THE HUNCHBACK OF AFRICA

Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya; aopicho@yahoo.com)



He lives in a big city
In a big bungalow
With all of his henchmen
And henchwomen
He puts on big sun-glasses
He has bushy beards
On his back a clenched hunch
Protruding menacingly
Like a lethal bombshell
His skin is ***** dark
His face is frog wrinkled
He forgot indigenous tongues
But he is a master of spoken French
Don’t mention the queen’s English
He is a bad news,
He is shrewd and corrupt
With avarice for money
He loves women, women, them women
Hot mistress is his domain
He loves European alcohol
His public office
Is a private personal bar
With all types of wines haute couture;
***** and whisky
John walker and cappuccino
Champagne and cognac
Smirnoff and viceroy
Chang’aa but in a skulk,

He has nothing to do with men
Only his two sons and brother in-laws
His sons bear European names
Aristocratic European names;
Knappert and Otto von Guericke
Mussolini and Harold,
He reads not African literature
On the claim that they are whimsical
But he reads white African writers;
Lessing and Macgoye
Coetzee and Nadine
Ruark and Blixen,
His shelves are woodlots
Of European classics
Classics of Palimpsest nature;
From Hugo to Dumas
Fyodor to Tolstoy
Cervantes to Austen
Maugham to Friedrich schiller
Pushkin to Bernard Shaw,

The hunch back of Africa gets broke mid-month
He goes for bank overdraft
A mistress snatches him to zero anew
He clicks and curses the **** *****,
But he consoles in the prompt flick
Wine can’t be sweet without those wenches
As he drives his white jalopy
A ramschackled beetle shaped Volkswagen,

He has ever nursed a Germany dream
To go to Germany and come back strong
To reason strong like the sons of bundeslander
To come to Germany and pluck out
The **** of a hunch from his back,

He expects nothing from a man
Especially men from other African tribes
Other than bribe and praise
Any form of praise sends him berserk with jubilation
Any form of bribe sends him rambunctious with ego
He loves power with all of his nerves
Including the entirety of his hunch,

He hates one book in his  live
That even he made it a toilet paper
‘The constitution’
He says it has no respect for old people
That it has no respect for freedom fighters
That it has no respect for hunchbacks
That it has not respects for royal sons
That it has no respect for rich people
That it makes the poor people to be rude
To be rude without discipline
He condemned it a toilet paper,
When you come to African privities
Be careful, the paper you use may be a constitution
The hunch back himself must stay in the toilet long enough
To use minimum of fifty pages of the Katiba
When cleaning his ****
He has an ambition to reach all the pages
Bearing the number hundred
On which there is a clause on
International criminal justice,

The hunchback of Africa is full of love
Indeed he is a fountain of love;
Love of his second wife among them all
Love of his tribesmen who are yes-men
Love of his atrocious spies
Love of his sycophants
Love of his fresian cow
Which he imported from the Hague Holland
Love of his ******* son sired to him by a mistress
Love of the psalms of David the king in the bible
Love of his English name ‘josephat’
Love of his kingdom
That made him the hunchback of Africa.

Goodbye!

For every emotion songs have already been written:
poetries and sonnets,
angry beats and ****** ballads.
My more positive, happier self is an extra-terrestrial being
from galaxies far away:
No cutting off fins from sharks. Unlike lizards’ tails
fins don’t grow back.
Love. Respect.
No ceramic idols lining the windows
their empty gazes crawling up your spine.
No empty promises. No magic cures for baldness.
Phones on mute during class. Eat sensibly.
Take a breather – life is not a race
to the finish line. Have cleaner washrooms.
Less unwanted criticisms. Less trance.
Love thy country.
Pin-striped shorts
from M&S; Stronger will.
No slitting wrists or overdoses. Suspend disbelief.
No secret candy stashes. Do your laundry without being told.
Omit racism, misanthropy. Wilted flowers by the windowsill.
No secret phone calls in the middle of the night.
Who are you afraid of? Almost and nearly don’t count.
Come home.
Forgive favorite band for disappointing album.
Be kinder to puppies.
Brood, not rant. Skulk, not stalk.
Get my name right.
Don’t drink and drive.
There are no gays, no lesbians, only
people with feelings.
Fight, not flight.
Have more 24-hour pizza places.
Avoid politicians, traitors, lawyers.
No throwing around words like vociferance,
vociferate, vociferous.
Accept fate – don’t be a martyr;
One day everything fades
so hold on to
all your post-it memory
until every star

turns to dust.

