This collection is paradoxical. It is a Chant of Mass Instruction crackling from the freedom famished soul cave of literary combatant , Mbizo Chirasha .An agonizing reflection of menacing lifestyle during days of nerve rattling COVID19 lock-downs and farcical experiences of rough sand paper gritting exile . A fusion of hybrid writings, poetic disinfectant sanitizing and taming political demigods and ideological imbeciles into repentant peace -loving democrats and candid political commentary and the preservative ingredient is rhythm sardined short fiction.
I STILL BREATHE THE WIND, a hybrid Writing
Immersed in the cauldron of swirling floods, I flap my weighted wings with a singular drive carrying my dreams in a perforated duffle bag. My feet seek the sun at midnight in the land processing its abortion of tomorrow under the snipers telescope so no truth escapes unpunished. I am a child of the South thrown further South where oceans crash with the fury of disagreed temperament. I am the child of the red soil darkened by falsehoods of high priests reading marching orders of disorders from a dishonored group purporting to speak for gods of democracy.
North is more than a direction as my eternal campus throbs against the steel fetters of burnt hope as the night lights a path to the horizon dragging the flag of my totem along strangers homesteads.
Baptized again and again by black night by men with no names, I now acquire a new name and a newer status. They baptized me grasshopper and I had to agree. Being a long jumper, being a high jumper and now attempting the triple jump, grasshopper sounded a fair baptism name for a newborn boy man lost the long road to the finish line under chase of fathers without hearts. The process demanded
I hit the road twice as hard into the no man’s square where mutation is official identity and 'refugeeism' an international tag that comes in hardy in the categorization of run away undesirables as State gossip has branded me. Back in the backyard where I first saw the sky through my father's thatched roof, my village groans under my mother's skirt birthing new hope in prayer for a child firm in his ways as it carry my umbilical on green banana leaves and the scented aroma of village songs now fading into the dusty thirst of warmth from a familiar smile. Eyes accuse my paranoid senses and it jump in nightmarish fever whenever a siren rings its ominous sound. Madness is a constant threat as shadows overwhelm daylight cornering it with harsh whispers of punishments of flame throwers onto my swollen feet and numb hands.
The next maternity ward aligned for my next rebirth and baptism is a grey room manned by grey suited men with faces long death of emotions. And the cesarean section they intend to perform is as crude as an amateur abortionist in a hurry.
What is left of my old decency and pride is crudely paraded on the cold operating table as men size my life's worth with biased scales perhaps from Shylock's days. Help was alluded to without insurance or guarantee. Safety was mentioned in an undertone so i missed the term. But I came out dripping a cold near death sweat with a number like all patients must. I had arrived at the altar of earthly saving shore, and i had acquired a new name to add to all the odd ones of the past.
My name in full then is Birthright Exchange. Exchange took my surname and clan name. A born again, baptised vagabond just got a new name and home. Except, there is a price. The price of up rootedness is the cold feeling of life standing out in the frozen snow replaying life before truth became a dangerous topic to the ears of malfunctioning States back where democracies are still in nursery schools.
The mark of the hunted is in the ring of my new name. And a name carrying the character of its bearer drones on in silent torment as time sweetly echoes old tales of the cost of a tongue to the ears of goons that live and act as gods in their appointed times and territories. Knowing me my dozen names as boarders define me, restlessness sends me to the solitude of own company to militate against failing to respond to the call of myself on demand. I have become a spy on me as others are. I spy on my moods and my mental status. I spy on my location; I spy on faces especially if too familiar. I spy on everything and everybody, and boy! Are there enemies!
I see them and hear them rushing to uncover the real in the unreal. I feel them creeping to pounce on me to reveal the cluster of baptism names so far accrued. I sense them stalking me in my dreams waiting to trace my dialect and send me back to the hell recently escaped from.
