Zoriah photo

 

By

Mbizo Chirasha

 

 

Drumbeat- “Raising Mukondi” Phase1 (Brave voices Poetry Journal 43 –The Zimbabwe We Want Poetry Campaign is this time of the year in partnership with the Campio Burns Group- “ From Ashes of the Fire”. We are in solidarity with the burn survivors, in solidarity with victims of Xenophobia, domestic and political violence. We are in solidarity with victims and survivors of burns, burning and domestic violence, we are in solidarity with the victors who managed to pull through defying the aftermath scars, pain and trauma.

 

We say write it, say it, talk about it, tell a story. We say poetry heals and Words are a form of therapy. Let Poets from across the globe write on this Cause alongside victims of burns, violence, xenophobia and refugees’ maltreatment. Let’s tell our story through poetry, testimonials and flash fiction.

 

The Intervention is offered space at the Zimbabwe We Want Poetry Campaign Facebook platform (100 thousand poets for peace-Zimbabwe on Facebook). Campio Burns Group –“From Ashes of the Fire” is founded by Beulah Faith Kay, an advocate for peace, life skills coach, Poet and a literary arts activist. She works along other great people around the world. The organisation is doing great through integrating burn survivors into communities telling their story.

 

We are proud to say that poetry is a refreshing form of therapy that serves heals scars, wounds and burns from inner to the outer. We continue to invite our poets, new voices, regular voices, victims and now victors to send through poetry above mentioned Cause and Themes to Mbizo Chirasha. Thank you Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Pakistan, Cameroon, India, Zimbabwe, United States of America, Liberia and Zimbabwe for taking part.  We are looking forward to have more poets in the next 5 set of journals.

 

Here is a brave mouthful from Beulah Kay, the Founder of Campio Burns Group- “ From Ashes of the Fire”-“ “Raising Mukondi” is a Campio Burns Group project (www.campioburns.blogspot.pe) partnered by the “Zimbabwe We Want Poetry” Campaign led by Mbizo Chirasha.

 

The project is a consequence of Campio’s “Face to Face with burns” Campaign and bears evidence of global awareness and the literary activism of poets and writers across the world. Activists who have been touched by the stigma and brutality of burns abuse of refugees, women and children.

 

Their pens speak and their ink never dries. It calls for the world to listen and cries out for xenophobia and burns abuse and stigma to stop! It cries out. This project has taught me that anyone can be burned… at anytime and anywhere anyhow. #awareness Edgar Langeveldt – recipient of the Prince Claus Award.

 

 

 

 

ANYTIME IS EVILTIME

 

 

When eagles run on land

Fishes swim on land

Ants fly in the sky

Devils live among people

Promises are broken

Minors are raped

Oh God ! When will order prevail?

Words have lost their meaning

Lust and riches filled the corners

Earth has lost its patience

Quakes and tsunamis warn well

Devils don’t heed but act on impulse

Embryos shiver in wombs

And unwilling to breath and smile

East, west, north and south

Lost their place

Day and night lost their time

Anytime is evil time

 

 

(By Gopichand Paruchuri – International recognized Publisher, Academic and great English Poet in India)

 

 

 

 

BLASTING OF EXPLOSIVES

 

 

The richness oozing.

Magnetic attracting deadly sting.

The soil breathing winter of June.

Underneath gems pilling like dune.

Sprouting and arranged as a pyramid.

Of which flesh blood soaks them amid.

 

Africa so loaded and on the top of the pose.

Like a star, always there shining engraved with pompous.

The unbelievable, when it blasts the fire in the moss.

Spreading bad odour, poisonous to the mass.

Gem panniers in the greatest zone of war.

Which leaves souls at confused par?

 

The golden pieces a scent of death.

Once upon a time, it was a myth.

Today death is ululated like a celebration.

For grabbing the gems is a marathon.

The survival of the fittest is the game.

Robbing life cunningly without shame.

 

Africa with the bitterness of paprika.

Widows, orphans, friends crying without a breaker.

Fathers, brothers, sisters all swiped off.

