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By

Mbizo Chirasha

 

Poets are truth tellers, the truth and only the truth will always set us free. The Zimbabwe We Want Poetry Campaign is driving towards seeking truth for the sake of the truth only, MR AND MRS GOVERNMENT.

We seek a government whose foundations are laid on the clay of truth. Truth is responsible and clean. The set of poets and their poems are a reflection of the quest for a true national leadership. Poets are the mirror of the masses and they are the voice of the voiceless. The Voices in here are true and they stand for the truth.

Zimbabweans have suffered for quite a long time from poverty and oppression perpetuated by black political leadership that has since failed in delivering a good social economy for the masses; political leadership decorated with violence and political bickering for many tiring years.

We are in a situation where our political leadership need to be told the truth and the truth only. The biggest challenge we have is that our African leaders are obsessed with power, looting and fame and they tend to forget to build their nations and protect voters from troubles, vice and poverty.

Thank you BRAVE AND SOLIDARITY from Zimbabwe, America, India, Pakistan, Cameroon  Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and many other countries for participating in this brave journey of resistance through poetry. Together we fight a good fight, together we rise, and together we shall win – Mbizo Chirasha.

 

 

 

 

RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION

 

 

This pen spits not venom

No venom against vermin

Driven it is by righteous indignation

Driven it is by an immense sense of justice

Echoing the words of Marcus Mosiah Garvey

That justice is greater than the law

 

The thoughts portrayed are organic

Travelling far and wide for wisdom

Learning lessons from Russia

Blame not the mirror if your face is askew

This mirror reflecting that wild dog snarl

 

A housefly cannot make honey

A bee cannot spread malaria

A dove can never crow

Blame me not for this righteous indignation

When the truncheon does its dance

Tearing up the flesh of perceived foes

When the smouldering tear gas canisters bounce

Scattering and choking those that dare shout

While an accusing finger points at the silent majority

 

I have not been able to bury my head in the sand

Refusing to carry that burden on my shoulders

I have not been able to admire the undulating landscape

Without thinking of many lying in unmarked graves

I have not been able to admire the setting sun

Without an invocation of images of dripping blood

This writing shall always be organic

After the funeral no longer shall there be dirges

A longing for the mirthful laughter of African children

 

 

(By Jabulani Mzinyathi – Zimbabwean to the marrow. A firm believer in the peter tosh philosophy that there will be no peace if there is no justice. Jabulani is a pan African and a world citizen)

 

 

 

 

YET ANOTHER FLOWER POEM

 

 

The American Dream is uncovered for being just that

in the flowers of the poinsettia, which are not flowers

at all but a series of scarlet bracts or modified leaves.

They recall the lips of Hollywood stars like Rita Hayworth,

and, most poignantly, of America’s astounding poet,

Sylvia Plath. But this is my garden in Bulawayo!

What has the American Dream or “manifest destiny”

got to do with it? Everything, I guess; except our clichés

are different, like “Commonwealth of Nations”, “rod of empire”,

“Rule Britannia”. And this shrub, Euphorbia pulcherrima,

adorning my early winter garden, concordant with that

afterglow of common thatching grass unsettling as its “flowers”,

is as much a settler as I am; and the day that it leaves

is the day I leave: “For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth”,

as politicians have, and academics (a white poet

should restrict his content to the flora of Bulawayo),

“to stir men’s blood”. My settler friends and me, our destiny

is obscure. We measure out our lives in platitudes, clichés,

watching the sun set on Zimbabwe, as it set on empire:

scarlet and gold, heart-breaking, most beautiful – pulcherrima.

 

 

(By John Eppel – lives in Bulawayo and has 18 publications of poetry and prose to his name, including collaborations with Julius Chingono, Philani Nyoni, and Togara Muzanenhamo)

 

 

 

 

IT’S STILL BOER BOTHA PULLING THE STRINGS!

 

 

Aluta continua!

Black South Africans you’ve to face this reality.

Aluta continua!

Life must be a reality

A real experience

Not a dream like what it is

In this your so-called rainbow society

Where only names were changed

From Kaffir to black,

From Azania to South Africa

Not for good, better or best

But for the worst!

Past their De Clerk

They gave you their Mandela.

Now with political hypocrisy and diplomacy,

They falsely eulogies him a great man, an icon!

For you in your sheer blindness to emulate their misleading idolatry.

How can the Boer decide your destiny

By choosing you this man, Mandela?

What’s so special of his incarceration?

