Mbizo CHIRASHA (Time of the Poet Republic Curator)   Author of a Letter to the President. co-Authored Whispering Woes of Ganges and Zambezi. Co-Edited Street Voices Poetry Collection (Germany Africa Poetry Anthology). Co- Editor of the Corpses of Unity Anthology.
Associate Editor at  Diasporia(n) online. Chief Editor at Time of the Poet Republic. Founding Editor at WomaWords Literary Press. Publisher at Brave Voices Poetry journal.  Curator at Africa Writers Caravan. UNESCO-RILA Affiliate Artist at University of Glasgow. 2020 Poet in Residence Fictional Café. 2019 African Fellow, IHRAF.ORG. Project Curator and Co-Editor of the Second Name of Earth is Peace (Poetry Voices Against WAR Anthology). Contributing Essayist to Monk Arts and Soul Magazine.  Poetry and writtings appear in  FemAsia Magazine, Wrath -Bearing Tree, Inksweat andtears journal, One Ghana One Magazine, Ofi Press, World Poetry Almanac, Demer Press, Atunis Galaxy poetry online, IHRAF Publishes, The Poet a Day , Bezine.Com, Sentinel UK, Oxford School of Poetry Pamphlet , Africa Crayons, PulpitMagazine,Poetry Pacific, Zimbolicious, Best New Poets, Poetry Bulawayo, Gramnet webjournal, Diogen Plus, Poeisis.si, Festival de Poesia Medellin and elsewhere .

MIDNIGHT MONOLOGUES

(i).

I smell the heavy scent of the night, pitch black night

It is sunset on the foothills of my country,

I smell the heavy scent of the night,

pitch black night   coils into this tired land feigning darkness

pitch-black night,

darkest of night birthing revolutionary ghosts and ideological imbeciles every pitch-black night.

Pitch black night ever pregnant with emotion and wrong ambition, with heartbroken shadows harvesting funerals,

 In this pitch-black night

 I drink tears for tea,

munching grief chapped lips for bread,

  dry bread to fill up my four-decade aged spiritual torment

I smell the scent of a dying moon, the death of moonshine

Midnight crawls- in with a groan of poverty,

I scrounge to catch the traces of freedom leftovers through broken windows of life.

I am walking journeys in my mind to touch the glimpse of the feeble moon

I weep for the death of moonlight,

And now gutter rats and stray cockroaches feast from hidden treasures

Dancing out the fiesta, feasting with corrupt and corrupted shadows,

silent anthills are weeping too, their death bleached bones and souls are weeping too

Mother is no more, she went away with the moonlight, they buried her with a dirge

Mumurevere mumumrerevere

Kana mabuvuzwa moti ayi namata

Mumurevere mumurevere

Mumurevererere

Kana mabvunzwa  moti ainamata mumureverere.

The last spell of dust clung her thick eyelids,

her spirit winked to Gods to announce her journey to the land of her New Canaan.

And we remained in the New Normal.

 I shall come to embrace Mama, the same way I came here, my spirit mother shall wink for her spiritual mates to welcome me the fruit of her womb back into the veil of heavens, spirit-land. We shall meet again.

And her spiritual mates shall chant a song, a song of griots, a song of unsung heroes,

a pungwe chant, a song they sang in the struggle for another struggle,

a song that perched black cockerels on the zenith of thrones,

a song that set the sun, a song that rose the sun

a song that killed the moon,

a song that is a paradox

a song that opened doors and shut them,

a song that polished rejects onto ladders of power,

a song of freedom, a song of aborted freedom,

a revolutionary song

a recycled song that recycled ideological demagogues,

 we are born by the song and we die by the song.

 Mama, I never sang the last hymn for you,

I never saw the last wink or the last giggle,

the fall of lioness, mother freedom.

Testimony of the struggle, the sceptre of freedom,

heartbeat from the echo of the yesteryear gun, mind-vibes, the raindrop beat rhythm of struggle pungwe songs

Maruza imi ,maruza imi ,maruza imi

Maruza maruza maruza

Maruza imi, maruza imi

Maruza maruza maruza

Maruza imi, maruza imi , maruza imi

 The last spell of dust is still clinging on your thick eyelids.  Here , here my  epitaph verse  ‘sleep comfortably in the warm palms of the Lord’

 And I sing  again  the last verse of the pungwe song

Maruza imi ,maruza imi ,maruza imi

Maruza imi, maruza imi

Maruza imi, maruza imi , maruza imi

 (ii)

I smell the crashing of the revolutionary light

Soothsayers talk in sacred tongues that the light in the moon went with last revolutionary legend,

Tyrannical legend died clutching the clay of country in his hard- clenched right-hand fist. He chanted another chant,

another slogan,

another clenched fist slogan.

In this pitch-black night,

obituaries wetted pseudo revolutionary columns and frail patriotic tabloids,

paradoxical revolutionary legend died with his Marxist -Leninist hardened forehead creased with the graffiti of a stolen country, a country strangled to death, a country that is now a walking ghost.