By the careless, blasting and unfeeling oaf.

Death for the ore.

Registered pain for all.

 

The copperplate dressed by human fresh blood.

Coldly salivating the raucous mood.

Stamp mill singing songs crashing bones.

Of the bright future stolen and swiftly bygones.

The more they perish.

In the mirror of life greatness perish.

 

 

(By Chrispah Munyoro – currently a student of Applied Art and Design, Graphics and Website Programming at Kwekwe Polytechnic College in Zimbabwe. Munyoro is a talented writer, journalist and a dedicated Design Artist. She is natural linguist, fluent in many languages among them English, Shona, Esperanto, Setswana, Swahili, Italiana and Yoruba. She began as a columnist writing feature articles in the Gweru Times in Midlands Province Capital of Zimbabwe. She has worked as a Midlands Chapter Chairperson of the Zimbabwe Association of Freelance Journalists. Munyoro was once a Zimbabwe Representative at Zone IV Regional Youth Games in 2014 Bulawayo in the boxing discipline. The multi-disciplinary artist is registered under AIBA the international body of boxing. The Writer, Artist, Poet, Journalist and athlete has been writing poetry since her tender years and she has participated in various writers, poetry, journalism and sports)

 

 

 

 

GRANDMA’S SIGH

 

 

Her last phrase was be humble! Subconsciously

Stood her statement as she gasped puffing out

Heavily, struggling her way out vibrantly passed

And her last phrase burst aloud, be humble son

 

Calmly I perceived what seemed a drama staged

By fate at tender phases of my life and beign….

Fourteen years wasn’t that much to acknowledge

Death rage and its excruciating pains stalking her.

 

The pains blared from her bewildering eyes that

Turned round and round her cavities in rotation

White rimmed iris getting darker and darker as

Her strength grew and my palm she held firmly.

 

I had never felt fear like that to acknowledge her

lying hopelessly on the stretcher bed, her soul

About half a mile where I stood besides her body

The felt terror broke a nerve and I cried. She sigh

 

 

(By Wilson Waison Tinotenda. A poet and flash fiction writer. The editor of Deem.lit.org and its founding father. A human rights activist, an ardent follower of the Zimbabwe We want campaign)

 

 

 

 

HOW SHALL WE THEN SING THIS ANTHEM?

 

 

and cross our right hand to the left to render this pledge?

Cause every time I tell lies, I feel a twitch in my heart

and a voice, telling me stop that.

For how long would we call it a petition?

For how long would this lie be our tradition?

 

Compatriots!

How shall we arise when the call is fading away?

When the nation is in excruciating pains?

Though with torment to our souls, we serve our fatherland

but how then can we do this in love

when the seeds of disunity is sown

and the wind of discord have blown?

When our leaders pay tributes to the demons of ethnicity

and our rulers welcome the sylphs of unrest.

For how long would we drink this portion?

This tonic that strengthens religious sentiments.

 

How then can we do it with strength on empty stomachs

when we are yet to serve the canals of our guts?

I have heard people say that a hungry man is an angry man

But for someone whose meals are only on the plates of hope,

Where is the vigor to get angry?

Would he, to serve his fatherland, agree?

 

How then can we do this in faith

when the scriptures of the nation is full of decay?

Should we then sing this anthem in believe

when truly the heart of the nation grieves?

The labor of our heroes past is gradually sinking.

Sinking into the crumbling edifice of history.

How then can we stop this calamity

when the very leaders that swear to protect the country’s integrity

have forgotten their manifestoes and gone after prosperity.

 

We are one nation bound in freedom

But freedom is not October 1st, 1960.

Freedom is when I can walk a freeman

without fear of cattle rearers,

Cattle rearers who hold guns rather than rods.

Guns that even the devil dare not hold.

Freedom is equality.

Freedom is love.

Freedom is what my heart longs for.

Freedom is peace, freedom is unity.

 

But this freedom, we have not.

For our chains have gotten stronger,

our pains are eating deeper

and all we have left is a prayer.

 

Oh God of creation!