What’s there to stand in awe for?

27 years of his inactivity!

What struggle did he fought behind bars

Which men out in the bloody streets like Chris Hani,

Steve Biko!

Oliver Tambo,

To mention but just few wouldn’t conduct?

Awake my fellow black people awake!

Indeed awake from your gross- stupidity!

And stop misnaming the truth hate-speech

let the truth dawn and shine,

and instil hope in the minds

of the oppressed

and enlighten the brainwashed,

Those who madly brag about transition but yet it didn’t put an end to Boer privilege.

Look nothing has changed as yet

and nothing shall ever change

till you really hope for it.

Group Areas Act is still in reign.

Look at your R.D.P hovels; crammed dilapidated shacks!

Municipal-ignored garbage heaps, miles high; licking the sky!

And look at their villas, mansions and castles: spaciously stationed

in places of charming tranquillity,

where a black foot can’t tread without white surveillance.

But you talk of freedom and democracy,

Which freedom?

Abortion and homosexuality!

High crime rate!

Rapes and murders; your daily media bread!

Social inequality; economic imbalance!

And this chaotic life!

If your freedom is a reality

Like what you absent-mindedly testify

Whose freedom is it?

If blacks and whites would today join hands to celebrate it

Let it be clear

Who was oppressing them both before?

Think of the ruthless Sharpville massacre,

The Soweto uprisings,

Both past and present atrocities against blacks,

Xenophobia,

The Marikana brutal carnage

As you celebrate next time

Your freedom and democracy

In your rainbow nation!

 

 

(By Blessing T Masenga – a bold word guerrilla, a fiery poet through his writings tirelessly and boldly seek to strip nude the oppression and the violations of basic human rights)

 

 

 

 

RAPED MINDS

 

 

My mind was raped yesterday

By the sharp edge of his thought

It felt the pain running down my spinal cord

The weight was too much

My legs couldn’t bear,

I could collapse on his words

I could faint on his lips

I could let myself be buried in his mouth

Oh! The thought of sleeping in the casket of his tongue

I chose to live for the thought was wild and my dream, wide

I knew the storms will forever be there

I knew his mind had once been raped

In a city where male sex organs are weapon for silence

Where they’re used as the sole password for success

In a city where I am more of an instrument

than a person

We live with raped minds

But my mind shall not soak in fear

It shall stand its grounds and mount the stairs

Shoot me with whatever words you want!

That can’t stop a tree from bearing fruits.

 

 

(By NNANE NTUBE – A Cameroonian who is passionate about creative writing. A teacher of languages (French and English) but she is currently furthering her studies at the Higher Teachers’ Training College, Yaoundé. Her poems The Lost Bond, The Pains I Feel, Hungry Voices, Change, Trust in Tears, A Child’s Dream, are published by Spill words press. Her poem, The Visitor featured in a magazine in Zimbabwe; 3Mob.com. The poems, The Pains I Feel and If I am Your Rainbow appeared in an anthology of Gender Based Violence, #Wounded which will soon be published in Zimbabwe by the POWAD group (Poets With A Difference). Her poems Before I Met You and As I Hold Your Hand are forth coming in a wedding day anthology in Zimbabwe. She is a social critic, a youth activist for peace and an aspiring actress)

 

 

 

 

A MARTYR’S TALE

 

 

They were killed!

Sure, they were destined

In cold blood, they were drowned

Their names, penned in this native soil

The ground of their birth

The only hand that dressed their naked bones

No one else could care; only

Nature humbled their decency

Their tears a martyr’s tale; a sad story!

 

 

(By Sydney Haile Saize I – a word guerrilla, a fighter for justice and a Poet in Residence for the Zimbabwe We Want Poetry Campaign. Haile is also a journalist, social change activist and a writer)

 

 

 

 

THE RISING DAWN (NO TO POVERTY)

 

 

From the horizons is drawn forth a dawn

That today is precious than the last dusk

And forecast the lost hopes in my home

A town bred monsters and savages busk

For no formalities were amidst the clans

Perpetrators of corruption opted brother

And incubators of, became the domains

Prosperous was he who lured the brother.

Incinerated by your own in return of not

More than a handful of petty silver coins

Enslaved by that sister whom cares not

For the wellbeing of the brothers… cons

Dilemmas of the progeny sort pleasures

By the elites. Not pillar to lean on nor any

Foundation to build on, it remains hopes

Unattended to. The breach of have many.

