Asaf Bartov (he/him/his) Senior Program Officer, Emerging Wikimedia Communities |
President Zimbabwe
Your prolific role is to see value in every citizenIam a citizen carrying crude metaphors of truth in the caves of my mindIam a Zimbabwen holding on to the raw scepter of true images of my land ,our countryIam a people yearning for power elite to repent from corruptionIam a griot crying for bureaucrats to repent from stealing the national fatI respect the flag ,it's colors and its meaning ,Iam born by ancestors that saluted chimurengaIam a fighter of truth and for justice ,iam haunted , threatened and intercepted for speaking the truthArt is a gift , poetry is a weapon of mass instruction, Zimbabwe is the country I know , country I was born , a country I know best of caves ,heroes, plains ,meadows and riversA country rich but a stolen country, stolen of truth, stolen of love , stolen of free speechpoets are national assets , recorders of history , fortunetellers of past ,present and futureWe do not to agree to make a country and to build peaceI thought the second republic is for all in the republic .I never knew it is of the selected few ,Iam voice crying in the wilderness , son of the soil haunted at home by minions of the state and l thrown into wild bushes for hyenas to feed onWhich crime have committed that makes me unwanted and unZimbabweanThebones of mothers cry for me in the land of my birth, bones of my fathers are weeping for meZimbabwe carry the throne , thistle , roses, pain, laughter , hope and cries of my peopleFor when Zimbabwe and security minions give me a breakIs it a crime to write the poetic grafitti of crude truthFor when shall we remain praise singers of some things that do not praiseI always thought as griots our role is to sing truth Power and then corridors of power are sanitizedTruth is the only detergent washing the dirty linen of the state and we walk clean ,loved and UnitedMine is not a violent statement , it is a message to remind you that iam citizen , a child of Zimbabwe , haunted by securocratic intelligence inside and outside the countryThe second republic as I was taught is the dispensation of truth, free speech and embraces allWe all got faults from high ranks of power ,I have written no placards but poetry, my slogan is poetry of resistanceIf I die today , tommorow or the day after I know that I died telling the truth to powerDeath by the way the way of God , I have sacrificed to die writing true poetry immersed in jugs of satire and dishes crude imageryI have lived a life as a defender of truth, as a writer of raw metaphorExpressing the hard feelings of my pain and the pain at homeI will not weep on my death, but my death is not a way to surrender ,it is to say, there is always that time to rest, to leave others carrying on with the revolutionary literary candlesIf you are true , you lay a wreath alongside my poetic peers on my supposed shallow graveThey will call me homeless , country less , fatherless and motherlessBut some will say here lies a poet , a griot , a son of the soil ,a fighter and allBut if I don't die tonight I will continue the fight for truth and I know one day you will see the truth of my resistance poetry and protest letters and I will be buried decently next to the caves of my ancestorsI have done my prayers that even in dreams ,death , life or writing , I will not be defeated,This is my epitaph to the man that is myself , a man who has fought many strugglesIam rejected , haunted and persecuted by his own peopleWhere are you mr presidentMy brilliance, my shallowness, my poetry, my controversial political commentary and my hybrid narratives are an assert to the land dipped in tanks of corruption, murky waters of political toxicity,unfairness and otherI respect those doing good , fighting to build the nation but there is an elephant in the room injustice, human rights abuses, lack of free speech and corruptionI respect those speaking the truth and every time they are gaggedPresident, iam a griot crying in the wildernessMbizoChirasha is the Founder of the Zimbabwe We Want Poetry Campaign ,2017Founder of the Time of the Poet Republic, miombopublishing.orgEditor of the BraveVoicesPoetryJournal, bravevoicespoetry.home.blogEditor of the Womawordsliterary press, womawordsliterary.home.blogAfrican Contributor, Monk arts and soul magazine, UKAfrican Contributor, Oxford School of. Poetry , BlackwellPampletAfricanContributor,FamAsia MagazineUNESCORILA Affiliated artist,gla.ac.ukIhraf.org/mbizochirashaCoeditor, Second Name of the Earth is Peace, an anti war global poetry collection(WorldBeyondWAr.org)Author, A Letter to the President, a poetry collectionAuthor ,Pilgrims of Zame, a collection of hybrid narrativesCoauthor of Metaphors of RainbowCoeditor of Corpses of Unity , a global collection
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