The world gazes shocked
Dawn has refused to wake up
August 8th
The reluctant gored sun
A hesitant pendulum
Suspended on frail certainty
Dances to the banshee
Shrieks of startled morning breeze
The willow knots her braids
The nightingale has lost her voice

August 8th
Afternoon yawns sadly
At it's muted sullen sky
Masked in cadaverous puffs
Heavy with O cursed bereavement
The dove weeps loud at precious
Feather blown by wind
The brook gurgles tongue-tied  -
''Loss is all I know''

The moon forgot
To come with her soft effulgence
The stars with a lot less winks
Last night
One big Star grew numb from cold
And fell from its hanger
Down into the black chasm

Loss and tragedy is ours
The house is empty and quiet
The heath is cold, no fire
Darkness is everywhere
But once you promised
That you will be with me,
forever
Dear mother...

     -dougwa-

I have been drinking wine
To douse the burning tip of my mind
Worries chewing at my nerves
Like the filter end of a rich Havana cigar
Woes of this world turn my whiskers
Into drab willows of misery
My nights into endless nightmares
And my thoughts rattling and jarring
Like the business end of a mechanical hammer.

Dreams clad in limp loincloth
Revisit me from the dark
Urns of history
The salad days of our beings
And their neauseating euphoria
When in drunken trance we siezed
Conscience by her arms
And threw her on her back
Splayed her legs
And smacked our lips
As blood spurt out...
I wipe my mind with the back of my hand
Trying
To brush away the dregs of the sordid rituals
We once enshrined.

A plump shiny green bottle
Buzzes around my mind irritating
Reminding me of Death
Hanging mockingly
Like a pendulum over my mind seducing
''O Sweet Carrion
You are food for the elders!''
And my sins in their hordes shimmer
A deathly pale round the nooze
Suspended from blushing heaven's bottom
My mind's eyes shed crystal tears
Giving away bucketfuls of Chiyadzwa diamonds to regain
Long gone and lost innocence.

I shared a bottle of wine
With my new-found friend, Today
Clinking glasses and minds
Then a greenbottle in full flight
Was caught between the grinding bellies
Of our glasses and minds
Bloodied fleshrot bespattered our intelligence
And our minds rushed to the wash basins retching
A brush with the fetid breath of the past
Left the gums of my mind barren and obscene
And together with newfound friend, Today
We covered our private parts with our hands
Ashamed
At the ****** of our thoughts.

She knocked at the door of my mind
Eyes shadowed in wet grey paint
Lips smudged in scarlet smiled at me
A Good Morning
My palm hiding the discoloured teeth
Of my inner-self
I muffled a Good Mourning to her, but
I felt a warmth spreading
At the base of my belly
Her milky-white mouthful was inviting
A milkyway blaze trailing into deep future
''I will flirt with her'' my mind whispered
But then the rasping sandpaper touch of her lips
Bruised and bloodied my thoughts
And I saw red at the future.

I must have swooned
From the First Lady's fistkisses of philanthropy
Doling out sweet nothings and promises
At a ceremony sheathed in royal pomp and dignity
Where the guests dressed like Harlequins
Mesmerised us with the crablike dance
And flummoxed O poor we
With democratic mumbo-jumbo and lingo
And the Povo touched with feeling
Donated oceanfuls of diamond tears
And their sincere prayers a mutter flutter
Into the heavens for beloved leaders.

I broke Biltong , my past, into the ***
To give life to ailing friend, Today
With my fingernail I peeled off
The tomatoe's tough ruddy jacket
To make sauce
And I heard a rumble of objection
From the August House
And the Mujibhas and Chimbwidos' angry yawn
Gave a chilli spice to the dish
And the food touching Today 's lips
He sneezed and broke wind
Startling ghosts of old nostalgic memories
That had took seats at the kitchen table
To wing away to the scrapyard
Their home beyond the rusting horizon.

Perched on the anthill of anticipation
I roll my thoughts
Into a big joint of mbanje
I **** and grey fading puffs
Of wishes spiral into the bored sky
Each a crippled dream
That was bulldozed at Churu Farm
An ambitious dream that was displaced
By the Operation Murambatsvina
A dream that lost an eye and limb in the food riots
A dream that lost its ***** at university
A dream that fell from the 11th floor at the Towers
Into the Taxman's hat
A dream that drowned in the opaque beer tank
At the Uhuru celebrations
A dream that lost its breath
On top of another man's wife in Mbare
A dream dumped and disowned
Only to find home at the bottom of the Blair toilet...
To find home in the sympathetic clicks
Of poets who have lost their voices.

The stub is burning my fingers
Minds run out of fuel and fire
The angry verbal lash
Of the emotionally wounded
Is a stub licking back at the wielder
To be snuffed out and discarded
On the ash tray of hopelessness
The grave yard that houses all
Once active minds.

-dougwa-

With blistered determination
We cling to the life-giving ***
Bending double on wobbling hope
We scrap on the bored earth
Begging for a mouthful.
A gift bestowed upon us
Like King Solomon with many wives
To multiply and fill the world
Is to fill the world with smiles and flowers
The rainbow family
The best out of the worst
The blest to school the rest.
Like a stamp and a letter
We stick together
Bleating and bleeding together
Looking in the eyes of the foe
We sit huddled round the dying fire
The embers bequeathed from our past -
The spirits in the wind chanting songs
Of love and peace.
Our eyes have gone numb
Gawking and hawking without cease
The sullen skies of old hope
That invisible palm outstretching
From the melting clouds of distress
''O ye get this vital itaal''
Mannah from your sleepy gods(dogs?)
The pendulum knocks
Against the walls of our minds
Reminding us of our covenant
With the gods of belief
To live our lives as an explanation
The story of the plaintive shadows
From the land of black and white rainbows
And rusting sunrises and sunsets.
Look into the splintered mirror
And you see the dream
A frosty webbed apparition
On the misted glass
Disbelief?
Then scrap on the ***** lozenge
On your underwear and sniff!
Till death do us party
We will always declare our presence
Beaten on one cheek
Donate another cheek
Once beaten twice shine
Do not let your bitterness glow by night
For one day for all this
Toiling and drowning in sweat and blood
Someone will pay.