And that today spelt a new genesis. Well

Beamed being the sunray, those brighter

Days now await to melt down the well

Built incubators and stood forth virtues.

 

 

 

WHO TO TRUST

 

 

To have drunk from the plague cups

Of impetuosity reluctantly sipped all

Not to have realised that his phrases

Would weird the matter that phase

“Kuti nyika yatakawana negidi yotorwa

Nepenzura nhasi? Hazviitike” Rude…

Save never grasped the deceitful wiles

Ironic was that inclusivity stunts vile

Indeed he took fiends for friends awry

And vowed honesty yet the brothers

Pledged deceit… Alas Save did flow

amid foes swiftly granted the masses

The sense of democracy and the other

Brother sort savage blue suited fellows

To lush, imprison and brought affliction

Severely to Save , That were his treats

Now that he is dead…Whom is next in

Line ? To blink to these monsters who

Bores political ulcers which inflames

The brothers and sisters guts in the

Ancestral domains. Who else will stood

Firm and votes for a government of the

People by the people. It began with the

Dark cup then the ice cream treat…

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

I WRITE

 

 

To tell you things I cannot say

To say the deep and the dark

To say without shame

To say without fear

To tell it all…only you will not understand….

I write

Do not write, you say

It will be evidence against you

That I know full well

If you choose to use it against me

You were never mine ….

I will walk away, hurt and in pain

Brutalized by your betrayal

I write

My joys and hurt so easily flow

As I search for word to explore

Sometimes I find, sometimes I lack

I use the synonym that is cliché

But that is the way it is……

When my reading is below my knee

However…I write

Will you read me again?

Please read me again

And write me a reply

So I can write again

Why I do not know the words

Those words my big brother uses

They are big…I need a dictionary

Itinerary…perambulate…aiiii?

My reading is surely below my knee

I must speed up my feet

Next time I come…next time I write

prepare your dictionary

You will need it…

It must be understood

That my brother has taught me!

Good morning big brother

 

 

(By Caroline Adwar – a rising Poetess, an English and Music Teacher in Kenya. She started writing poetry while in high school and she is a fanatic of old English poetry writing traditional style, rhyme, repetition, alliteration and assonance. She is currently experimenting African free verse and her poetry will soon be published in Kenya, Zimbabwe and other International platforms. Caroline is a Bachelor of Education Arts (English and Music) from the Kenyatta University in Kenya)

 

 

 

 

OUR CHALLENGE

 

 

Can someone create

A machine which grinds guns

As cows grind grass

To produce manure for peace?

Can someone create

A machine which breaks bombs

As dogs break bones

To produce food for the underfed?

Can someone create

A machine which mashes missiles

As cooks mash macabo

To produce food for the malnourished?

Can someone create

A machine which grates grenades

As farmers grate garri

To produce more healthy humans?

Once we find these people

We must shield from weapon dealers

As hens shield chicks from hawks

Before they abort their inventions!

 

 

(By Nsah Mala – an award-winning writer, poet, motivational speaker, and youth leader from Cameroon. The author of three poetry collections, Chaining Freedom (2012), Bites of Insanity (2015), If You Must Fall Bush (2016), Nsah Mala’s short story ‘Christmas Disappointment’ won a prize from the Cameroonian Ministry of Arts and Culture in 2016. In the same year, another story of his received a Special Mention in a short story competition organised by Bakwa Magazine, the leading online literary journal in Cameroon at the moment. His French poem was cited in the novel En compagnie des hommes by the internationally-accl­aimed, award-winning Franco-Ivorian writer and poet Véronique Tadjo in August 2017. His forth poetry collection in English, Constimocrazy, will soon be released by a US small press while he is finishing a collection in French, Les pleurs du mal. He has read poetry in Africa and Europe)

 

 

 

 

SPARROW

 

 

When God died

The sparrow navigated

Toward light

Broad fence tangled web

Broken sentences

Metallic silo screaming

Faded breeze/empty fire

Singing along

River valleys

What remains

Of the Lord?

Who remains

To remember? eternal

No more names

Sparrow builds a nest

On margin

Of a cloud

Impermanence, sunset

Inferno

When words bare no meanings

Sparrow glows

 

 

(By Neeli Cherkovski – Acclaimed and International published poet in USA)

 

 

 

 

FAREWELL TO MY FUTURE

 

 

Farewell to my Future

May I ask when and how

For I don’t see it happening

Any future now, I see it receding

Future slipping back

To past, I see this in twenty years

To twenty days and twenty

Hours. This even is not past –

The virtuous past of the yore

This is a perverse present

And looming shadows

Of dark future which we will

Though not live but our children will

I do not see any future here –

I would unroll your banner that,

‘The future starts now.’

