(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