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Re: President,Zimbabwe by Mbizo Chirasha (Asaf Bartov) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2021 14:47:22 +0200 From: Girlchild Creativity &lt;girlchildcreativity(a)gmail.com&gt; Subject: [African Wikimedians] President,Zimbabwe by Mbizo Chirasha To: african-wikimedians(a)lists.wikimedia.org Cc: Tafadzwa Muzondo &lt;tafartist(a)gmail.com&gt; Message-ID: <CAPqxyU6FxuiK9gvoxh+FnB8BjAW2GLeYM= AeoS0LY__AyUMkDg(a)mail.gmail.com&gt; Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="000000000000b2334005c47ce8dd" President Zimbabwe Your prolific role is to see value in every citizen Iam a citizen carrying crude metaphors of truth in the caves of my mind Iam a Zimbabwen holding on to the raw scepter of true images of my land ,our country Iam a people yearning for power elite to repent from corruption Iam a griot crying for bureaucrats to repent from stealing the national fat I respect the flag ,it's colors and its meaning ,Iam born by ancestors that saluted chimurenga Iam a fighter of truth and for justice ,iam haunted , threatened and intercepted for speaking the truth Art 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 rivers A country rich but a stolen country, stolen of truth, stolen of love , stolen of free speech poets are national assets , recorders of history , fortunetellers of past ,present and future We do not to agree to make a country and to build peace I 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 on Which crime have committed that makes me unwanted and unZimbabwean Thebones of mothers cry for me in the land of my birth, bones of my fathers are weeping for me Zimbabwe carry the throne , thistle , roses, pain, laughter , hope and cries of my people For when Zimbabwe and security minions give me a break Is it a crime to write the poetic grafitti of crude truth For when shall we remain praise singers of some things that do not praise I always thought as griots our role is to sing truth Power and then corridors of power are sanitized Truth is the only detergent washing the dirty linen of the state and we walk clean ,loved and United Mine 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 country The second republic as I was taught is the dispensation of truth, free speech and embraces all We all got faults from high ranks of power , I have written no placards but poetry, my slogan is poetry of resistance If I die today , tommorow or the day after I know that I died telling the truth to power Death by the way the way of God , I have sacrificed to die writing true poetry immersed in jugs of satire and dishes crude imagery I have lived a life as a defender of truth, as a writer of raw metaphor Expressing the hard feelings of my pain and the pain at home I 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 candles If you are true , you lay a wreath alongside my poetic peers on my supposed shallow grave They will call me homeless , country less , fatherless and motherless But some will say here lies a poet , a griot , a son of the soil ,a fighter and all But 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 ancestors I 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 struggles Iam rejected , haunted and persecuted by his own people Where are you mr president My 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 other I 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 corruption I respect those speaking the truth and every time they are gagged President, iam a griot crying in the wilderness MbizoChirasha is the Founder of the Zimbabwe We Want Poetry Campaign ,2017 Founder of the Time of the Poet Republic, miombopublishing.org Editor of the BraveVoicesPoetryJournal, bravevoicespoetry.home.blog Editor of the Womawordsliterary press, womawordsliterary.home.blog African Contributor, Monk arts and soul magazine, UK African Contributor, Oxford School of. Poetry , BlackwellPamplet AfricanContributor,FamAsia Magazine UNESCORILA Affiliated artist,gla.ac.uk Ihraf.org/mbizochirasha Coeditor, Second Name of the Earth is Peace, an anti war global poetry collection(WorldBeyondWAr.org) Author, A Letter to the President, a poetry collection Author ,Pilgrims of Zame, a collection of hybrid narratives Coauthor of Metaphors of Rainbow Coeditor of Corpses of Unity , a global collection