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For the Uninitiated Impostors
I feel a nauseating revulsion to see scraps of prose
Bundled together in a neatened pile in the name of poetry,
And prizes being awarded for such otiose verbiage
And praises being heaped for such boring coquetry.
Poetry, my dear uninitiated impostors,
Is the language of the mute solemn gods.
You ought to choose your nifty title well
And thus commence your verse against the odds.
Avoid Soyinka’s worn-out style of incompetent blank verse,
Instead, give it the rhyme scheme of the unbeatable Yeats;
The superior verse that one Tom Mboya has never read,
The taste that a Kenyan editor will haul over the rooftop sheets.
Line after line beg the company of some higher Muse
So that you may pen the will of the gods and not your own;
Alliterate here and there though you must not make it your aim,
Then lunge into deeper thought with a deity-like melancholy tone.
And never seek fame for your sacred poetic tasks.
Leave the young to sing your lyrics centuries upon your death,
And remember a great weaver of rhymes long deceased
And pray and wish you immortal blissful health.
Copyright ©
Hannington Mumo
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