previous | next
 
 
 

FOR SUZANNA
Dedicated to my friend of the war years, who died of stress.
For Suzanna

A lady who never came back home but was always around.
Her body and soul divorced in a border conflict
As united nations become too much for strangers
To remember the rusty land mines
Surrounding the truth.

For Suzanna

A veteran of untold stories
Whose body became a church
For high-ranking monks to relieve their stress
From hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness.
Like the unwritten songs.
There is nothing interesting about the truth
Since politicians may lose their jobs
Just at the thought of it.

For Suzanna

The women who delivered healthy babies
Through caesarian section without anaesthetics,
Operating with a sharp ageless stone.
Her babies received tree bark and leaf comfort,
While running away from a genocidal war
Somewhere in the centre of the earth
Yet still alive
For longer than history’s own grandmother.

For Suzanna

The woman who toiled,
On the land from dusk to dawn
Wondering still about her role in society,
Who specialised in growing human beings
Yet never claimed her nearness to god,
While her own progeny insult her kindness
Through mental and physical rape.

For Suzanna

Always haunted by images
Of torture and barbarism.
The children wonder
What mother talks about to herself.
And the invisibles use her
As a pocket for their debts.

For Suzanna

Whose funeral proceedings shall be hijacked by dinosaurs
To prove they still exist.
Using her life story as a parable
For a Sunday sermon
To lure more subscriptions.
A descendant of the Mbuya Nehandas
Whose history shall remain
On stone paintings in caves
Until the truth takes itself to the liberator’s pallor
Where the sun will rise every day.