MBIZO CHIRASHA

MBIZO CHIRASHA

MAYIBUYE!

Sing Africa. Sing the song of the Sharpeville massacre.

Sing mayibuye, sing Uhuruna ujamaah.

Sing of fearless Kimathi.  Djembe drumming for Sankofa.

Sing Tambo, Biko and Madiba’s Nkosi sikelela.

The continua struggle is the villagers’ song.

Cities belching gutter dreams, daughters clutching, blistered

Media, weeping flags, empty bodies trudging through dozing villages.

Mothers and fathers restrain their tears, withering hearts

bandaged by anthems. Sing your struggle Africa!

CHILDREN OF SANKARA!

Children of sankara! Bathing in the river of salt, poetry and song

Beautiful children of a fat revolution, revolution that roasted colonial fungi in the summer song

Shadows of sankara and Lumumba sharing rich patriotic coconut in fields ofUpper Volta

See, juju borrowing your salt to cook the beetroot of another struggle, Gambia singing your song.

Abacha, walking naked drunk with booze and blood

Sarowiwa dancing with virgins in the Eden of Biafra

Son of Uhuru hunting wisdom in the deepest of Timbuktu caves

Childen of Sankara,

I dreamt of fire  burning the social fingers  of the state,

Sing songs of the country to repent puppies and puppets.

IDENTITY APPLES

I am a fat skeleton, resurrecting

from the sad memories of dada

and dark mysteries of animism

I am Buganda

I bleed hope

I drip the honey of fortune

Makerere; think tank of Africa

I dance with you wakimbizi dance

I am Tanganyika

I smell and fester with the smoke of African genesis

I am the beginning

Kilimanjaro; the anthill of rituals

I am the smile of Africa

My glee erase the deception of sadness

my tooth bling freedom

I am myself, I am Gambia

When others seep with bullets stuck in their stomachs

I sneeze copper spoons from my mouth every dawn

I am the Colombia of Africa

I am the Cinderella of Africa

Where mediums feast with the ghost of Kamuzu in Mulange trees

Here spirits walk naked and free

I am the land of sensations

I am the land of reactions

Coughing forex blues

Squander mania

I still smell the scent of Nehanda’s breath

I am African renaissance blooming

I stink the soot of Chimurenga

I am the mute laughter of Njelele hills

I am Soweto

Swallowed by Kwaito and gong

I am a decade of wrong and gong

I am the blister of freedom vomited from the belly of apartheid

I see the dawn of the coming sun in Madiba’s eyebrows

I am Abuja

Blast furnace of corruption

Nigeria, the Jerusalem of noblemen, priests, professors and prophets

I am Guinea, i bling with African floridirization

I am blessed with many tongues

My thighs washed by river Nile

I am the mystery of pyramids

I am the graffiti of Nefertiti

I am the rich breast of Nzinga

I am Switzerland of Africa

The rhythm of Kalahari sunset

the rhyme of Sahara, yapping, yelping

I am Damara, I am Herero, I am Nama, I am lozi, and I am Vambo

I am bitterness, I am sweetness

I am Liberia

I am king kongo

Mobutu roasted my diamonds into the stink of deep brown blisters

Frying daughters in corruption microwaves

Souls swallowed by the beat of Ndombolo and the wind of Rhumba

I am the Paris of Africa

I see my wounds

I am rhythm of beauty

I am Congo

I am Bantu

I am Jola

I am Mandinga

I sing of you

I sing Thixo

I sing of Ogun

I sing of God

I sing of Tshaka

I sing of Jesus

I sing of children

of Garangaja and Banyamulenge

whose sun is dozing in the mist of poverty

I am the ghost of Mombasa

I am the virginity of Nyanza

I am scarlet face of Mandingo

I am cherry lips of Buganda

Come Sankara, come Wagadugu

I am Msiri of Garangadze kingdom

my heart beats under rhythm of words and dance

I am the dead in the trees blowing with wind,

I cannot be deleted by civilization.