Am so very tired. I have a craving for normal. I just want to take a walk and feel the sun on my face. I miss bursting into spontaneous song just because. I wish to call a friend and laugh at life. But I can't. For I am a sinner in the eyes of my landlord. And sinners such as I have been declared, are punished by being deleted from living and their memories faded by being refused a burial.
So here I am. A born again human with an identity crisis like an old spy who believed his lies. Am cursing life as I eat with a mumble under my foul breath. I think of my lover and spit at the sky convinced she smiles at my tormentors as a measure of gaining favor against harassment.
I am born again and bear a new name, but am far from whole, with all the holes punched on my psyche by this journey to the unknown. This process of my resurrection is digging me in deeper into a different detention camp. The only positive is I get to chronicle my spiral to where this ends, unlike my malevolent accusers who suffers, that I still breathe.
Yes. I still breathe the wind piloting me to the next bus stop of this life where I found a mango seed I flung out the window in a fate of distasteful and displaced anger sprout. I stopped in my tracks. I stared in utter disbelief at life fighting to stay afloat at the oddest of places. I went closer to check out this miracle of rejection turning to acceptance and daring to take chances.
The seed had lost the outer covering in the hostile manner of its rejection. What will eventually be the root shot out tenderly in form of a fading yellowish green tendril reaching down the edge of the stone where the mother seed hung on with nothing but the will to die so tomorrow the next generation of mangoes would have a chance to feed humanity?
I was ashamed of my anger that robbed this kindly nurturer of humanity and wildlife a proper positioning for the purpose for which it now struggled.
I had walked a rough road for many a mile. There are nights when I wasn't sure I would see light of day. I had run and sprinted from ghosts out to harm me. Now, a seed was lending its lesson on resilience in a language that knows never to give up.
The seeds concern is not that with disgust it was flung out with a bitter hand. Its purpose was to die so more mangoes could be born. Incapable of placing itself in a fertile place for better chances of survivor, it stoically reached out from the ledge of a rocky parch and send hope of growth through the thin threads of shoots.
And I knew then, what I know now. That am not owed comfort by my persecutors. That if I live or die is not their concern. That how I chose to live from now is not dependent on those who sent me here but on me.
And I, was once more, born again. This time, the rebirth was physically and emotionally painfully personal.
I knew I was not a hero neither a worm. I realized that I had been selfish and unforgiving.
I saw me for whom I had become. A grumpy soul who focused on the injuries I had accrued and not the healing I could embrace by moving on.
Then, from a distance, thunder rolled with a deafening roar. Some fat raindrops drummed on the roof top like kids playing male drums. I looked at my teacher and Baptist, the quiet mango seed, and something passed between the two of us. We are each a brother’s keeper. And as rain pelted the roof more furiously now, I reached out and covered the little tendrils with enough soil to ground the seed to grow. Then, I went back to the veranda of this home away from home facing my cowardly old eyes with the reborn eyes of a creature equal with all other creatures big and small.
Yes. A man defines his circumstances. That’s the wisdom of progress of rebirth taught by the silence of a mango seed.
And while I packed my duffle bag for the next location, I bid goodbye most earnestly to my tutor and mentor from the warm blanket of soil I had heaped on her.
originally published by jamiededes.com
THE ROAD TO ZVEGONA,
Is fading the memory of its son,
Who for words must ride the night
Fleeing ears that hear thunder on a babies purity guggle,
Zvegona, my homestead,
Ancestors are watching
Elders on a scheming mission
Trading lies with more lies
The road to Zvegona
Your Sideroads sigh
Your song is silent
Only hiccups of mothers greet the sun
Yearning for the return of the bearded child
Who lives on the strings of truth
Truth refused a seat at the council of baboons on the lagoons
Goons settling scores on the assumptions that a boy has a price,
Well, the boy true has a price
But not one you can pay with looted coins
The boy has shaved his hair not his brains
The boy has slipped his boots on and truth has raised its flag
And the spirits of truth sing his Achilles heels on,
So Zvegona, the village of the lucky poet,
Grow thistles and thorns
Feed cattle and goats
The boy has shaved his beard
Ready for a walk back, to shave the land of all pretentious shenanigans
Uprooting the weeds and weevils
Repair the kraal too,
Where roosters shall announce light unto the land,
Currently bent double under the gargantuan weight of lying tongues.
