KABEDOOPONG PIDDO DDIBE'ST

KABEDOOPONG PIDDO DDIBE'ST

QUEEN IS RED

Queen is red,

She is a purified gold,

Refined by my sweet words of mouth,

Sprung out through the gapped teeth of Ruping,

She is a dog of fear,

Hyenas go about her,

Impotent to afford her,

My Miss Mirror is beautiful.

Queen is red,

Her lips are wide shut,

Spitting me commands,

Wanting to eat me up

Like a double-mouthed leech,

She wants something light;

With a jingling nose ring,

Scarlet lip-sticks, bloodshot eyes,

A beautifully bleached skinsuit.

Queen is red,

She is now full woman

Who cooks better than your mother;

She sits like men,

Waiting for food like nestlings,

O my queen bee in my beehive,

A scorpion sting on Christmas night,

My red queen is sweet.

Queen is red,

Her arms on my sore shoulders,

Conquering the center of gravity,

Roaring like a lion,

As I cower into my soft wounded shell,

There is no one sweeter than my queen;

She is my husband.

CHICKEN

I am Stalin's chicken,

Plucked clean like a woman's chin,

With metallic fingers,

Quacking in silent pain,

Naked in the falling rain,

I am a mere chicken,

With untimely deathday.

He plucked me clean,

All my tattered feathers,

Cut with metallic fingers,

He threw me down,

Down on his rubber feet,

And walked away in my eyes;

With metallic laughters,

Rippling like troubled waters,

Risen to life by a dead stone.

I walk and still walk forever,

Behind him, following him,

For my plucked feathers,

Tattered in his iron-hands,

Shivering in cold with helpless flight;

Following him for my feathers,

Gone are my beauty and might,

My fear is my life is next,

My meat smells the flesh of death.

CANNAN

The land that flowed honey,

Now climatic change,

Unfed cows milked,

Smart Casino players;

We came,

And got barren land,

That flows scarlet blood,

Rivers of darkness,

Apartheid flags raised;

We came,

Land titles demanded,

Liberty of slavery,

Important problem

In the pearl of Cannan;

We came,

Across the Red Sea,

Capitalistic masks,

On the bloody throne,

We hear silent missiles;

We came,

On the calls of weaverbirds,

On Cathedral windows,

Preaching the life of our death,

In this sick land;

We came,

Dancing heretical hymns,

They sung to liberate

The land from their own chains,

Sitting in the heart of the realm;

We came,

And buried hospitality,

In every man for himself,

But God for us all,

Embracing new faith of greed,

Repatriation and brain drain;

We came,

From our motherland,

In their masterial ships;

Now waiting for freedom

On Africa's mouth, my father's land.

KABEDOOPONG PIDDO DDIBE'ST

KABEDOOPONG PIDDO DDIBE'ST is a young published Ugandan poet, a born of Kitgum district, Northern Uganda; an Acholi by tribe.