When you created the heavens and

Title: The Anthem and the Pledge.

Facebook word count was exhausted

Continuation of the poem below.

d the earth

and made humans,

and us, a Nigeria.

You made it good and void of corruption.

You made it noble.

But what then shall we say is our cause?

For we lay in the ruins of imperfection

and our leaders, upon us, a curse.

 

They stray and we pray thee that you guide them aright.

Let the house of representa-thieves and that of the sin-inate

see your light.

Help our youths to know that armed robbery and scam

Is grievous in your sight.

Cause only then can we, in love and honesty, live aright.

 

How can justice reign,

when our judiciary has become a shelter for embezzlers and money launderers?

How more into the ground can the word ‘just’ be buried,

When a fine of Five hundred thousand is paid,

by a butterfly who cargos a ship of nectar?

 

How can we recite this pledge without tears in our eyes?

Without the twitching of our hearts?

 

How can I,

A Nigerian,

Pledge to be faithful, loyal and honest?

How can me,

without asking myself if our leaders truly make this pledge.

Or is it that they just lip-synch?

Or maybe it’s just that their hearts are smeared with hot iron.

 

How can I serve on an empty stomach?

How can I defend the unity of a broken home?

How can I uphold the honour and glory of a lost battle?

 

So,

Help me God.

 

 

(By Anu Soneye– a young Nigerian poet born on November 20, 1999 in Ile-Ife, Osun state, Nigeria. He writes both lyrical and narrative poetry. His interest lies in the painting of reality with the colors of literature. He also delves into writings related to the state of the African society, specifically, his country, Nigeria. He is a writer who sees writing above being a mere act. For him, writing is an unavoidable art, a necessity and a beneficial addiction)

 

 

 

 

DESIDERATUM

 

 

you’re our desideratum

every corner we scour

with hungry eyes

hopping for your power

for your shower

on the parched skin of our lives

 

 

(By Richmore Tera – a Zimbabwean poet, short story writer and freelance journalist. He is the author of the poetry monograph, “Here Leaves Silently Fall” which was published by Arts Initiates in 2009. In November 2017, Tera was appointed as the Zimbabwean Ambassador of the Museum of Words by the Cesar Egido Serrano Foundation, a non-governmental organisation based in Madrid, Spain, for advocating for unity and peace through his works)

 

 

 

 

THE MAHSUD

 

 

And this on my ground there is

None, none that defeated me whole –

Whilst you the servile comforts owned

My bitter day and night on stone –

While all else in the empire’s feet

Kiss my earth, – for am not like else

Name from past of five thousand years

Neither Greek, either Persian –

Gengiz or Tamerlane, Mughal and Durr –

For whence the soil is holy my possess –

O thou unworthy how dare you lay

Your hand on my honour dignity shred –

My blood spill with deceit betray

That am not the ordinary lot to submit

For once a while the rebel in me –

 

 

(By Sadiqullah Khan – The Brave Voices Poetry Journal Solidarity Voice from Pakistan, Dr Sadiqullah Khan is a gifted poet of immense insights and creativity. Writing on a range of subjects his themes are social, spiritual and politically aware. Looking the domains of day to day living, delving deep into the sufferings and joys he seems to be the voice of dispossessed and the vast majority of poor he passionately identifies, yet his art touches the high mark of existential writing, unique in style and composition, he appears to lead his own genre. He belongs to Wana, South Waziristan in Pakistan)

 

 

 

 

AFRICA – ONE OF A KIND

 

 

Africa- one of a kind,

a black star- in a white sky.

A distinct pearl- amidst white corals,

we are the bell- ringing good morals.

 

Africa fine women- with adoring tribal marks-

their smiles mean good omen- their laughter show the fair gap-

between their frontal snow-like white teeth,

and when they dance- they control drum beat,

with each steps as if controlling the wind-

their waist beads, as they dance, exclaim “Africa! Africa! Africa”. They are the goddess of the kitchen-

eat their food, forget the date of your naming ceremony.

They are the sweet mermaid of the bed;

every night is heaven for Africa men.

