche. But it is her body her face her voice that walked inside the gate of my skin & entered my cells welcomed by all of me. Now I am dim of facts. Every day I see the newest latest fashions & very most up to date women of the current evolutionary calendar. I am never totally here. I am always partially in her absence.

They walked in death's shadow All evil they should've feared Lives but within their hearts Bidding then heed Darkness living inside Their guns be their strength Through it our obeisance be got As they rampage through This valley, where Sodom's wind blow Before them we lie Trembling hearts caught In-between chattering dental Bladder loosened by fright Body taut in heartless readiness For hot lead to strike Do they not laugh? Teeth sparkling ever thus Polished by choice chop Behind tinted glasses They sneer, As hunger pushes us Towards them in servitude They know not your name Therefore, we beseech you in vain They hearken only to their need That hunger that knows no sate Their god is money We know their oppression Be only for this while We hoped for death's call Not on us but on them Its call whispered song Alas, we hoped in vain Fate holds back our saving rain They knew death's name Planned all along to cheat him Their progeny returns Groomed across the seas ...

“Mama please don’t forget to conceive me...” “Unconceived one, where you want to go there are too many rivers, Flooded with hate, disunity, poverty, and innocent blood, no more graveyards, Neighbour is killing neighbour’s son for his father did not pass him a snuff, Sons are raping mothers...” “Mama please don’t abort me, I already have a mission in progress, Africa will flow in one drop...” “Unborn one, you are just the definition of rape and...” Mama is lying in front of me, writhing and screaming in pain... Am standing in front of her, pulling up my trousers... Pulling the trigger... Her blood soils the earth...

One who invented arms of war One who uses arms of war One who manufactures arms of war One who sells arms of war One who buys arms of war One who restores peace at the expense of innocent lives One who denies basic human rights to the masses.

Becoming colorless, fitting into nowhereness since I was Chicago-born, still watching the news every night, my old neighborhood not a civil war any more but an Against Us/Ourselves not war, but the Marquise de Sade out for a (five kids slaughtered today) little fun, vultures, hyenas, killer ants/wasps, always enough money to tweed and Catholic me, somehow colorlessing myself into Harvard law school and judgeships, but locking all the night-windows, turning on the alarm system, this week the fancier the neighborhood, the hungrier the howls, identifying with my Sudanese-Haitian-Nigerian families, but still wondering how many millenia it will take to Un-Nagasaki the whole schmear.

Only had I known, I wouldn’t have joined the others; Joined the others in unanimously proclaiming Only had they known They wouldn’t have contributed To the appalling cataclysm, That cataclysm; the same That has claimed many Erroneously its foundation we agreed to lay With all due legitimacy, The sourced of our hiccups was enacted With singing, ululation and jubilation, Its continued existence was upheld With clenched fists we all strove to keep it in being Drastically, the transformation began Subconsciously, we strove to keep it in place Paradoxically, we become responsible for our own Our own precarious destiny. Should we continue the witch hunt and blame game, While they cost us? Should we, like Hume, rely entirely on Carelessness and inattention, With the protracted view that they alone Can afford us any remedy Should we swallow our pride then, And unanimously, as before, Delegitimize the existence. Will there be any guarantee that we won’t again, Unanimously, unanimously thrust ou...

I had rejected the whole discipline of the arts and the governments and I understand everything that was understandable for others: I lift my whiskey glass now in this mist in this grey night and I get everything: the gentleness of the morning, the silence, the walls weep like old paintings burning at the bonfire, the sky, the black sky laughs, everything is real, unbent, and shining and burning like the fire in my glass, this thing in me screaming, wailing, wanting, demanding this thing in me black as the night, eternal as the face of the mountain, long as the rope at the gallows, regally as the dance of the fly in the web. the spider… but I have a little more whiskey and therefore chance.