NDABA SIBANDA
MY TWO IDEAL WORLDS
If ever there was an ideal world
It would be within earshot --
Without a gunshot
I suppose it would have—
Acres and acres of pages
Lyrics and love and letters
Wedded to melodies
Seasoning life
Even in strife
Music my intimacy
A depth of emotions
Even in commotions
Without it
The world is lonely
Even hellish & hollow
Without it
My heart is hungry
Even uneasy
WOMAN OF TODAY
Enjoying the amenities and
peculiarities
of modern living
of dynamism
Clamouring for greater marital
power
at household level
at national level
Denouncing a subordinating social
position
in any given locale at any given
time
in any given space at any point
Basking in the prospect of reigning
supreme
over patriarchal fanaticism
over male pig chauvinism
Engrossed in a conversation to give
credit
to women’s reproductive and
productive powers
to women`s empowerment rightists
and entities
Vowing
never to accept oppression as if
her hands were tied to her back
never to accept tokenism in
business and in politics and in education
A woman of today says no
to the trammels of culture and
religion
to an inferiority complex or pull-her- down syndrome
A woman of today
seeks to be treated as an equal at
a workplace
seeks to read the epitaph of oppression and degradation
ELUSIVE PUMPKINS
Dear dear Sun
Please please send your princely
rays
Down down to heat Sea and Dam
Lovely lovely live-in parents of
Water
So that Water delivers Son Vapour
Who might therefore ascend to Sky
To condense and come down refined--
Talk of a lively dance of Rain and
Grain
…………………………………………………………
The clouds are gathering in the sky
A darkness looks near but is high
I hear children singing
Woz`Malamlela
Come down Rescuer
Singing Woz`sidle amakhomane
Come and let`s feast on pumpkins
For the young children understand
well
That when Nature has smiled on the
land
People grow lush fields with
pumpkins
And everyone jives into jollity and
plenty
Rain do not refrain
Please enough of pain
Come down today
Come down Rescuer
Fields are rumbling with emptiness
Sadness defaces farmers` faces
As they see no vegetation
But a fist of sickening starvation
Industry long came to a heavy halt
Life is starved of economic
salt
Rain do not refrain
Please enough of pain
Come and let`s feast on pumpkins
NDABA SIBANDA
SIBANDA is the author of Love O’clock, The Dead Must Be
Sobbing, Football of Fools and Of the Saliva and the Tongue. His work is
featured in The New Shoots Anthology, The Van Gogh Anthology edited by Catfish
McDaris and Dr. Marc Pietrzykowski, Eternal Snow, A Worldwide Anthology of One
Hundred Poetic Intersections with Himalayan Poet Yuyutsu RD Sharma.
Amazing work!
ReplyDeleteThank you.
ReplyDelete