David Smalling Poet Free verse

Fanon

I was planning on going to Azania to die like you
No one would transport me
Away from the rhetoric, and Fidel left before 
I knew. So I wrote on walls
Endless missives of declarations for freedom.
I made words into missiles
But saw no gore, nor body bags, and I wept.
If mine was only a mask I would be another them
The drums heart throbbing would tell me nothing
Except where to board the ship and work my fare
Until I stood in cordite fumes and carbine glare.
I say it securely, but I am not sure
How much of me is recoverable from the past
And how much of you was lost
There are so many broken things in a broken history
So many false images in the cobweb of lies
If thinking becomes a chain
Unless I think like God again.
What would you say Zimbabwe now, this global mirror
In which we must adjust the self against the self?
What would call a man that keeps no vow
So that he may keep a vow?
Is not all love a compulsive obsession
When you believe in its truth?
I am hanging mask on wall tonight, I am going out
To look up at stars and name them all after you.

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Robert Pettit August 18, 2012 at 1:45 AM Are you writing about the late Frantz Fanon here? This has been a very enjoyable and interesting read. David Smalling August 18, 2012 at 2:07 AM Frantz Fanon is an hero of mine because he recognized like Cabral, it was not enough to liberate a country, you have to also liberate a man from the mental shackles that enslaved the country. Che might have been then the only liberated liberator.