Zvegona, you are my yesterday
Zvegona, you are my tomorrow in whatever form, shape or …….
TRANSLATIONS
Each rain drop, fast, often furious, Rushing to greet the earth, often hard and thirsty earth, Transitioning, into pools, rivulets, and, Surface run offs to the drain, After roots had sucked enough, To the tributery and mother river, To the sea or lake, Far off too, to the ocean, Steam off the seagull Nation, with waves crashing on whale fins, Up and Up the heat fly's up , Clouds picking wings and forming fluffy feathers, Am from the South where men play dice with human bones, And the best use of the mouth is to chew held dreams, And spit them into fresh graves, While father's walk the slow walk of the nineth trimister mother ready to deliver, Except,the new born is an old lie wrapped in diamond glitter, Am now in the East, where Christmas happens every market day for those with pockets, While hunger roams the side streets of those politically incorrect, Am going to the North, where hope still holds a decent conversation, And reason is not needed to allow a man to breath, Invited by a soul who knows my needs and not my name, Perhaps I may end up West, Where feathers once adorned a brave head, There, I might rest a night and a day, Waiting for paid maladies to find a cure, And social consultations to search my roots, At this cross section where my dreams sit anxiously, Am kept alive by sweat of Angels from Lands I know from Google map, Am constantly logged on the accounts of good will, Never lacking for sleep for the flow of interrupted hope, I see in my mind's eye why faith is such a divine virtue, Hunger has failed to dim my steps, Cold has refused to deaden my prayers, Am a warrior first who fights best on his knees, Pillars that stand like light houses never fail to send light my way, Am mothered by love that is beyond blood and tribe, As for father's, their silenct arms embrace me from afar, So dressed in the dusty clothes of a traveler, Bearing temporariness like a permanent feature, I transact my steps in Translations of survived hits, Counting my blessings in the power of ten like Man Musa and the Commandments, I transition each night from a wide freelancer boy to a missionary with a mission and vision, What the world will know one day is this, Some paths are never chosen by those who walk them, And that the path does pick pillars to support such a walker, And I, son of an uprooted existence, Is borne on this journey by true Angels, Am a beneficiary so grateful, That when a tear drops, I catch it first before heaven thinks am ungrateful.
MISSED MOMENTS AND LOCKED PADDOCKS( Hybrid Essay )
Calling the morning with a mournful urgency, sleep fell off the routine checks of protocol and the gong silently, if urgently, summoned a sermon of fleeting feet. A son beheld the sun’s shadow with loving thoughts packed hurriedly into a strained back. The beauty of smooth roads and distance hills failed dismally to tell the dreams on a runway refusing crafts to land. Temporariness is a weed with long tendrils as only those with healthy respect for shadows know. To part with tomorrow’s hope to the hands of a paid Piper whose mission in “ his appointed career” is to poach livelihoods of passerby’s in quest for a nights nest on this migratory routine is a pain bordering on a tooth extraction without anaesthesia. That this accepted sin is described in business lingo as lucrative is tearing off fresh from the living and asking to be thanked. And the revolutionary chant is not over!!! Am blind and love it because that way I judge nobody. Am deaf and trust it because that way I hear only hope from Angels from a far. Am immune to cold and heat so the elements don’t scare me, I am a lamp post planted by hands I can only guess at. Am a child and a man honest enough to acknowledge God exists in the spirit of creation and the heart of men however few. When boarders slam doors louder than an irate spouse demonstrating disgust at an assumed slight by love, common sense stirs the soul for an instinctive triple jump. Am a son of the South where the sun rises with the song of the hills and cattle calling milk to duty, Milk is a source of life and it’s absence is a bitter song that speaks kwashiorkor and other third rate needs unmet. Am a product of great souls that the universe unites to clear the morning smog with a hearts torch. And the struggle song is not over!!! What is Man but a