I thought,
I was impervious, armor
in place, attached to detachment
my pesky synapses
melted away in
a gray soup

protected,
pain exempt...
but ****, you  
come to me
in dreams

in Morpheus grip
you slip in, those menacing faces
I managed to block, return
to mock me

the jeers to which
I made myself deaf, are now soprano, alto, bass
in my nocturnal symphony

those who malign me
are free to walk on my grave:
to them and all others I am
but slumbering slave

I can not choose
when to wake, to end your reign
but if I could, you would then skulk  
a bit in my skull's dark den
waiting for my weary eyes
to close again

come let me lead you through my mind
where angels tremble in their sleep
for fear the waking makes them blind
within the darkness dank and deep
the shadows skulk and hiss and scream
and reach for me with outstretched hands
with greed they feast upon my dreams
and run amok in fallen sands
they know my name the one I keep
within a jar beside my bed
along with tears I've yet to weep
and words as yet I have not said
they'll come for me if er' I rest
and let my guard so foolish fall
but yet I have to pass the test
though mine own fear doth me appall
so walk my mind but be aware
to never stray from well worn path
for if you do your soul they'll snare
and you shall feel their pain and wrath
for broken minds ner' know no peace
no glue nor tape can ever mend
so run away my hand release
forsake me now I beg their friend.

in the corner
where giant walls join, he stares
at me, or the painting on the sky
of drywall behind me

if my mate spots him, she
will demand martial action
I am to skulk across the laminate field
and use the mighty broom

then, the dustpan
scooping his carcass up
for the grave, beside the cat
in the yard

squirrels, pestiferously perched
on my fence, teeth sharp courtesy of my
redwood trim, will watch

no, I won't listen to my spouse,
and execute an overgrown mouse
I'll let him squeeze through the planks
and go where royal rodents go

still, I may go hunting yet--my prey?
those furry tailed acorn chiselers, who ravage
my redwood with impunity...
(they think)

You come out of the dark, and a young Japanese schoolgirl--couldn't be any older than 19--is standing in a heavy-lit archway, the blinkered 'sort-of's' of her eyes only visible in corners due to the convex glare rebounding from the heavy light and onto a parked Miyata windshield, right back into the bloodshot lower-left cleft of each eye, sleepless veins like miniature pipelines slogging her fossil fuel blood to the energy markets of her face (but it ends in death, hopeless economy! it begins in death like OPEC!)

There's concrete, and there's stone: the former a collection of synthetically compiled chunks of the latter. In either regard, it might just be the end of the World, tho just an intermission during an afternoon matinee for the world. There are a lot of things you don't understand. There is plenty more you do, and yet you believe your own humility when it whispers, "You don't," tho you are entirely unaware this is delusion and not humility, but some unconscious form of ascetic worship of WONDER!! You're going coocoo for cocopuffs WONDER! We can remember what J.B.S. Haldane once said: "I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

I was born at the edge of the Cold War. 4 years after America's Operation Just Cause deposed Nicaraguan dictator Manuel Noriega using heavy metal music and heavy metal weapons, loaded to capacity with heavy metal bullets. 4 years after the slow-dissolve tablet of the Berlin Wall finally faded upon the German palate. Brian Mulroney was my Prime Minister at birth. I was also alive (tho not 'conscious,' per se--intellectually conscious, that is) during the Prime Ministership of Canada's first female Prime Minister: Kim Campbell (she was only leader for just over 3 months and thus I cannot give her time in office the full credibility it would have deserved had she been a fully elected candidate instead of an inter-election Prime Ministerial appointment; when, for godssakes, will we have a Fist Nations' Prime Minister? I would like to believe the only reason there has been none is because the indigenous people have categorically rejected the game-fantasy we have stomped upon their land and the world and self-righteously crowned as 'realistic, sober, objective;' tho maybe I'm wrong, whispers Humility: "I don't know").

There is the endless and omnipotent consensus that the world's about to end. For those who study history, they will often notice that when 'then' was 'now,' it was often and always the end of history. 'Now' is the always-result of 'then' and it will never change unless we neglect its consideration. That's really all theory takes to disappear: stop thinking about it. (as if that were possible, ha!)
Because the impression has been one of pollution and confusion, our wide un-thought idealization as children has often led us to emulate all the bad habits we witness growing up, even if at one point we cloudlessly rejected them because the damage didn't seem clear, it was clear.

I was 8 years old when I took my mother's cigarettes from her bedroom while she slept, and proudly announced to her the next morning that I had thrown them out. She had become furious, tho I had done it out of a militant concern for her well-being. During my years of primeval arrival on this planet, mom had almost lost her life to breast cancer. I can't remember understanding much as it happened, nor do I recall fully understanding the implications of death until my grandmother died and I watched my dad fight back tears as he read aloud her eulogy, recalling a story I can pick through scattered memories stored in grey matter to resurrect only one fact about it: they were on a boat, pulling up to shore. My grandfather--the cheeky Briton-optimist he is--made some silly joke, and my grandmother pitched in. The rest is somewhere else in space.

