(For David Emeka Kalu )

 

You’re tangled up in politics

you’ve drowned yourself  in ink blots

Jesus Christ redemption

is your full time job.

 

Here rhetoric & prose

lie hand in hand: dug down deep in

African Bad Lands where death hisses

where death huddles & colludes.

 

You’re tangled up in politics

all dried up & superimposed

no time for living, giving, loving,

you love the whole world.

 

Love lost in Hero prime time

you know that now’s the right time

to become a martyr to quarter sainthood

to write a testament for what you think is truth.

 

Beko & Mandela point a way

through beatings & prison cell

you try again to quell

the treachery of despotism.

 

You’re stitched up in heroism

the word etched on the page

you’re a symptom of the rage

of an entire nation