-dougwa-

Yes, I feel it growing
slowly
like a  trickle
of some condensation
on the roof top of our  nest
Some condensation
of all the sighs we make
in the ecstasies we share
In the wee moments
we are in each other's arms...
Yes, it's growing
in a trickle ...
Single droplets unite into rivulets
Forming into a river
Foaming  into some madness of torrent
With hungry passions  to drown
flaming desires ...
The river is now in flood and we are
its captives ...
Oh I'm drowning in this
love
and don't even try to help me out
'coz I'm enjoying every bit of it!


                             -dougwa-

I enter this world
Sheathed in protective latex ******
I will lie with this world
All night long,
night after night
But will leave no foot-prints
Of my intimate visits to this world.

Who am I to leave
My footprints at the beach
Who am I to leave
Rose -tattooed memories
in their hearts...
Love -bruised  lips
On this ******* world...
I will remain in the shadow
Of the sun, the moon and the stars
I will hide in the shadows
Of the lewd dreams
with this world
Like shadows slithering
On wet walls of reality
I will remain ghosts
Pinned
to the cross of truth
By the nail of imagination...
I leave no signs
Even in most lurid imaginations.

Squirt your seed
into the lips
Of this world and she grows
big
With child
that resembles you
Many have done it...
The world we cradle in our arms
Resembles them
crystal clear
I will not leave any sign.

             -dougwa-

How do you want me
MR GOVERNMENT?
Roasted, grilled or stewed
With mustard, salt and pepper
to taste...
How do you want me?
Plain or with some dressing
May be drowned in sauce
May be downed with red wine
Just smack your lips
You are going to meat me there.

What wrong have I done this time?
Being a Squatter, Vagrant, Streetkid!
A beggar in the land of plenty
Yes, we have plenty misery
Suffering there...

The guns bark their chorus
And muffle the wail of the hungry and weak
As the law pins me against the wall...
Law the watchdog for the powerful
That chants its mumbo-jumbo
Against the poor...
I hear the loud voice of the gun
You are going to meat me there...

There, I am wanted
For tax evasion when I am not employed
For asking the meagre returns
Of my sweat and blood
For demanding back my poetry
They stole from the archives of my heart...
Yesterday I was arrested
For riding my master's mistress in a dream
Today I am dragged before a Judge of Law
For being found with maliciously true poetry
In my heart...
Tomorrow they will charge me
For singing a song
They will claim to have composed long ago
In their hearts...
I stand accused.

You turn me into a bull's eye
For your mahobhos
I am booted and teargassed
I have my back stuck to the wall
And the fingers curl on the triggers...
Too, too many fingers employed for the trigger
For sure they want to meat me
....there!

-dougwa-

You hide behind that smile
An artificial mouthful of white
Barren in warmth
Just as your barren gums

You give me a sulky kiss
The commercial Zollywood type
Purring
Like a cat with a fatal cold
Stiff-necked in my arms
With feigned bliss

Shut up your ****** mouth
Your breath is not Ozone -friendly
kills my good mood
And stop looking at me
Behind those dark glasses
They don't hide your ***** mind
Behind
Though your face is clean
Your neck and back of ears are not
I know your ***** habits
A nauseating lump of pretence
You fabricate, embroider,magnify
Pretence
is all you know
I hate you


-dougwa-

A long
and winding umbilical cord
That melts into the distant
Disturbing
sparkling fantasy of a mirage.

A snaking dusty trail hemmed
With rosemaries, pansies,
fennels and violets
Fading like a refrain of a lullaby.

A sad mourning song
Of a windy August night
Voices of homeless times
Joys
and tears waiting to be discovered.

Dancing
images of light and shade
Merging heart-shaped silhouttes
Against the glow of hope and fate
Frail dreams
walking on a dusty trail.

Sometimes I struggle alone
Toil, *****, fall and
cry alone
When you fail to understand
me.

And I trudge on
in the windy night
Toward the holy grail, heaven's ecstacy
To voices in the dark
calling my name.

         -dougwa-

Sin glows
With sparkling richness
Of all luminaries
of blanketing galaxy
Sin is worshiped and enshrined
Righteousness is
but blase fallacy

With all over-flowing
Affluence
of new pentecostal churches
and their greedy pastors
And easy-come riches
of Chiadzwa diamond fields
with her flippant Gwejas and Gwejerinas
Life is but black
like Soddom's ****
I hear the knell of dawning doom
As Angels of doom boom...

I swear by ****** Mary's blessed ****
I saw a Stephen preaching down Rekai Tangwena Ave
And was run down by a speeding motor car
"O poor chap, was a good fellow," muttered God

I saw drunken Thomas roaming the streets
Of cogitation convincing himself
it was true news
That brother Jesus, ***-bellied in Armani suit
Was back riding a top of the range Lamborghini
And  God shrugged his shoulders,kept quiet
Afraid it may be fatally true

I saw God wet his pants
When listening to Elliot The Idiot's "Songs of Sobs"
That applaud Simon and Peter fishing
From people's pockets
Songs that revere and adorn  the vigilant
Pillar of Salt
Scorn and mock
the meekness and softness of heart
At Golgotha...

Sin is vermin spreading
In this our home,the infierno grande


-dougwa-