A Place We Can Call Home by Kwabena Agyare

Image -

http://www.clubmadrid.org/sspblog/?p=766

If only
these thirsty soldiers would stop sipping our blood from the calabash of chaos
If only
these resounding voices of those guns would fade
Then we can call this place home

And continue to gather around those breasts that nursed us
And not play the sojourner's flute
like a Fulani in the Sahara
And not allow innocent blood to curse this land
We can call this place home

We can feel the breeze again
like our childhood never walked away
And gaze endlessly at the smiling sun
This is perfect a place
A place we can call home

So our children can be proud
and dust themselves
whilst building their castles

in the sand

A place we can call home

That our wives
will love in peace

And I dream
of a good place

A place we can call home

Nostalgia by Prolifik

Swirling, Swirling, Swirling,
mimicking the liquid I so recently
poured down my oesophagus
I let myself fall to the floor.....

I Stare at the stars in the sky
before I begin to cry ...
thinking of the days when I
went to bars for the whores

Now I avoid bars because of them ...

Lady Goulds by Donal Mahoney

 

Image -  http://www.debsbirds.com/

Moving from Chicago to Missouri wasn't easy

but breeding Lady Goulds kept me sane

for many years--well, almost.

I was writing then to make a living.

All day I'd rearrange other people's words.   

I needed Lady Goulds to look at 

in the evening and most weekends.

Otherwise I might have married 

some nice lady for the wrong reason.  

Right now, a canary helps me dance 

away the years or days or hours

I have to face before 

I take on a cane or walker. 

The canary calls the dawn with glee. 

Lady Goulds, you see, don't sing. 

They don't have to.

All they have to do is sit there  

as if Mondrian painted them 

or God lifted a pinkie on the 7th day. 

The beauty of the Lady Gould,

some say, is the result of evolution. 

There was no grand designer,

most scientists maintain.

The Lady Gould is one big accident 

that happened eons ago. 

I find it comforting to stare at them 

and know otherwise.

Blackness Posing by Zibusiso Mpofu

Blackman on the street

Skin black

Wrapped in the arms of my forefathers

We gather to meet

In strange lands abounding in

Street soul and leisure complete

Cameras and cameos, strange hellos

Whistles in the day time and amusing laughs and whimsical giggles

So rich and rare

This is the dream that composed

The melodies of my ancestors

Whose words wrap themselves in the minds of my people

As they waltz their pride on the strange paths

And then they pose, the lens, the light

A captured moment, a lyrical escaped, a song, a strange fruit in these eyes of mine

They are strange, we are strange

A perfect blend of rod and mortar

Then we dissolve the friction between friction and fact

Our prejudices and insecurities fade…slowly and die

A perfect blend of rice and rapoko

A moment, captured, Blackman…posing

The Stranger, A Stranger by Changming Yuan

Image - gavade.deviantart.com

Is nobody

But another mouth

Another bottomless hole that keeps

Sucking in food

And vomiting words

Is nothing

But another number

Another series of numbers

Is really no body

But just another you

Another me

When You Go by Artwell Masuku

Slam the door
Behind you
So I'll be sure
You've left me
Lying here in the barely dawn-lit room
To meet my maker

I want to see
Your shadow passing by my window
As you leave me to my demise
Please don't step lightly
But stomp
Confidently
Over the threshold
When you leave

Marching is not an angry sound
Just the certain noise of going
I want to hear when you leave
Please ....please understand
I'll never push you out

When you leave
I'll try not to hold you in
But I can't promise
When you're gone for good
That I won't clutch the air
Where you once stood
And pray for forgiveness

I'll be desperately seeking
The punchline
Beating my chest
Angry that I can't control
Your going
Loudly or softly
But I will be glad
If you leave with a shout!
Out that hard
Painful door
And please remember
To wake the neighbours
When you leave.

Caseworker Determining Eligibility by Donal Mahoney

                 

        Cabrini-Green Projects

        Chicago, 1963

The child, age two, hammocked in the half

moon of his mother’s arms, is locked

in palsy, yet moves an eyelid as I ask,

moves the other as his mother answers,

application form interrogation.

The father was a white policeman.

“Curiosity,” the mother says. “No more.

I didn't go with him for money."