I am not Kaffir, I am not Khoisan

I am the sun breaking from the villages of the east with great inspiration of revolutions

its fingers caressing the bloom of hibiscus

Liberation!

DIMPLES OF HAITI

Haiti, the stink of sweat smelling millet slavery and the scent of blood revolutions

Slapped in the face with sanctions mud by hands under the influence

of imperialistic alcohol, a superconcotion of propaganda maize porridge and

media yeast

Waterfalls of anger washing away your freedom dimples

Handmaidens and mental epileptic waiters serving political syphilis in ideological cafes

Children smelling stale ideological urine and dirt diplomatic cocaine

Identities condomised with donor culture and sexual myopia

Baboons eating colors of your flag, munching apples of your freedom

Tongues kissing bottom streams of the state under the veil of democracy gospel

Haiti, my pen is a weapon of mass instruction, I see the spreading yellow york of the sun

, gently falling over the darkness of your skin, yawning off the old skin of dust,

Regaining the lost richness of your dimples.

DIMPLES OF FREEDOM

Dimples of mighty river donga, river

Sokoto flowing honey of liberation, dripping sweetness of decades

Of freedom harvest

Taraba and ekuku flowing with seasons coming after one another

Winters in tears and summers in blood

Dimples of freedom sing freedom

Freedom of the people, people and their song

The resonance of rhythm, rhythm of drumbeat throbbing

Tsaunin mainono, veins of tsaunin Kure, throbbing the heart of tsaunin ukuru

Rhythm throbbing under the feet of mothers and children pounding this earth sodden in oil and hope.

Dimples of freedom

You age with generations like baobab

The essence of villages and the resonance of tribes

Tribes singing embracing the dimples of silver moon

Singing one tune, in one tongue, sing boki mothers, rise mbumbe sisters

Sing bachere songs, dance the gavako dance

Dimples of freedom

You age with generations like banana trees

Kings of this land, i sing of you

My song of bones, shadows, stones, mist and smoke

Dimples of freedom

I sing of kings whose skin glow after the caress of coco butter

Their breath smelling the milk of coconut

I sing with modibo of gombe, obong of obioko, olu of Warri

I sing of you baban lamido, oba of Lagos

Dimples of freedom smile with olo of the olowo

Dimples of freedom

Smelling decades of light and stink

Enduring decades of nights and hope

Sleeping in decades of nightmares and dreams

Rivers gobe, ekulu and aba, rise for freedom

Your stomachs vomiting the sun of liberation, liberation

That crocodiles and reptiles be pregnant with the sun of liberation and

The moon of freedom

Dimples of freedom

On top of tsaunin kuki, tasunin shamaimba, doves and owls hooting

And cooing the dark of nights and newness of mornings

Dimples of freedom smile to the mountains of this land

This is my poetic grapefruit to the land that breakfasted

Omelette of bitterness and beetroot of sweetness

Dimples of freedom

This is my succulent watermelon of metaphors to the land whose is heart is

Velvet and whose soul is a grain of wheat

Dimples of freedom sing with me, the song of freedom,

Sing Bello, sing azikiwe, singawolowo, and sing shehu

Song of the people, people and their song.

MBIZO CHIRASHA

Mbizo  Chirasha   Recipient of PEN Deutschland Exiled Writer Grant (2017) Literary Arts Projects Curator, Writer in Residence, Blogs Publisher, Arts for Human Rights/Peace Activism Catalyst, Social Media Publicist and Internationally Anthologized Writer,2017 African Partner of the International Human Rights Arts Festival Exiled in Africa Program in New York. Resident Curator of 100 Thousand Poets for Peace-Zimbabwe, Originator of Zimbabwe We Want Poetry Movement. African Contributor to the Table of Words Dermer Press International Poetry anthology in Netherlands. Solidarity Member of Global Alliance for Politics and Arts. African Participant to the 2014-2020 World Poetry Almanac Anthologies series in Mongolia.http://tuckmagazine.com/tag/mbizo-chirasha /