On waking up








A quake
The earth shakes and breaks
The mausoleum crumbles
A flywhisk, that Stetson hat and three piece
Walk out, to see a new day

This Figure, this poem can’t like
I have to hide it
Hide it even from His zealots
The zealots that outlived The Despot for Life

Let me not face three and half
Years in gaol, where the poet
Rot, and rot, and rot for lines
These zealots thought against The Life Despot

The Despot for Life shall faint
I have my liberty, to play
Words around, literally
Of his coming back to life

Yet, nothing of that
Shall The Figure see
The miniskirts down Victoria Avenue
The trousers, that make geography fun?

What of my locksied hair on a newspaper column
Will This Figure wave the flywhisk
At His born-frees
Dancing like Mbumba for their nkhoswe

Down the valley, The Figure to his abode walks
Now a crèche, now a busy assembly
Now home for some drunk,
Inebriated with alcoholic stupour brewed in ’65

Truth comes home to roost

Of dogs, quarelling for nothing
Throat-tearing bitches threatening murder
The dogs never crossed prison floors, corridors of poverty
The Figure muses: We need one, floorless, party

In one room, He sees a zealot
That once saw accidents happen on stage
Created death, ejected into exile, slept with The Despot
Now ruling the once mighty

The Figure a tear sheds
Blue–eyed boy now bows for everyone, shrewd
His former stoogie, the one with six-pounds
Clasped in his yellow democracy-infested hands

And that tall-fingered clown
Tooth-and-nail grooving his way back
To steal and rob, and plunder at the Hill House
The Figure’s tears are double

And for that drunk, ghost-chasing poliomyelitis victim
Who begs mercy, sympathy for his evil misdeeds
Listens only to his voice, obliterating the past
The tears are threefold salty

So The Figure decides
Calls Santa Claus, with his foul mouth
Come here boy, you once respected my bones
A budget is a budget boy, that’s mausoleum wisdom
Respect your laws, boy and people respect you

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