product of Man? I refuse to reject humanity and I do it with humility. Where I am is a location whose dust reminds me of my earliest form and my final formlessness. I am a journey on a travel and now is time to chant an old tune, That no struggle is without cause and course if it’s the one that chose you, And in the beauty of such times as we are living in, islands within, Am counting thousands of breaths in gratitude for the spice that life and living is. For spice true, is in the variety, Not only of terrain but of origin, But also the hand that tended it, The hand that picked and packed it, As such, Making the whole a part of the bits and vice versa. Cycles refuse to rest, like a month in flight, a soul flies in the night leaving a sad dream on a prodigal sons wet eyelids, And the liberation vibe is not far , Who can say the taste of life is anything but mysterious and hard at it’s best? News is best at it’s absence if it’s not the birth of a child, Am awake to all truths even the most banal and morbid, Am human enough to weep at wickedness and laugh at jest, But tell me fair men of this land that “ unlanded” me how to virtually bury my own, Tell me like am a three year old how to grieve with dignity this vehicle that bore me to your shores and must now bid a silent goodbye in my blinded monastery upon this cavernous existence, And the redemption thunder is rumbling more closer!!! Am flesh and flesh has demands to weep and touch it’s own in making and unmaking, Who will roll this mist back a day and allow a wish to plan a shared hug? Am a child of the universe bleeding hard on the winds that make commandments of demented bafoonery, I fall on these weakened knees sending this mute anguish up into the bloated clouds, If I see tomorrow it’s all because silence has given me a route to walk in this barren vacuum of misplaced hunger of human touch, That voices sprout hands that feed my sanity with a purity only angels know, am grateful, And some day, when the grass has grown over that mound that settled unto itself, This boy with a grey beard shall come back to plant a fruit tree on the home square and name it “ Silver” in honor of all dawns and dusks, And the tender hands that give me dew upon this journey at the earliest of arrivals. Am all that because you are all that, even as you now ride the stars in the silence of night and the wind of days. And the revolutionary chanters are chanting still Its not yet uhuru , Aluta Continua, the fight and chant for freedom Continues.
IRON WIND ( Hybrid Writing )
The world has known divisions for as long as history can remember. From strength that overrides others to the weakness that attracts marauding gangs of men of ambition and cunning. Adventure has led some into what they termed “discoveries” of Rivers and their sources, of Mountains high and majestic, and a people so different in their cultural environments, that to the eye of a visitor, they appeared other worldly.
The world has never run short of divisive tools and terms to keep one for each. From the irony of heights and weights, to the delight’s and indecency of dark humor based on foods and drinks and a people’s culture. GOD and god’s have their roles and stamps on a people’s interpretations, raging from waging wars to convert and dominate, to whole sale massacres because others beliefs were less acceptable to a deity followed by a muscular power. In the name of many known Faiths , man has suffered immensely and continue to suffer even under the full glare of a world that is so connected, that nothing escapes the owl eyed social Media/internet never sleeping eyes.
If it’s not belief it’s something else that pits one man to another. Color has played the worst card in segregation of humanity. Regimes are known to have come up with a cultic panacea of annihilating all who were less than their proscribed hue, height and eye color in a so called super race.
Commerce has not particularly done well to hide i’s dismal take on the lesser endowed in terms of what the world considers GDP….Countries are graded into first, second and third world. Countries comprise individual human beings. Once categorized in numerical terms, they cease to have a human quality and adopt a statistical stature.
Dehumanizing poverty by demonizing it and those suffering the “pauper malady”. Terms like ” those who survive under a dollar a day. A people labelled by lack. Another labelled by luck.
