If ratings give meaning, symbolled with stars,
Then always keep on your ratings radar.
I’m trying to write my best poem by far,
Please rate it between a one and five star.
Lines as, ‘She brakes me as if I’m a car,
While my engine’s roaring like a jaguar!’
What, that’s too simple, need to raise the bar?
Ok, how about some hardy har har.
Like, ‘Friends of mine truly think they’re the Tsar!’
I say ‘Tsk, tsk, Tsar.’ Is that a one star?
Alright, alright let’s try something bizarre,
With a foreign slant; you with me so far?
‘Jones’s travels brought him to a bazaar;
He wanted dinner, but had no dinar.’
Ok folks, please rate that quip from Dakar.
Does it yet approach a two or three star?
Give me one more chance to get up to par,
For the next line may be a real all-star.
‘The sturgeon roe’d his boat for caviar.’
Is that great line worth at least a four star?
Why rate ‘show and tell’ like a kid’s toy car;
Does rating give purpose for who we are?
Ratings are playthings for wanna-be stars.
Still, increasing ratings’ rates is in our,
Need to soar somewhere, maybe way out far.
Yet, let the cosmos govern the five stars.
The Election result is a kill-joy
And has a man made a boy:
A result so blunt I’m trying ketamine;
That should my recovery determine
My BP should’ve been key issue
And its treatment a Toilet Tissue …
A woman has captured my capital
And what’s next if not Hospital?
The whole stuff taken to any doorstep
And claiming to have watched my every step …
My eyes have been fed humbling scores,
Another shutting of my political doors
An angering spread sheet on my lap
Underscoring my defeat by a gap.
And I swear animals what these portend,
Birds to laugh if I do them contend …
Right now A chairwoman Elect!
And they wouldn’t me select.
Already, I can see her sky-scraping head gear
And celebratory fanfare in high gear
Artificial eye-lashes one can glimpse from hundred meters
And music-powering generator with hundred litres …
And guess I’m emigrating to Dakar
Or to far-off fourth Africa
Or perhaps nearer Niamey …
No eye-lashes wearer will chair me.
I stung my glory to Dakar
Where I portray my lovely '66'
Without no more melancholy
I played to save me precious '66' in Dakar
Referred to as a ***** I stood my ground
Blossoming into the heights and
Portraying the ability of unseen peculiarity
I slander no more to the very angels of mortality
Now right at the heart of success I stung again
But this time I stung harder than ever
Paving way for the angels to freeze their visual mortality on my peculiarity
In their devil's box with two horns
I called unto my fellow
To surpass their thoughts
And stand on hills to crave for a trust
In their ***** by building virtues not of bust
In a place called the 'big black'
Let's come together and quench their mortal angel
For we are not mortal like angels
But we have a dignity to stand for
After and while we portray our '77'
The devil's eye box will always play our
Melodious themes for the angels to sing in their solemnity
I will always long to praise my '77'
Though the past has gone to the dust
And the youths know it no more
"I will live to stand my '77' for a greater forever"
An African Queen
Senegal what do I know of that country
But I have sailed past her coast, alas, she
Is married to Dakar nothing I can do.
She spoke French the tall lady and sounded
Sex, my language seems like a bulldozer
Flattening a Palestinian home so I smiled and
Said little dismayed over my lack of speech
When it imperative to make injustice heard.
Tall she was walked like a gazelle she worked
At a place where she didn`t had to be up
At seven in the morning and anyway she was
Not from Senegal, it was Senegal I loved
My ship doesn`t sail her way, but I whisper her
Name Senegal, Senegal into the African breeze
This is a script to read again
Its wordings are clear- no blunder
Each page on its own is a sane
It has distinct words to ponder
I’m yet to find its replacement
This is a script to read again
It’s obvious in its endowment
A script fit beyond thousand reigns
With what I've seen, I've much to gain
Those about lives before our own
This is a script to read again
Can any author beat this Lone?
In everything it’s just the star
I think its lost can’t be regain
It’s the same here and in Dakar
This is a script to read again.
28/5/2013
1.
Calm descends,
feathery, misty, settling gently on this city’s breath.
Elusive sleep,
teases,
hiding amongst the clouds,
while silver ribbons of moonlight, caress the concrete.
2.
Midnight in Jo’burg,
alone, in this wild-eyed, crazy city,
warm and cruel at once,
ragged, torn, sublime,
brimming with African life,
alive in an African summer night.
3.
Zimbabwe, you are us,
Morocco is infused in our veins,
Nigeria lingers on our wet kisses,
Malawi, we are you.
4.
A continental mosaic,
the smells of Cairo,
and sounds of Dakar,
soaked in tastes of Addis,
mingle on my city’s streets.
5.
We are all, African.
‘They’ are not the other,
we are ‘them’, tossed in a communal pot,
sipping mampoer*,
and chowing pap and vleis*,
in my city,
my Jozi**,
your Jo’burg**,
our eGoli**
_____
* – a home-brewed drink, and a maize-meal porridge and meat.
** – all names refer to Johannesburg.
Still trying to make sense of it all after all these years
Still weighing-measuring and short changing my own self;
There isn’t much hope I’ll find any positive answers;
Especially out here where the natural order of things live
And the innocents who should have been granted munity;
They appear to have been lined up and given their places
As if the more of those that hear the story and agree;
The less contradictable might be the causes and effects.
Pointing fingers -wagging tongues;
They’ll be no forgiveness when everything’s done;
Truth was but a reminiscent portrayal.
And too many ships have already sailed.