Poetry Bulawayo

  (c) Mgcini Nyoni With my cracked hands The hangover of broken dreams Phantoms in an unkind enclave Lifeless idioms of hijacked promises Oh slogans, how I wish they had been edible. Now I smile no more, Now I hide no more A million deaths have I died, Used by the savannah sun, A ragged footnote of freedom Yes I have waited for this day, I have longed for this day Un chaining my chains Of hijacked expectations   That smoked away my emptiness I too, am Zimbabwean In my angry Shona   Lacerated with Bemba , or Nyanja Crusted exclusion Have my generations not ploughed for you Did you then call my sweat alien? Now is my time, Resurrected by a new people s covenant, I am no one’s alien So I wait too, to alienate, the alienator My birthright s revenge. I too am a Zimbabwean. Born free or free born Once the spirits were buoyant   Hope then was the currency We swam in books and degrees But we drowned, the revolution s carc...

In the gulf of past and present A fusion of contempt and disdain Deceased hopes paralyse dreams Where the mind traverses Treacherous terrain Of abandoned words and wounded memories While the heart beats only In spasms of pain Gaping chasms linger relentless Stirring up silent cyclones of terror In the heart trodden upon already Brewing from memories Effervescent throbs That mortify and petrify And plow deep trenches By the acerbic rain of tears And lead weights of sorrow Caustic winds of regret blow Conveying the uninvited incidence Of guilt and shame To virgin territories of the mind The eye of hope dares find escape To seek a place of solace, where words are kind