A country lost in the cemetery of vendetta and vulgar

 Learned tyrannical revolutionary legend, munched the all -protein -all vitamin chlorophyll filled bean-leaf Oxford English dictionary ,

Imbibed the red-grape beverages of Latina encyclopedia, sanctified by Vatican City Catholic moguls. The dead tyrannical, revolutionary legendary stalwart carved by ideological recipe and intellectual concoction of Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist socialist gin, the Victorian- Elizabethan verbiage, peasant-guerrilla-bush struggle for freedom scholarship, pan African-Nkrumaist socialist extremism-

 A balanced diet.

An Ideological recipe.

An Intellectual concoction

The revolutionary legendary stalwart is lying in salient stone

And that lashing tongue with its lips chapped by vitriol is sealed in silent marble

And that Leninist- Stalinist- Marxist- Nkuruma-ist charisma is silent in the silence of the stone

And that extremism carved propaganda-ist clenched fist slogan holds the red clay of earth in silence in the silence of the stone

 Tonight, this midnight, Ideological charlatans sing praise and protest, the legend went with the country, the tyrant went the country’s sorrow-soaked epitaphs, grief laden obituaries, tear filled eulogies and our gold in his fistful slogan.

And zealots and charlatans, poets and griots sing still, they sing praise and protest for a guerrilla graduated into patriotic super star, later an autocratic medalist but still he lived and died in paradox, revolutionary paradox

Griots and zealots sing protest and praise still and still they sing to the pitch-black night, to the death of the death of a legend, to the stolen country

Manyarireiko, manyararirei

Manyararie,manyarariyeko

Manyarariyeiko, Manyarariyeko

the legend stole treasures of the land and the conscience of my now vulgar tutored and vitriol schooled poverty hardened generation.

My generation polarized by political polio.

My generation lost the light of the moon

My generation lost the beautiful blink of the sun

 Legendary tyrant died clutching the golden red clay of the country in his slogan hardened clenched fist

Jongwe raenda

Raenda rakanyarara,raenda rakaguta

Raenda Jongwe

Jongwe rakukurudza,raenda jongwe

Jongwe raenda

Raenda jongwe raenda richidemba

Raenda jongwe

Jongwe raenda nezuva,raenda nomwedzi muchena

Raenda Jongwe

  Obituaries inscribed in rain- beaten century- aged potholed highways

epitaph was a black cockerel carved onto the edges of torn bank note,

  eulogy was a by a Vatican supplication and a Latin poem

   gesters and griots danced out the night with presidential parody

He died inside the pitch-black night,

the funeral ritual was conducted inside the pitch-black night.

…………………………………………………………

( iii)

In this pitch black night, zealots and senators congregate like wild hens

Senators cackling vendetta and zealots singing political vulgar  , gobbling fresh bread from the rich wheat of our sweat, gulping   matured grape-wine of our toil.

Tonight, our tears wash the corruption clad parliament tarmacs

As our ever -pouring sweat rinse their extortion laden court rooms

teargas graffiti decorates the broken statehouse lampposts

Hieroglyphics of poverty match the campaign print on the torn presidential election bandana

I see the president grazing the steak of our ballot-cast for dinner,

I snoop on torn newspaper headlines for lunch 

I stuff my rumbling stomach with gossip and grapevine for peace

I see the double -chinned parliamentarians greedly drinking our juicy sweat of our hardly won freedom for breakfast.

I see famished citizens gasping for dignity, dignity imbibed by the un-couthed mouth of the gun,

Father died with a torn election campaign Tshirt drapped on his wood and tin made coffin and his cold feet was covered by the three doeks emblazoned cheap propaganda, he raised his fist for a solid slogan and chanted a revolutionary hymn before sliding into a death trance.

Father died a socialist, an ideologist, a revolutionary

Towards the dawn of his sunset, he jabbed the wind, jiving for the freedom cockerel,

he chewed propaganda mustard biscuits with gusto,

he drank the ideological whisky with verve.

Political vibe chopped his mother tongue and spoke in political tongues of green combat propaganda

Father died waving a fistful slogan.

 Father sang a song alongside the slogan chant

A song of the last liberation

A song that was carved on his DNA like a radio antenna

He died before the setting of the moon

and left a song and a slogan chant,

a song of the last liberation

 He died before the claws of dawn caressed our rondavels,

In this pitch-black night, I hear the wind whistling the tune of that song, song of my father

He loved my mother, president black cockerel and the song

 Brother went to war and never came back,

I peep through the broken window of life that one day we see brother walking back to his village rondavel,

the pain of loss is decaying my respect to the parliament until my brother returns.

Freedom was gobbled by the November goblins,

revolutionary eggs gulped by greedy young cockerels with their disrespectful alarms announcing dawn at night.

Charlatans reaping cash and belching corruption stink into our sand paper, poverty taunted suffering souls.

  Beloved generation, beloved bitter-sodden generation

Our sun set long years before black cockerel died, before November knives hacked the revered black cockerel from the zenith of the throne, Yes, another dawn was announced inside the pitch-black night, before owls announce their anthems, before dog’s howl to the last star, before hyenas laugh the last giggle