Divisions.
Then came weaponry and sophistication. Guns and canned Carnage. Bombs as heroism spoke to the Sky over Nagasaki and Hiroshima. More divisions follow. Giants with cold threats lying under silos of frozen homes awaiting disagreements. What a time of it the world had! But like all eras, this too came to an end with trumpets of fragmentation scattering the deadly embers of stored caches of annihilation finding its ways into eager markets of rogue juvenile quarters ready to tussle for positions of “global respect” through “fire power”
Ideology made no sense. Religion was cowed. No one was immune to the future that loomed on the human collective heads as each goon state thumped it’s nukes chest.
How times change!
A new baby was born in the East. A baby with an attitude like a thief. Escaping its parents unloving gloved hands, it flew first into the neighborhood, dropping its ghastly feaces on the heads of its makers kin. Death. Sinister death. The wind took the birdling over the boarder, across the oceans on the comforts of cruise ships. And luxury living became a nightmare. Right now, quarantine is not for rabid dogs or leppers in their colonies.
It’s what no longer divides that divides us. What irony! We are faced by an enemy of our own intellect taken over concious. Our own intelligence exceeding common sense. Our own genius gone insane. In it all, regardless of mitigation measures,one thing speaks a human language. It’s no longer about class, color or Creed. it’s not even about ideology or theology. It’s about being careful to survive the monster we have made. And the world suddenly speaks “humanese”
How I wish we didn’t have to face such an ugly and tragic catastrophe to bring us to the realization of the folly of excessive greed in pursuit of glory and power over others.
If we survive, we may have to analyze our engagement with dark matters that that put life at risk. If we don’t, we are to blame for our end. For now, let’s keep hygienic, keep to ourselves, bury our Dead, care for the dying and think of how we have arrived at where we are.
While at it, let’s pray. For regardless of our form of worship, days of worship, mode of worship and the dress code in worship, we all pray to a Higher power. He may yet hear our prayers and led a hand.
YOU SEE, praying I personal and communal if you will. Worship places are closing fast, if not faster than bars and deli’s. Offices are closing fast, if not faster than schools.
Only true saints are at work. Those medics and their assistants and the guys who must fill the supermarket shelves with your basics. If you ask me, the very deity we seek in those buildings, is inside us and those selfless humans who take chances with their lives to take charge of ours. They are the ones mellowing down the iron wind of a viral onslaught on humanity right now.
DICTATORS DOEKS
Grandma’s sweat bathes the statehouse tarmacs, Poverty shaved fathers are the glitter that replaced floodlights and stolen lampposts Brother is the anointed fisherman catching political breams for the presidential roast Ideological tutored memes sing praise anthems………..patronized Singing praises to the republic’s red-carpet ……..they never stepped on. Protocol relegates them to the ragged edges of the republic, Mother’s tears rinse dishes after daily dictator’s banquets, August is a museum of spent cartridge that shat death on sister’s womb, ……………..she birthed death. Sister and her bullet shredded fetus are now snoring sorrow under the rubble of elections cemetery. January swallowed its conscience and munched grenade for dinner November drizzled both waterfalls of blood and threads of hesitant laughter’s …………… Nights of long knives ………… November drizzle birthed another tyrant. November! November! You are dictator. Autocrat’s robes immersed in blood gems of Katanga. The African moon archived that in RED CAPITAL LETTERS. Hermits and slogan slingers donning dictator’s emblazoned doeks, jabbing the corrupt foul wind with pseudo–revolutionary jives dancing for the gwamandaizing, glutton, gobbling globetrotting gold cartels trendsetter. Kitchen cabinet frying small fish in autocratic pans and then enjoy the delicacies during dictator’s concert under the guise of shadows ……….ooh crocodile games. Grandma snores under the hill of villages packed like sardine until next ballot quadratics. March, foot prints of dictators are scribbled all over the republic’s red carpet. April ,autocrats’ fingerprints are the signature of diamond cartels. May, tyrant’s thumbprint decorates the ragged bank note. June, lyrics on your doek are his campaign slogan. Still grandma’s sweat bathes the statehouse tarmacs. Mother’s tears rinse dishes after daily dictator’s banquets,
