Anxiety in Mosaic

UNDER THE PRAWN’S CARAPACE

59 UNDER THE PRAWN’S CARAPACE In this literary wail From the sizzling, malversational excruciation Of iron-brand wrongs done to man, A chagrined biro Sheds its ink-tears verselessly on paper Lamentation I Watery stool in the bowl Spiced with salt and pepper Passes for achu soup And on diarrhoeic days like these Anal minds of state Defecate their ego-faeces In the mouths of us accursed simpletons While urine from the royal bladder Of Paul the First; king in despoliation, Has drenched the people to the soul In the offing, I see the times Turned inside out: afternoon starts the day, Then midnight, followed by dusk Till the rain falls From the earth to the sky I am the omen of this 'upside-down ness' I augur well for the sad tale That shall come To be told a few dark nights away from this day That the entire chiefdom had committed suicide at dawn Every tribesman and woman 60 Hanging down from the greed-noosed halter What, for hell's sake, am I gibbering of? Of slime and reek under the prawn's carapace; Of you, kitchen waste from the household Of oligarchic voraciousness, And of me; the Anglophonic wretched Of this earth of scathophagous politicking And what's become of our sea breeze? Dead-rat halitosis exhaled in my face This late afternoon by the ocean's windy yawn On a Tuesday as bleak as all the others Since the oligarchic chieftain and his close collaborators Began wasting from the rot of dementia II See me here, O kindred eyes of the betrayed! Standing this high on the rostrum Of a treason, higher Than gaol walls, deadlier Than death row - and hearken, All ye ears that bleed from the jagged edges of keen moans – My own cry of lamentation, telling Of black hands that strangle me between the lines Of this literary blabber; a soul Wronged by the surfeit of men Here, where the winged cost of basic needs Soar, like kites, to the skies I sit, enfeebled By purchasing weakness from the proboscis Of governors, stuck down my neck 61 In nights of sleep Without a single soul to see in my dream Down to what Gomorrah Leads this dirt road; this dirt road, watered With the retch of inhuman beings – Death's bequest for me, plied by hearses – Up from this place of ice-cold faces That stare at me from the dark, francless black-outs Of economic nights? III Morning exhales its breath of staleness in my face On polling days covered with mildew. In the blurred corner of noon Darksome compatriots play the gubernatorial chess; The dimly lit room Of this casino of state where masked compatriots Handle cards in gloved hands, seated At the table of election-blackjack To them goes a recompense And to the rat mole-engineers who dug The subway that links coffers and the pockets Of trousers worn by their Excellencies. I boycott, then, this ceremony In honour of white-collar traitors, Of medals and epaulettes for pilfering awardees Under the three colours that have sworn to mother rainbow That they shall never again be the ones To flutter high over a land that claims It is one of glory 62 Here, where hearts carry mountainous desires To satisfy hillock-sized needs, Off my blood richly endowed, O! brother, Lives this parliamentary draculocracy And if only you knew What astral cogitation This righteousness that exalteth my nation brings me Then you would understand Why I pray, saying: Flow over this mind, O meander of elixir To wash the squalor off our souls! IV We goats whom greener pastures Have shunned to damnation, No choice have we but to bare our bodies And brave this iron-brand economic hostage crisis Red-heated in the privatisation furnace What America to protect me From this kamikaze of kleptocracy When terrorists of cupidity strike, Blowing down – to a rouble of destitution – The trade centre of my world? Of patriots and quislings (but of quislings more so) Shall be said those things Of which death alone knows how To make men forgive Yet forgetting not So Nyobé, my Guevara! 63 And you, Likenye! Big brothers in arms: You who trod fearlessly the decrepit hammocks over black waters; You who took over the chanting when our voices broke In...