By Mbizo CHIRASHA, World BEYOND War, June 14, 2020
AZANIA!!
Azania! I have a song for you
A song of bees feasting the rainbow nectar on the tattered petals of the revolution
Egoli! I have a love song for you
Song of Nomvula, the princes of the rain
Madikizela! I have a love song for you
Song of the abandoned poem.
I have a love song for born frees eating beetroot in Thembisa
Povo smoking ganja in Thokoza
I have a love letter for tweeting imbeciles, whose bellies are burning with emptiness
Zambezi! I have a love song for you
Song of fatcats milking cash cows of the state until udders bleed
I have a love song for you, Azania
Song of your bottoms frying in ovens Xenophobia
Political turncoats watering marikana fields with blood
Orange River flowing red
Cicadas singing protest songs
Eating funeral sandwiches with apes in Kgalagadi.
Finding no sleep in burning trees
Azania, this jungle burnt off the coal of our dreams.
Azania!
(ii)
Azania, smell and memory of Mandela
Mzansi, long walk of sobukwe
Land of metaphor and ambition
Choking in toxics of xenophobia
Babies lulled to sleep by rants of fake revolution and alliteration of the rainbow nation
Metaphors of madness!
See Hani and slovo-your freedom suns watching sarafina from terraces of life
A Scarred revolution!
In this land that lost its gold and salt.
Azania, you are the rainbow laughing the last giggle
Xenophobia burning rainbow flags to ashes
Xenophobia! Black ants burrowing back into their umbilical soil
Madiba weeping, singing for another summer, another rainbow
Madiba went away with rainbow, clutching the clay that bind the rainbow threads together!
Azania, Mandela was the clay of the revolution and the glow in the sun
Azania, foxes and their puppies are eating from the pot of gold- Egoli.
Hyenas sniffing the sweetness of this earth now blistered by revolutionary ailments
See the heartbeat of Soweto carrying the soil of madiba forever!
Poverty saluting the sun, cockroaches drinking the milk of freedom.
Azania! You reaped freedom not the fruits of freedom, the red sun and the bruised rainbow
Rainbow is sleeping in stone, Mandela!
Rainbow weeping Marikina after swallowing rain and grain.
Marikana! Afro phobia eating the beloved. Beloved shelling, pounding brothers like monkey nuts in mortars of apartheid.
Born frees cracking their shoulders to catch that thin glimpses of freedom.