PRESIDENTIAL GRIOT
Sometimes memories smell like a dictator’s fart We once jived to our own shadows under the silver moon and our shadows danced along with us, we rhymed to the nightmares of hyenas and hallucinations of black owls. Our desires sailed along with gowns of fog back and forth at village dawns. Wood smoke smelt like fresh baked bread. Time bewitched us, we ate William Shakespeare and John Donne. We drank lemon jugs of Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou. Soyinka’s lyrical whisky wrecked our tender nerves. We bedded politics with boyish demeanor and dreamt of the black cockerels and black Hitler’s Sometimes time is stubborn like a sitting tyrant Last night, commissars chanted a slogan and you baked a dictator’s poetry sanguage. Zealots sang Castro and Stalin and you brewed a socialist crank, the president is a stinking capitalist. I never said he is Satanist. Back to village nights, hyenas are laughing still, black owls gossiping, silver moon dancing still over rain beaten paths of our country dawns. Sometimes time stinks like a dictator’s fart Your lyrical satire sneaked imbeciles through back doors. Your praise sonnets recycled suicidal devils and polished revolutionary rejects Back then, smells of fresh dung and scent of fresh udder milk were our morning brew and under the twilight the moon once disappeared into the earthly womb, Judas, the sun then took over and every dictator is an Iscariot. I never said we are now vagabonds
Sometimes time smells like a dying autocrat Mwedzi wagara ndira uyo tigo tigo ndira – the moon was once sour milk silver white and fresh from the Gods’ mouth and sat on its presidential throne on the zenith of bald headed hills and later with time the moon was ripe to go mwedzi waora ndira tigo tigo ndira Sometimes wind gusts whistled their tenor through elephant grass pastures, we sang along the obedient flora Chamupupuri icho…oo chamupupuri chaenda chamupupuri chadzoka Chamupupuri icho...oo!
Our poverty marinated , yellow maize teeth grinned to sudden glows of lightening, the earth gyrated under the grip of thunder, then Gods wept and we drank teardrops with a song mvura ngainaye tidye makavu , mvura ngainaye tidye makavu .. Pumpkins bred like rabbits, veldts strutted in Christmas gowns. Wild bees and green bombers sang protest and praise. I never said we are children of drought relief.
Sometimes time grows old like a sitting tyrant, Tonight the echo of your praise poetry irk the anopheles stranded in tired city gutters to swig the bitter blood of ghetto dwellers, gutter citizens eking hard survival from hard earth of a hard country , their rough hands marked with scars of the August Armageddon , their sandy hearts are rigged ballot boxes stuffed with corruption ,they waited and sang for so long . Chamupupuri icho…oo chamupupuri chaenda chamupupuri icho…oo chamupupuri chadzoka Chamupupuri icho..oo
LETTER TO GOD, a Short Fiction
LETTER TO GOD
Somewhere beside Zvagona hills, near Zvamapere ‘kopje of hyenas’ , adjacent to the foothills of Dayataya mountain lies bones and spirits of my great grandfathers and their descendants .I loved this land .Every rain season, Zvagona hills were village brides fitted in green dresses and floral doek’s over their heads. Their lush skin shimmered blue from a distance in the hazy of December sun .Usually ,autumn arrived with god’s gifts of multi- colored costumes of blooming flowers , their petals nodding erotically to the hesitant sun, the sun winked back secretly to the smiling flowers . Bees and cicadas haunting them like delinquent boys to village damsel’s .This time, the earth becomes a beautiful princess scented with natural perfume and clad in floral gowns of pink, yellow, white, peach and ox blood red.