However--regarding death-- I feel that even then we never understand the full implications of death in witnessing another's death, but only through dying ourselves. Which is fine. None of us need to understand these implications until the time comes (and even then, it may just drip away once you've reached the Light. Which is fine).

Returning to the cigarettes: I had absorbed the common knowledge they were awful for you. 'Death-sticks' indeed, just like that scene in Attack of the Clones. Tho I understood nothing of the chemistry, a box or a video or an authority explaining their potential 'results' or 'consequences' was enough for me to righteously desire to save my mother from her own acquired vice.

14 years later, I skulk through the streets of Victoria with Chris, high on ******* and chain-smoking Export-A Gold on the subconscious condition that the world will probably end soon enough for none of this to matter. Tho as I said: For those who study history, they will often notice that when 'then' was 'now,' it was often and always the end of history.

History is comprised of an endless succession of losers who sincerely believe they've figured it out. The only redeemable characters in this Human Odyssey are those who have realized nothing in particular. The people who think, believe, and conceptualize as an infinite process; something without a result. Something with abstract 'goals' that only fit for awhile, not forever.

I'm nobody special. Tho, at the same time, I am; and at the same time and in terms of my relationship to this greater Human Odyssey, whether I will matter in this giant plot is in part up to me (should I write a book? 10 books? Relentlessly pursue the arts, whether that be rapping, writing, music?) and in part up to sheer probability (if I do write a book, will many notice? Or will it be swept under the Great Rug of the Present-Into-Past and be forgotten to thought?), and regardless of all this: the rocks will forget. The trees will forget. Both space and dark matter will have already forgotten what I am doing and what I may one day do.

But life can't be approached on a basis of personal impact; honestly, who wants to pursue the writing of 10 books or the creation of albums in the same way the capitalist approaches economy, for sheer attention and accumulation? Those desperado's, those who chase-the-game-of-success, they have already lost. They lost as soon as they tried to win. There is nothing to win, no award great enough to keep, no person you love or have loved who you will one day depart with for the very last time. But to depart with a personality may be tragic, it is only a true void in concept; when one removes the individual (both themselves and the one they love) from the eternal context of the universe--the ebb and flow of tides to the movement of the moon, the soft breeze supplemented by a fan placed next to an open window, how your hand--when clapped to the surface of a wooden table--is one with the matter in that table regardless of how transiently you perceive such a touch as an interaction. In essence, it's all still here; it always was, and never won't be.

tho maybe I'm wrong, whispers Humility.


                                             *"I don't know."

Sits between twin bluffs  burrowing into neon souls
long to be seen in a  future frame of corpses and flipping
through the lenses of the kaleidoscope 1916 or there abouts.

Mr Edison took full advantage of the moment transitioning for all time  the boundaries.Maybe Muybrige in1888.
The here and now. The real and surreal. the equation is now unbalanced.
Is seeing now believing? or is believing a reason to see.

The proof is in the putting.
Dead men long digested in soil and  ground  can still emit sound and point  a blame-full  finger
Linger if you dare in the baleful stare of the science.
quiet, silence, desist. No
even virtue  can not  still the burning light.

cellulose spirits on walkabout lookout from the past again and again
flickering things they be.  conjure you as well as you conjure them.

The end is sight at the bottom of the hill
steel rails to nowhere still squeal to silence,
The riders swing free and lite on Italian loafers and
skulk away. padded shoulders conceal weak wills and
weaker hearts still.

Silver screen visual refraction
once there for all to admire must now bow deeply.
Curtsy?
Vanish and still remain at the pointed end of   it.

Dangerous girls with ****** lipstick and low rise skirts
with cold mean eyes to hide their own secret sadness
The kind who think nothing of tearing another girls to pieces
with words sharp as fingernails and teeth
Sweet girls with eyes and voices cotton candy soft
usually with hair and personalities to match
the ones everyone wants to be close to
and loved by
Strong girls who fill rooms with their presences
the commanding, assertive ones
Wounded girls who skulk in corners
waiting for someone to offer their hand
Oh, but the most dangerous girls
are the ones who are secretly wild
with a fire smoldering under their skins
so when they open their mouths to howl
or laugh
or cry
It can only be for a short while so the flames don't escape

Wolves hide among the fragrant flowers
Skulk, stalk, pounce, and bite into their prey
****** their maws, their canine, their fang
Don the fleece of the white sheep
Rip out the innards
Garbed in white
Draped like a cloak of purity

Wolves hide in cathedrals
Stalk among the pews
Furs streaked with blood, coated
Defile sanctity
Impregnate
Virginity with something vile
Dark, putrid, and false

She sees the wolf in you
Hears it in words that you utter
Sees it in words that you write
Drunk, sober, aware, unaware
Smells the blood on your maw
Smells the pennies in your breath
Faint, odorous
*
Wolves like you
Hiding in fleece