Graffiti Portrait

Poem by Edward Dzonze

Angry faces to go along with
the sour taste of life
I lost the brighter shades of my skin colour
to the political machinations of the Addis Ababa parliament
A life too fragile for our calloused hands
The brethrens in power pulling the clock hand against the flow of life
Nobody dares point to the witches in parliament
And remains with the finger,
They called nights upon our living days
And breathed darkness upon our livelihoods
When we ask for the African sun,
they tell us to wait for the moon that doesnt come too soon either
To pronounce the night, only a time to sleep

A country is burning
From a fire that keeps the legislators warm
The smoke of which keeps them high while the nation chokes
Denizens suffocating from the political stink of a patronized fart
Dregs of freedom dripping from the undergarments of the shepherds above the datum
A chunk of that freedom spelt in braille for the blind to see what the sighted cannot decipher
A known measure of freedom born from the struggle
It remains a mystery how the people only gets to know the caricature

A ticking bomb looms across Africa
The stench of governance is at war with our livelihoods
The people’s rage have grown bigger than the cage
Bread prices soaring beyond the acceptance of our wages
One needs a gun and a government van
to negotiate only the price of a bun
It takes one to master the chorus of corruption
to bask in the African sun
We all need a government mask to sip the ambrosia in the national flask
A world for the shepherd and a different world for his flock
When the sun gets hot, the shepherd sips the tears of his flock
And when a fire beckons in the pastures
The flock is on its own because the shepherd doesnt feed on those burning pastures

®️©️NRS 29/09/29. 09:07am
#ShadesOfBlack
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