June is a vicious dog, it brought howling winds and winter’s canines grazed deep into our lives. The earth is undressed into utter nudity. Elephant grass saluted to the passing wind like grandfathers surrendering life. Our hills spotted jailbird’s bald shave as they nodded to the winter’s sirens: whirlwind and dust ripples .Forests stood shell shocked in their torn overalls. Flowers are tightlipped, their cousins rot into extinction waiting for rain when the earth is born again. The cold bruised sun is a patch on the undergarments of grey horizons .This time, the moon is a hesitant bride. It is winter and nights are ink black and unfriendly. Hyenas wail in pain of winter’s bite, regular face- booking of monkeys is on hold. Cicadas are silent like birds. Sometimes hills wept to each other under the veil of mist and the shivering moon lulled our somber souls into sleep until the next morning. When morning comes , the baldheaded hills are ready for a fight, standing proud in anticipation of sunshine or rain , alas the biting winds persisted and the hills are resilient too and similar to the undying spirits of peasants eking out life from tracks of hard red earth on the fringes of Zvagona hills. At night hills were draped in robes of white mist and towards dawn, they fit onto skirts of grey and top gear of blue. We were told ancestors walked alongside the mist at nights and in mornings they would go into deep sleep. The mystery of Zvagona hills, hills of home. During that season, we stacked loads of firewood for warmth, cooking meals and brewing traditional beer. We lived off the forests.
When Gods are angry, the earth is clad in rags like an imbecile. It wears a black torn monkey hat over itself like a pick pocketter. The air is taunt with foul smell of decaying lives. Baboon’s sermons are placed in God’s wardrobe. Our creased faces told sorry tales of poverty and hunger gnawing the pits of our bellies
When the red glow of heat persisted like in hell. Silence and barrenness are weaved together onto red earth. While rivers become white washed skeletons of dry sand .Elders spoke in tongues to the wind, we lost their words in the pleats of their elderly language .After some days they traverse to the end of the earth to supplicate Zame, the spirit of rain . Njelele, Zame’s disciple would direct them to Nyami Nyami, the goddess of water .They are told to wash their feet and dance to Gods. They were punished for replacing forests with concrete jungles. Birds and spirits of the land were now vagabonds. They are told the earth is simmering in abomination and Gods are angry and choked with carbon laced fumes. They are warned of the coming of devil’s triplets: hunger, heat waves and cyclones. They paid their ornaments, applauded the gods and returned to their hovels underneath the fringes of Zvagona hills.
Later, when heavens get overexcited. Gods washed our sins with tears of their joy, rains washed and blessed our land. The earth is born again and is dressed to kill in its usual green gowns and floral doek’s .We danced to the clap of thunder and camera flashes of lightening winked at us. Our poverty marinated, yellow maize teeth grinned to sudden glows of lightening .Sometimes lightening jolts sank our tender hearts into our rib -boxes. Zvagona hills also gyrated under the grip of thunder. We danced still for the blessing of rain and rebirth. Our planting fields were patches of alluvial earth between the hems of the hills and the banks of Mamvuramachena “river of white waters” .Sooner pumpkins bred like rabbits, veldts wore a silver cap of water and new dark green military combat of sprouting elephant grass. Smells of fresh dung and the scent of fresh udder mik were our morning brew. The new grass fattened our cows, their oily skins shimmered under God’s obedient sun.
