Please Welcome Mbizo Chirasha, Our First Poet in Residence

It’s a great honor to introduce Mr. Mbizo Chirasha to our Coffee Club members. We met Mr. Chirasha through Poets & Writers magazine when he sent us an email recognizing our efforts. After reviewing his credentials and reading, “I am a capable literary and cultural arts worker. My role and purpose is to shift perceptions, inform and educate society through my writings and literary arts activism projects,” it was evident we could ignore neither Mbizo’s internationally acclaimed poetry nor his extraordinary activism.

After discussion among us baristas, we decided Mbizo should be offered a new position, created especially for him: the first Fictional Café Poet in Residence. When it was offered, he wrote:

“I am greatly impressed by your offering this position. I accept with my all poetic humility. I thank you greatly.”

Mbizo is a native of Zimbabwe, but today lives in exile. He is the 2019 International Fellow of the International Human Rights Arts  Festival, New York. His most recent book, a collection of experimental poetry, is A Letter to the President (available on Amazon). In 2011, he founded the Girlchild Creativity Project, which helps females of all ages find their creative voice. The list of his accomplishments is truly mind-boggling.

Below are four of Mbizo’s poems he has chosen for this occasion.

Please join us in welcoming Mbizo Chirasha as our Poet in Residence at the Fictional Café by sharing a Comment at the foot of this post.

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SAMBISA’s COUSINS

Boende, You sold your morning sun for a cup of tea

Darfur, I see red ants coming for you in the wake of another dawn

Bujumbura, You lost your salt in gossip

Sambisa, pungent smell of home brewed war, permeating the nostrils of Africa

We are children of chiboko burning in the charcoal of war

When Ebola sneeze, Bissau catch a cold,

When the sun sits over hills of home, I see triplets Ebola, xenophobia and Sambisa sharing half smoked cigars after a ritual bath in Tugela

Pongolo and mfolozi bleeding xenophobia

Limpopo crocodiles smelling roasted flesh

 Soweto smoking imboza

After another Marikina

Ghost of biko eating beetroot in the drama of rainbow revolutions

When the sun filter its orange into this red earth. I see twin brothers Renamo and Frelimo laughing out loud to baboons dangling in gorongosa trees

I see children sniffing Facebook and colonial dope.

Darfur, drowning in the din of rattling drums and blood dollars, their children eating Wiki leaks for breakfast and Twitter mojo for supper, oiling the revolutionary engines through song and dance

Burning candles from both ends.

Nodding to the wind of drums and beat of the gun, drunk with wind and sound

Sing Darfur

Sing to the freedom babies eating Twitter berries and Facebook figs.

Forgetting their fingers in Google forests. Licking Wounds after burning in cultural monoxide and moral dioxide

Bastards starved of ideological oxygen

Black monkeys learning about trees from sparrows

Khayelitsha, Armageddon of kwaito and booze

Enugu drunk with palm wine in the red hills of manobe

Sankara and his ghost breakfasting Communism in upper-Volta

Harare wincing from punches of media witches

 You need holy water to wash your armpits

**

Last night Congo drank Ebola from White Nile

Copper pregnant earth of Congo, carrying the wind of want Heart beating like djembe, monkeys sneezing flu to equatorial birds

Anopheles defecated malaria in Cabinda

We are the children of sabalele.

Sharing our DNA with Hani and Biko,

Whose ghosts walk in the fake bling -bling of rainbow freedom,

 Freedom stillborn!!

Eating carrot and beetroot in Mpumalanga – the land of sun.

Rains of death are beating the land into madness

Madness breeding slums

**

DICTATOR’S DOEKS

Grandma’s sweat bathes the statehouse tarmacs,
Poverty shaved fathers are the glitter that replaced floodlights and
stolen lampposts
Brother is the anointed fisherman catching political breams for the
presidential roast
Ideological tutored memes sing praise anthems………..patronized
Singing praises to the republic’s red-carpet ……..they never stepped on.
Protocol relegates them to the ragged edges of the republic,
Mother’s tears rinse dishes after daily dictator’s banquets,
August is a museum of spent cartridge that shat death on sister’s womb,
……………..she birthed death.
Sister and her bullet-shredded fetus are now
snoring sorrow under the rubble of elections cemetery.
January swallowed its conscience and munched grenade for dinner
November drizzled both waterfalls of blood and threads of hesitant laughters
…………… Nights of long knives …………
November drizzle birthed another tyrant.
November! November! You are dictator.
Autocrat’s robes immersed in blood gems of Katanga.
The African moon
archived that in RED CAPITAL LETTERS.
Hermits and slogan slingers donning dictator’s emblazoned doeks,
jabbing the corrupt foul wind with pseudo–revolutionary jives dancing
for the gwamandaizing, glutton, gobbling globetrotting gold cartels
trendsetter.
Kitchen cabinet frying small fish in autocratic pans and then enjoy
the delicacies during dictator’s concert under the guise of shadows
……….ooh crocodile games. Grandma snores under the hill of villages
packed like sardine until next ballot quadratics.
March, footprints of dictators are scribbled all over the republic’s
red carpet. April, autocrats’ fingerprints are the signature of
diamond cartels. May, tyrant’s thumbprint decorates the ragged bank
note.
June, lyrics on your doek are his campaign slogan.
Still grandma’s sweat bathes the statehouse tarmacs.
Mother’s tears rinse dishes after daily dictator’s banquets