A sticker phrase for a billion dollar

Business. Your future might now –

But I bade farewell to my future.

 

 

(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)

 

 

 

 

THERE

 

 

There are those spiritually hungry

who should be left alone

to be allowed to suffer

and fight for the self

their way

and not become colonised objects

of pity in the news

or tomorrows anthropological

thesis.

There are those who are lonely

who hunger for a god

that still won’t be named

or mirrored in human alphabet

or given a particular face

except the face

of everybody.

They should never be hidden

from loneliness

or given a place

where they will be hidden

from the tragedy

of reality.

It should enter them

in the eyes

in all the curved horizons

it will return to them

they will recognise it

in all directions

where they see

tangible living truths

that keep changing shape

because truth is a living thing

like a rainforest or

a colony of ants

or a stream of mountain water

or a compound of people

a low cost housing

project

a taxi with a sliding door

a man selling chips

your barefeet hardened

by years of walking

old newspapers

and not a word

or somebodies pure idea

it is here

and it moves

keeps moving

moving.

There are those who evangelise millions

and have never fallen in love

or been intimate with one person

or even slightly aware

that the self

keeps dying

somewhere inside the mirror

and all photographs

that are being taken by the media

are images of that which

has already died

and become another.

But none of this really makes me unhappy anymore.

Not even the peace in your eyes I will never fully understand.

There’s too much restlessness in my love.

This moment I am yearning for you doesn’t have to end soon.

 

 

(By Kyle Allan – Poet and Creator at Underberg Himeville Arts Festival)

 

 

 

 

MY EGOISM

 

 

Is hurt by your insults

Is lowered by your innuendos

Am pained my husband

A lover to you or a ball

A comforter or a punching bag

You forget my king

The sweet nothing you whispered

The eroticism of the nights

The swollen rivers you crossed

The battles you fought

The crocodile tears you shed

To win me

To beguile me

To soil my Puritanism

And now

Am a hag

A rag

A watchman

Forced by your kicks?

 

 

(By Patrick Kamau – graduate in literature and special education from Kenyatta university. He hails from murang’a county in Kenya. Currently he is a special education teacher. Kamau loves reading, making friends and writing poetry. His dream is to publish an anthology in collaboration with other likeminded poets)

 

 

 

 

POVERTY

 

 

The streets are drunk with heroin

Slumlords pimping daughters for ganja

Gangsters baptising sons in crack and skokian,

Slums sniffing poverty, fat cats are farting blood diamonds.

 

 

(By Mbizo Chirasha – an Internationally anthologized Poet, Writer in Residence, WordPress publisher, Creative Arts Projects Curator and Arts Activism Catalyst.Mbizo Chirasha is the Originator/Instigator of the Zimbabwe We Want  Poetry Campaign http://www.newzimbabwe.com/showbiz-39824-Poems+on+Zim+abuses+to+be+read+in+the+US/showbiz.aspx,( Brave Voices Poetry Journal -Tuck Magazine, Word Guerrillas Protest Poetry Journal – Zimbabwe Sphere, Poets Free Zimbabwe- Miombo Publishing). His poetry, writings and blog journals are widely published across the globe, https://tuckmagazine.com/tag/mbizo-chirasha/, Chirasha is a solidarity member of the  Global Arts and Political Alliance (GAPA http://www.ga-pa.org/2017/11/21/gapa-meets-poem-mbizo-chirasha/, and African Partner of the International Human Rights Arts Festival, New York, United States of America (http://www.blackstarnews.com/education/education/the-international-human-rights-art-festival-highlights-poet). He publishes Women Voices and Profiles in his POI Journal (www.personalitiiesofinspiration.wordpress.com), Writing /Poetry Voices in MP (www.miombopublishing.wordpress.com). Mbizo Chirasha  is a Poetry/Opinion Journal Contributor to  the Tuck Magazine (Brave Voices poetry Journal-www.tuckmagazine.com/mbizochirasha. He Co-edited a bilingual Poetry  e- book in Germany and English with Andreas Weiland, International Poet, Translator, Publisher and Critic in 2017 (http://www.street-voice.de/SV7/SVissue7.html)

 

 

 

 

 

The Zimbabwe We Want Poetry Campaign