The Poetry Marathon

Here, we have only one ambition
To make all your dreams come true
Pleasuring you is our ultimate reward
What would you care for, madame et monsieur?
A spa…a sauna?
Facials…facelifting?
We can alter and dis- alter virtually anything and anybody…in our castle fantasy
We can make…and break
Even exchange your reality for another’s
Switch your er nagging and overweight wife with one more temperate and hour glass figured. Your rambunctious kids for docile ones!
Whatever cuisine or wines you can think of, is on our handsome and robust menu. Properties in choice locations and automobiles, as well!
Aspiring for a political position? Within a heartbeat, that will also be arranged and viola!
Just dream it!
And we make it!

I have learnt that beyond the breezy ‘ I’m fine thank you’ response to our usual ‘How are you?’
Can lie heartbreak, discouragement, pain and so much sorrow
The ‘I’m fine thank you’ is an automatic default setting kind of answer
But, it takes a true friend, a sensitive one to decipher what lies just underneath the mechanical reply
A lot of people are hurting, a smile, a kind word or even a gift can keep someone going, give a renewed faith in humanity, make one stronger and happier
Life happens to all of us. No one is immune and so in this journey, we need each other’s shoulder to lean on intermittently.
Be the friend who sees beyond the façade and offers safe harbor

Intricately wooven
Carefully spun
Again and again
A matrix is formed
So many untruths
With a little sprinkling of truth
Put together
In a web…that cannot be unravelled

I watch you laugh, without a care in the world
A laughter that reaches deep down into your belly
Your grins literally light up the world
Your presence make it all complete
And wish…I could be on your side
Be with you….laugh without a care in the world
Be so happy as to forget the ache inside

The birds chirping
The horizon clearing
The trees waving
The cars starting
The air clearing
The day cheering
Signal
A brand new dawn

I am dark
You cannot see me in the dark
For i blend with it
I am dark, i am night
I am your darkest desire
I am your darkest need
Smooth and svelte
Like Gulder
Dark and stormy like the sea
I am dark

Nobody’s land

Nothing works here
There are constant excuses for the never ending power outtages
From one breakdown or collapse or the other
The future of the youths are traded on the altar of foreign loans
Debt servicing now the vogue
Adept at scratching the surface of the problem, never actually solving the problem
University education stymied…with students bemoaning their fate
Local currency almost useless, daily being devalued
Inflation at its zenith, for we cannot give what we do not have
Food production is threatened as farmers are either being kidnapped, killed or threatened
Peace is anathema here
Lawlessness, social vices apparently given free rein
Women are made husbandless
Husbands rendered wifeless
Children made orphans with gunshots
Worship centres are filled, with people daily crying to their gods
Youths…graduates roam the streets in their thousands in search of none existent jobs
The civil service is filled…to overflowing with the people who have ‘connect’
Quota system is slowly killing the morale of the populace as many feel very marginalised
Anyhowness describes this clime
Political prostitution now the order of the day
Desperate people…desperately and avariciously and sometimes murderously clinging to the reins of power
Almost as if it’s their identity…they cannot exist otherwise
Road travel now a death wish as it is now an easy trap for kidnappers
This marriage of convenience shakes…as calamities accompany it
Whither Nobody’s land?

I am dark
I blend with the dark
I blend with the night
I am dark
A colour that strikes fear in your pale heart
I am dark
Svelte, smooth
Easy on the eyes
Easy on the hands
I am dark

A black and beautiful beast was El toro
Shinning and enormous in size was El toro
He thought himself indestructible
He thought himself…unvanquishable
The pride of the stable was he
And he made sure both man and animal alike never forgot it
Until he was sold out to another farmer
Where he was relegated
As the farmer had bigger and more beautiful bulls…more magnificient looking than himself
The great El toro became ordinary..so ordinary he was always overlooked in the barn
The great El toro became…the poor El toro

Greedily. ..his eyes light up at the sight of the mint and strawberry Lollipop
Aye, his eyes literally strain out of their sockets…until he is given it
He sucks greedily his beady eyes dancing with delight
His belly straining within the confines of his shirt increases literally width wise as he sucks
His mouth is badly smeared, his shirt too by the time he is done licking the mint and strawberry lollipop