Our mothers traversed from hill to hill harvesting mushroom, nhedzi, zvihombiro, nzeveyambuya nezhouchuru ‘names of different kind of mushrooms’. Wild mushroom is an African delicacy, a delicacy that raised us from mucus drooling kindergartens into goat bearded grown-ups. Wild fruits of maroro, nhengeni and nhunguru were showered to us by the excited Gods. Bushes became our second homes. We dried fruits and mushroom for the future with the aid of our loving grandmothers. We salivated to the rich fart of roasting meat and baking bread emitted from kitchen huts. Grass beautifies the earth as food beautifies lives. We enjoyed to see our goats getting fat. Bush honey was abundant. We fought successful battles with ferocious red bees for the mouthwatering delicacy, dendende sweet red honey. We accompanied the red honey hunt with a song
Sunga musoro wedendende
Sunga wakanaka dendedende
Sunga musoro wededende ,
sunga wakanaka dendende
Sunga wakanaka dendende
sunga wakanaka dendende
The rhythm had returned.
When cockerels announced the new days, eastern hills were beautifully capped with the glow of orange hats from the sparkling sunrays . Baboons cuddled each other in the wake of dawn romance. Rock rabbits jived to the acoustics of cicada tunes and to the discord of village sounds. Mother monkeys rebuked their babies from over eating. Down the stream, fish and toads bathed in smoking falls of fresh water. They are home again. Shezu ‘honey bird’ spoiled the festival by singing a warning hymn, maybe for another drought to come or death of a reputable person. Nights are stitched with thread of hyena’s laughter’s and the syntactic hymns of owls.
Our elders sang in contented choruses, nhaka inhara meaning ‘the year is blessed with rains’.
We sang to the silver white moon that was fresh from God’s mouth as it sat on its throne, over the fontanels of Zvagona hills, Mwedzi wagara ndira uyo tigo tigo ndira –and later with time the moon was ripe to go we bade her farewell mwedzi waora ndira tigo tigo ndira.
Now many years had passed since I left for the city, two decades away from years of dance and abundance. The land is now a wretched vagabond. I am sitting underneath the ragged skirts of mystery hills, pondering if my great ancestor’s bones and spirits are still lying here. I see the luxury of rotating seasons is long lost in the abrupt silence of this land. The tenor of birdsongs and baritones of baboons on the mountain zenith is no more. Birds and baboons are long gone, maybe to blessed climes. The joyous scream of hyenas and jackals at dawns was cut short .The joy of reeds dancing to the soprano of mighty streams was remote silenced. A deadly silence.
The sun’s heat is menacing as if tongs of red hot charcoal are floating in the air. The heavens are rude and clear blue .Waves of heat turned the earth into a baking oven. Fields are chunks of dried and burnt bread. Trees are strips of roasted biltong. Cyclones passed through and carried away my ancestor’s bones to faraway seas. Skeletal dunes of sand replaced our mighty Mamvuramachena ‘river of white waters’
Hills are bald headed and wearing a herpes zoster belt around their bellies. They are sweating under the grip of heat caused eczema. I suppose we are cursed. Nyami nyami once warned of hunger, cyclones and heat waves, the menacing triplets.
Behold my earth is naked.
Dear beloved God are we cursed?
PorCuPineQuill is authored and edited Mbizo CHIRASHA
Founder and Author of the Time of the Poet.Freedom of Speech Fellow toPEN- Zentrum Deutschland,Germany.Alumni of the International Human Rights Arts Festival in New-York, USA.Literary Arts Activism Diplomatie. Globaly Certified Arts Mediums Curator and Influencer. Internationally Published Page and Spoken Word Poet. Writer in Residence. Arts for Human Rights Catalyst. Core Team Member of the Bezine Arts and Humanities Project. His illustrious poetry , hybrid writings , political commentary ,short fiction , book reviews and Arts Features are published in more than 400 spaces notably the Monk Arts and Soul in Magazine in United Kingdom. Atunis Poetry.com in Belgium. Demer press poetry series in Netherlands. World Poetry Almanac in Mongolia.Poesia journal inSlovenia. Bezine Arts and Humanities Webzine in USA. The Poet a Day in Brooklyn ,USA. Litnet Writers Journal in South Africa. African Crayons in Nigeria. Poetry Bulawayo in Zimbabwe. Pulp-pit USA.the FictionalCafe international Journal, Texas USA
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