Elephant Grass by Christopher Mlalazi

Image - http://zimsiffs.blogspot.com/

We were two, mother and I

Deep in the bush behind old Pumula township

Mother wielding a sickle

And I a catapult

 Eyes searching for anything that moved

For I was the guard

Seven years old

The grass was as tall as gum trees

Yellow as gold

A world of weaver birds

And insects with long knees

As mother cut and cut the grass

Tied it into two bundles

One big one small

And we would emerge from the bush

With them on our heads

And I walking behind mother

The bundles slowly accumulated

At the back of our home

And we would watch them slowly dry

As the seasons went by

Sometimes playing hide and seek amongst them

Or leaping into their bosoms

As if they were our parents

And we would open the buttons of their blouses

And suckle to sleep

Then months later

A lorry would arrive

And our grass friends

Would be on their way

To gogo and khulu in the rural areas

Where they would be reborn again

As thatch on roofs of huts

Providing shelter and beauty to the rural landscapes.

Mornings in Venezuela by Neil Leadbeater

(i)

  

        Strangers found them belly-up. Their barbed mouths were

            jaw-wide

        as if they had tried to draw down great gulps of air.

            Every man-Jack of them

        was a Xerox copy of blood-red ventrals.

        Before you go, she said, I will tell you all that I know.

        Aside from the oil, the gold and the diamonds,

        you will be like a man who suddenly sees through a gap

            between doors:

        the one

            half open

                the other

            half shut

        where the poor pound hoes into parched land, their one hope

        to survive all this, to come through hunger and be thankful.

(ii)

         It was

        fast-fast

        that I raced in my sleep

        to the sound of the long-tom

        the dollar and the rocker:

        dredges whose nozzles, buried in deep,

        flushed out jewels

        from alluvial beds

        to pay off debts

        for barter.

        Seeing the burst

        escape from the dam,

        I ran and I ran

        to the river-run:

        I watched the dross

        choke the drains,

        its pulse like blood

        in the seams of veins

        and my heart pounded

        at the empty drums

        alert with the fear

        of poison.

Beyond These Walls by Batsirai E. Chigama

Image - peopleofcolororganize.com

My blood is cold beneath my skin
Frozen with shame
They undressed me
In front of a thousand strange men
Stripped me of all pride and dignity
Laughing, pointing at my withered breasts
Hoping for subjugation they beat me
Beat me in my nakedness
Then they chained my hands, chained my feet
Trapped me with dank sour smells of lost hope
In a cold cell with rusty bars
Then clanked the door shut
Threw the keys in a forgotten mine
Hoping I too would be forgotten

My body bleeds from the inside
My spirit is wounded
I am chained 
Yet my thoughts roam
In places far beyond these walls
Places I have been and those I will soon be
My visa to freedom 
My mind
they can never
take
Away
From me. 

#ZimRef by Mgcini Nyoni

Image - swradioafrica.com

Over imported cognac

They incinerated our views;

shook hands – ‘job well done comrades’

And shared mines and ‘indigenised’ businesses.

Over exotic coffee

they agreed on povo enslaving clauses;

shook hands –‘ job well done comrades’

And reached ‘compromises'

-          inflated parliament and oversized cabinet

On cruise boats in Kariba

and in massage parlours in Vumba

they struck political deals and ‘alliances’;

shook hands – ‘job well done comrades’

And drove us to the polls

to vote yes

for growing fleets of luxury cars

expanding waistlines

expensive holidays

and offshore accounts for them and offspring.

Death Of A Child by Clemence Chinyani

Image - guardian.co.uk 

A child was killed,

A little boy,
A son,
His body was burnt,
His crime?
It was time,
To vote for a new president,
Who would extol no-one,
But himself,
Make it rich and,
Shit on everyone,
While his troops make merry,
And the rest of us wept.

Summer Ablutions by Donal Mahoney

Image - www.thisoldyard.net

Stunned by July in a hammock

he remembers the apricot wife 

no longer here

one curler more and the flutter

of leaves in the orchard

the sound of trees 

letting go

a downpour of plums

flowing over

the wicker

propped open 

below

Leaving Dreamland by Artwell Masuku

Image - commonhealth.wbur.org

He wakes up from a dream
Hears a crashing sound
What was that?
He thinks
Tries to see something
In the darkness that surrounds him

There it is again
That sound
Two times two as in maths
Reminds him of something
Something he can’t grasp
Still half asleep
Suddenly it is back
The memory
Of another night
With thunder and lightning
And rain clouding his vision

The memory of valentine
Of a happy evening
Which ended so badly
When she went into the bathroom
Just one second too early
One second
That changed everything
One second
That woke him up
Every night and the only thing
He could do was scream
As the shots rang out.