Grandma’s sweat bathes the statehouse tarmacs,
Poverty shaved fathers are the glitter that replaced floodlights and
stolen lampposts
Brother is the anointed fisherman catching political breams for the
presidential roast
Ideological tutored memes sing praise anthems………..patronized
Singing praises to the republic’s red-carpet ……..they never stepped on.
Protocol relegates them to the ragged edges of the republic,
Mother’s tears rinse dishes after daily dictator’s banquets,
August is a museum of spent cartridge that shat death on sister’s womb,
……………..she birthed death.
Sister and her bullet-shredded fetus are now
snoring sorrow under the rubble of elections cemetery.
January swallowed its conscience and munched grenade for dinner
November drizzled both waterfalls of blood and threads of hesitant laughters
…………… Nights of long knives …………
November drizzle birthed another tyrant.
November! November! You are dictator.
Autocrat’s robes immersed in blood gems of Katanga.
The African moon
archived that in RED CAPITAL LETTERS.
Hermits and slogan slingers donning dictator’s emblazoned doeks,
jabbing the corrupt foul wind with pseudo–revolutionary jives dancing
for the gwamandaizing, glutton, gobbling globetrotting gold cartels
trendsetter.
Kitchen cabinet frying small fish in autocratic pans and then enjoy
the delicacies during dictator’s concert under the guise of shadows
……….ooh crocodile games. Grandma snores under the hill of villages
packed like sardine until next ballot quadratics.
March, footprints of dictators are scribbled all over the republic’s
red carpet. April, autocrats’ fingerprints are the signature of
diamond cartels. May, tyrant’s thumbprint decorates the ragged bank
note.
June, lyrics on your doek are his campaign slogan.
Still grandma’s sweat bathes the statehouse tarmacs.
Mother’s tears rinse dishes after daily dictator’s banquets

**

AZANIA!!

(i)

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 binds 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.

**

GOLGOTHA EPISODE

Ballot defecating shadows of hunger over

Poverty creased napkins of my mind

Slums farting anopheles into the gutters of my blood

Long departed hunters urinated bullets into iron uterus of

war tired peasants

giving birth to atomic bombs

and suckling grenades

Media wizards imbibing propaganda salami

and slogan pizza

Hunger-mandraxed rabbis licking fingers after chalk dust noon meals

I am word dynamite fumigating corrupt economic bedbugs

sucking out the fertility of our sunshine

clouds of hungry bellies rumble with formulae

Sunrise with virus graffiti scribbled on its forehead

Moonrise with roaches corrupting its eczema-eaten breasts

Bread buttered with tustiville blood, sanguages cheesed with

Darfur wounds

Gore dripping diamonds auctioned for flesh guzzling guns

Brown teethed nights grazing green mealies before fingers

of dawn caress vendetta wounded minds

Unrepentant Ngo bishops pimping vulnerables for fat chequebooks, gong and bling

Greenback laureates double-crossing peacecrats and warcrats in donor shebbens

Economic whores dipping their sperm-ducts in diplomatic brothels

Paparazzi gutters vomiting garbage of spraypainted columns

Slogan dogs parodying Hiroshima farce and Baghdad comedy

Greenhorns licking leftovers of propaganda braai packs after ballot arithmetic

Undersized zealots fitting political G-strings in springs of delimitation

Political morons mastering propaganda syllabus in their gimmick-

Tired memories.

I am poetic chlorine puritising political mental conveyor belts

from the crude oil of corruption

I am a metaphoric lotion peeling off eczema of the decade election hepatitis

**

DIMPLES OF HAITI

Haiti,  stink of sweat smelling millet slavery and the scent of blood revolutions.

Slapped in the face with sanctions mud by hands under the influence

of imperialistic alcohol. A super-concoction of propaganda maize porridge and

Media yeast.

Waterfalls of anger washing away your freedom dimples

Handmaidens and mental epileptic waiters serving political syphilis in ideological cafes

Children smelling stale ideological urine and dirt diplomatic cocaine

Identities condomised with donor culture and sexual myopia

Baboons eating colors of your flag, munching apples of your freedom

Tongues kissing bottom streams of the state under the veil of democracy gospel

Haiti, my pen is a weapon of mass instruction, I see the spreading yellow Yolk of the sun,

Gently falling over the darkness of your skin, yawning off the old skin of dust,

Regaining the lost richness of your dimples.

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SAD REVOLUTIONARY LULLABIES

……..Sing songs of Afghan circumcised,

Damascus masturbating bullets

Sing Belafonte Sing!

Of revolutions that never crawled, sing!

Lumumba, see whiz kids castrating political gods

Nkurumah, see them mutilating revolutionary goddesses

Sing Kunta , Sing Kinte

I am tired of revolutions importing colonial mood,

Propaganda decayed pimps frying anthems like frikadels

Tired savages roasting constitutions in corruption oil pans

Sing songs of freedoms that never walked; Sing

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Please join us in welcoming Mbizo by sharing a comment below.