 

Africa men- one of a kind,

brave- strong men- not scared of war,

with bare hands- they kill hyenas,

and their voice spans the world for a tour.

Africa men with skull of wisdom,

without a sword, they win kingdoms.

Well-secured are the African women in their arms,

against the eagle- they protect Africa with their arms.

 

Africa children- one of a kind,

climbing the neck of mountains

at their very tender age,

picking sluggish silly snails-

after every meteor rain,

from the dark hearts of forests-

where wet leaves shed silent tears.

Africa children are one of a kind-

to heaven; they send their kites through the sky.

 

Africa- One of a kind-

a distinct black star

in the white spreading sky.

 

 

(By Ibrahim Clouds – Nigerian poet. He spends 90% of his time in seclusion, meditating, reading spiritual books and writing. He studied science for three years in Wesley college of science Elekuro Ibadan Nigeria. He is currently studying architecture in the polytechnic Ibadan Nigeria. He was born a poet, identified as a poet since he was 4 years of age and started writing 5 years ago)

 

 

 

 

BELLIED MAN

 

 

Culled from a rib,

Restructured,

Recreated,

Wombed,

Breasted,

Weaker than the first.

Oceans of endless streams in their eyes,

Compassionate as did Christ,

Persevering,

Comforting,

Understanding,

Caring,

Epitome of excellence,

Yet unrecognized,

Unattended to,

Maltreated,

Manhandled,

Raped,

Deformed.

Questions without an answer ringing in their minds,

Always anxious to find a ray of light in their dark state,

flies encompasses around their only source of light,

Singing croaky dirge into their itchy ear.

 

Glory of the house,

Pride of a man,

Born coordinators,

Representatives,

Continuity agents.

No them,

No continuity,

No representative

No joy

No pleasure.

Know them,

Know love,

Know compassion,

Know greatness.

Unbellied Men too seem similar to these creatures,

Only that they are their exact opposite.

Recall their smile and brighten your face,

Look at their laughter lines and clear your frown lines.

Beautiful tunes of their voice, softly spoken,

Keeps your mind positive.

 

O God you are near to hear their cry,

In all their dreams,

Their belief

Their daily activities,

Always be with them.

You bellied them,

We also pray you see them through all.

 

 

(By Ambassador Daniel Amakor (ADA) – a young Nigerian playwright, short story writer, actor and poet, who took into professional writing since 2013 and has since then served as a local poetry consultant. He has all forms of poetry beautifully interwoven to form a unique and formidable style of writing with its main purpose to cause necessary transformation. His writing subject ranges from the ultramicroscopic things on earth to the most significant things around. Having written for tele stages and journals, he was awarded a barge as an outstanding poet. Ambassador Daniel Amakor lives in Abia state, Nigeria)

 

 

 

 

MAMA HELP ME!!

 

 

Mama l admit l made a mistake.

But that doesn’t mean l am an object.

Mama , pregnancy is not equivalent to marriage.

 

l have tried to work things out but we are not compatible.

He is very dangerous l am not comfortable.

Everyday l wonder if l will see tomorrow.

You forced me to be in this marriage of sorrow.

 

You forced me to be his wife.

Everyday he stabs me with a knife.

With a knife of verbal abuse.

With a knife of physical abuse.

My feet are sore l can’t walk properly or wear shoes.

 

God is my witness to him l am submissive.

But like Hitler, he is heartless and abusive.

Mama l am now beyond recognition.

ln the mirror l can’t admire my reflection.

l am now a bag of bones.

l can’t take the bull by its horns.

Even though l opened Pandora’s box.

 

Mama please, come and rescue me.

Or you are going to bury me.

l am in jail.

l am in pain, it feels like hell.

All l need is your help or you will regret.

l want to come and be safe.

 

 

(By Tafadzwa Bandera – Alfred Tafadzwa Bandera was born in chegutu, 1990 but grew up in Morris Depot, Harare. He is a social worker, script writer and poet. He resides in Randburg, South Africa)

 

 

 

 

 

The Zimbabwe We Want Poetry Campaign