KABEDOOPONG PIDDO DDIBE'

KABEDOOPONG PIDDO DDIBE'

THE PRODIGAL FATHER

Woman,

My desire for you is now tasteless,

My body hates seeing you:

You have an inborn cancer of headstrongness,

And now, too used to obey me.

I want someone who obeys me like an unquestionable priest:

One who, if I gas so stanchly, swallows the smell up;

And if I fart so deliciously, spits it out,

You are not that type!

I see waves of wrinkles on your face:

No more glory, faded beauty!

I need faces lotions still embrace,

Full-make-upped bodies, lips dripping lipsticks;

Bodies that bring me current, brown as bricks.

Not your rusty feet,

Cracked like the mouths of river-banks,

Sooty logged-legs, dirty chicken feet.

You compete with naked-footed chicken;

Ducks are even better than you, woman.

I, Ojuk, am still a baby, only forty years old!

I need not your sixteen year-old old face,

You make the village married bachelors scorn me,

That Ojuk, the husband of Nyalano,

The village hero, has an old woman at his home as a wife!

You become a ghost and disappear from my face like a dog that gased.

RAT-RANKS

I shuffle and re-shuffle your faces

Your innocent-looking murderous faces,

Beneath white teeth lie rotten smells!

Rats are measured by ranks,

Ranks are measured by sizes,

Sizes are measured by loyalty,

Loyalty is measured by spittle-licking,

He that licks spittle can lick asses.

You are my best enemy,

You state-trained rubber-footed army.

I shuffle and re-shuffle you like aces,

I scatter you to Somalian field of fire,

Call you back and re-shuffle you;

My golden hands shake your wooden hands,

Yellow Khaki envelopes,

Cut your revolutionary intrigues

Against my thirty five years village rule.

A Man of People, I am;

Steering the train of poverty-wheel,

Goats, come and feast with me,

Wolves, wear sheep-clothes,

Cover me up in hypocrisies,

Smiles deceive eyes,

Flush your yellow teeth

If you see my extravagant car-convoy,

So I measure you money in sacks.

I shuffle and re-shuffle you, death-holders,

Embrace my prosperity for all,

Though you know it is poverty for all,

A fool follows another fool,

Rats!

RUPING AND ANYADWEE

Anyadwee, you are a noble savage,

And you are, thus, backward!

I, Natasha, am a civilized savage,

But you say look awkward.

That my skillfully applied make-ups

That sparkle like disco-lights

Are a mere Christmas Tree.

That my pretty fire-engine

Red, pinky lipsticks, lip-glossed lips

Resemble traffic lights.

That my nice, blue eyebrows and lashes

That attract congregations like a magnet,

Are grossly dyed like a Malaya' s;

And smooth powdered face

Looks like a witch' s ashy face,

Circling people' s huts at midnight.

That I wear dead whiteman' s hair,

Plucked and painted by an artist,

Woven into wigs and worn on bald heads,

Creating an illusion- a  beauty.

That my tall, red, hard claws resemble the Lucifer' s,

Dipped into a sacrificial blood-pot,

And my bleached black skin is a spotted python:

A modern disgrace to Tee-Kwaro Acholi.

***

Yes,

I, Anyadwee, say so,

Natasha, the Civilized City One!

I see flock of brainless men fly

And whistle after you,

But you won' t win my lover, Ruping.

KABEDOOPONG

PIDDO DDIBE'

KABEDOOPONG PIDDO DDIBE' st is a twenty five year-old Ugandan poet, born and living in Kitgum District, and speaks Lwo or Acholi language. Uganda is a landlocked country under Yoweri Museveni Kaguta' s rule (1986-Present), after Idi Amin Dada (1971-9), located in the East of Africa, surrounded by Kenya, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.