"inheritances" poems
Capitalism is fair.
Though capitalists be well bred.
The poor can only care
That they should sometimes be fed.
The rent they pay to capital
Exceeds the nation's rate of growth.
People are mere collateral
When fortunes begin to bloat.
The masses may start to shout.
Though the rich intend to die out,
Inheritances never croak.
Inequality learns to cope.
Apr 21, 2014
Apr 21, 2014 at 6:37 AM UTC
The curse of a great, well-known or (at least) culturally interesting family.
Heralded at birth to mimic similar (or even, surpassing) social feats of achievement/wealth/renown.
Instead manages to underpasses even mundane non-impressivenesses of second-generation parentals.
I
See them, smirk or folly with time, silently.
....which they seem to quite often.
Biding weekend with multitudes of varying categories of "friends"
and sweethearts who never seem to stick around too long
All aware, of course, of the famous family lineage
Themselves, instead
after lifetimes where first words, senior infants homework,
cheerful accusations of mischief and certificates of age-appropriate health
were lauded as signifiers of a future onslaught of fulfilled capabilities
emerge as providence's lackeys– and meekly, to be
Written out of History
One by One by One.
II
Talent is frequently a despairing life-cycle
for people who witness
and go without.
III
But what price success?
Is it to be counted in public
or left behind in wreaths?
Stern evidence
of favour, fought for and won
or shaky good fortune
One life's profitable fluke
IV
Does the cost of success itself
admit backstories of other kinds of loss
that children
without the chance of ever knowing
or changing their inheritances of fate
are powerless to cease the flow
of their own anonymity
all for the insistences of the unarguable
and for merely treading the average?
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 2:15 PM UTC
Live your life
though it's not an easy thing to do
especially for those who are not born with inheritances
every step of the way is rampant with imbalances
it's also because the world is riddled with contrived rules
everywhere it's still primeval law of the jungle
sometimes we're not strong enough
but at all times we need to think for ourselves
protecting ourselves is the only way
making it possible for us
to live a life
many choose to conform to the practices of the society
some choose to stay true to their humanity
the two choices often find themselves in conflict
not saying there's no reconciliations
staying true to yourself
is not preordained to be a confrontation to the world
sometimes it can be more of an integration
because when you know yourself
you become tolerant of the world
because the more you love yourself
you have to learn to love the world
and slowly you'll be able to live out
your own life
the process is never easy
but it's the only way to understanding life
to loving it most of the time.
Jul 19, 2023
Jul 19, 2023 at 4:34 AM UTC
The say inherit after seeing the success of other inheritances
But in other circumstances it’s more of coincidence
And sheer luck that one can be of such providence
Revered across the land in his time
By multitudes as much as the grains of sand you can find
Blinded by his love and trust of man
His life he did forfeit in his prime
But his memory is well imbued with mine
The blood of a great ruler courses through these veins
Of Chiefs of Kings of Lordships that string a long line
Chief Chivi Shumba Murambwi
Jun 23, 2016
Jun 23, 2016 at 5:17 PM UTC
My father died
before he could tell me
that your lungs fill
and you drown in yourself
as your heart fails.
My sister died
silent with the knowledge
that you taste the waste
your kidneys can't expel
as they slowly shut down.
My brother died
within the shell washed up
by the rolling tide of blood
from the bursting of
cerebral arteries.
My mother died
desiccated, emaciated,
her bitterness consumed
in the uncontrolled growth
of her cancerous sweetbreads.
One never lives
until they learn for themselves
the lessons of the lives
the histories and the deaths
of their inheritances.
May 10, 2015
May 10, 2015 at 3:31 AM UTC
I don't care much
would you mind
giving me your number
You look fab, tonight.
of which, I go
as I dance
in a midnight shadow
and this lurking image on me
the curse begin
of the pain, i felt
and the bitterness
i don't care much
disowning everything you ever knew
is of mighty courage
as i remove myself from all the subjects i ever read
subtracting to all the inheritances
of shallow practices and gaining attentions
with bleak sincerity
would you spend time with me
you are beautiful, lovely lady
these words, it doesn't reach to my ear
nor to my heart
I don't know why people fall in love
with a hollow shadow
or maybe they find solace
in not being noticed
in these naked nights
i sleep all my time
keeping myself too busy
to think much
as i don't care much
Dec 30, 2016
Dec 30, 2016 at 7:38 AM UTC
#
*She does not speak aloud, not here. This is the place where silence answers back. The grass moves like water— ripples of praise without a mouth, but full of memory.
She walks barefoot, open-palmed, hands lifted in the hush of morning light, not for ritual, not for prayer, but because that is the posture her soul has always longed for.
The wind does not resist her here. It circles her ribs and says,
"You are not here to carry anything anymore."
And so she dances, not to forget, but to remember rightly.
Each step a release. Each breath, a forgiveness. Each turn, a letting-go of a thousand unspoken inheritances she never asked to receive.
The grass bows gently as she moves— to the child she was, to the woman she became, to the fierce stillness that remained when the world could not hold her.
Then he comes— not a man, but something older, truer. A horse, many hands tall, his mane braided by wind, his coat the color of evening stone.
He does not run. He simply appears, like a truth that was always waiting just beyond the edge of what she dared to hope for.
He lowers his head, presses his warm forehead against her tear-washed cheek, and something ancient inside her quiets.
She does not ride him. She walks beside him, her fingers woven into his mane, like roots learning the shape of soil for the first time.
And she knows— this is what safety feels like. Not absence of pain, but presence of witness.
Not every love needs to break you to be real. Some love simply comes when you're ready to remember your own name.
The grasslands will remain. But now, they echo with her laughter. And the wind—
it carries her name like a hymn that never forgot how to rise.*
#
Apr 15, 2025
Apr 15, 2025 at 10:03 AM UTC
My legacy was
To be laved twice a day,
To disport myself around the garden.
Enveloped in my crisp creaseless clothes,
Encircled by the aroma of blossoms.
My gladsome day was rounded
Off with a dinner fit for a King.
My education taught me
To read, write and a lot more.
I was conditioned to expect nothing less.
Her legacy was
To toil the soil on the farm
In threadbare clothes.
Steeped in baked clay,
Engulfed by the stench of the fields.
Her meed was to eat
Whatever there was.
Her education was to do
More than her fair share.
She was privileged to expect nothing more.
We walked the earth,
We breath the same air,
Yet,
Like the two oceans,
Our lives never transgress.
Our challenge is to reconcile our inheritances with what should be.
Apr 5, 2019
Apr 5, 2019 at 4:38 PM UTC