Let me

rise by bending over

to pick another

sister

fallen

Let me be

the one on a chicken bus

to give the woman with a child on her back

my seat

because i know with no doubt

her mother like my own

taught her the same

that if she finds me in her place

no doubt she would do the same for me

Let me be silent

in the face of adversity

yet speak my peace quietly

teaching the next sister

to speak with love

and repremand with the same

let me rise

by bending over

to pick another sister

fallen

without pomp or fanfare

purely reaching out

to the woman in me

Let me be

my sister’s keeper

not to be remembered

by mere words spoken

but by every life my life touched

by every sore my hand touched and soothed

let me

let me be my sister’s keeper.

Will I write that song?

Child
When I get the courage
When I am ready and brave
To bring you in a world
With too many potholes
And frolicking leaders
I want to make sure
You are strong and ready
For the furrowed ride
I will keep you safe for now
Wrapped in my scared womb
Only when I am ready
Will I birth you freely
Like the way this poetry flows from my tongue
When you get here
I mean if you get here
I imagine the joy of your small
Cute smiles and
Your tiny hands curling
Into little adorable fists
Incapable of hurting no one
Then slowly opening like
The petals of a beautiful rose
I imagine in your sleep
You will dream of happy things
And i will watch you stretch
Your tiny limbs
Saying ‘when I grow up I wanna be…
better than mummy’
Like the words flowing from my tongue
You will wear many names of your choice
For I want to give you that freedom from birth
With the easiness of a happy child’s laughter
To make your own choices beginning with your name
Without me breathing down my failed dreams
On you
Child
I want you to be proud in your skin
So comfortable no one can convince you otherwise
Be weary of brain-pickers i would say
Those who will pick on your brains with shamboks
Like they did on the backs of grandma
In the cotton plantations
You will be gifted with brawn
But child that does not mean you are to be a slave
And when you are old like these locks
Tying my world together, at 8
I want your world to be open
Full of limitless possibility
I want you to be brave
Just like me when I bring into this world
To labour for your own happiness
To strive to cut the fences, prejudices
Around the skin you will unashamedly be proud of
My child I seek you to find
All-weather wings
A heart as warm
I want you to find love
Give love
And
Above all, I want you to be you

I will keep you safe for now

Wrapped in my scared womb

Safe from the stale promise of democracy

misfired bullets of hatred

pelting my ears from the radio relentlessly

Safe from circus governments of disunity

pawning our rights & freedoms

like zhing-zhong products at the flea market

Only when I am ready

Will I birth you freely

Like the way this poetry flows…

In memory of Julius Chingono(passed on 02.01.11)

We were miniscule caricatures

Split between the rims of his glasses

Each one of us

Stuffed shirts and too serious

To gather laughter in our stride

He stitched simple paisleys

On our foreheads

That told the world

We were “tighter than

thief’s anus”

All we needed was just a fart

To remind us we are human

After all.

By  Batsirai E Chigama

04.01.2011

You have reached the woman

whose words are not buried beneath her tongue,

who crafts metaphors & similes like

she tends to the tattered garments of her inner untouched soul

that place she can call her own,     

You have reached the woman

who  has dared to stop and take stock,   

who realises the images in the broken mirror are not hers   

but mere distortions of what the world prescribes to her to be

You have reached Batsirai

Inspired by phenomenal women through Nebila Abdulmelik

I want to know how it feels

To make a woman bleed

To death

Without hearing her cries

Without hearing her pleas

Without seeing the death

Of her dreams.

I want to know

How you felt

I was only two

Did your bludgeoning penis

Feel exhilarated

Pulsate with devilish desire

As you forcibly sowed your shameless seed

On my infertile ground

That you mutilated

The ground that will now

Forever remain infertile

Because of you?

I want to know

How you can sleep at night

What kind of dreams you dream?

What kind of man strangles

Fondles a two year old

Was he born of a mother

Like my own who bleeds

Tears every time she sees me

Begging to be forgiven

For not having been there

To protect me for my own father?

Somebody tell me

What kind of a world is this

That sodomises its future

Telling the young ones

Not to believe in love

Not to dream

Not to dare

Not to laugh

Not to treasure life

and believe in humanity?

Tell me somebody

Because I must believe in something

I must believe in things kind

And gentle

I must believe that the sun

Not only shines

For those who stand before it shines

But for those like me too

Whose limbs were severed

Before they even learnt to crawl

I must believe

The world can be better than this!

Raise your hand somebody

If you will help me believe

©Batsirai E Chigama

6 November 2010

You have stared at the ground far too long
You know the tiniest crevices
And all the red and black ants that burrow
Tearing earth’s intestines for you to see
We catch you watching into space
And wonder what captures your mind
Engrossed, you can’t hear us

Where are you?  It seems you died
And buried yourself when father left
Buried us with him and forgot ever
To come sweep the graves now forgotten
Under the leaves of the muchakata
Your silence is a hot pot of seething, lethal oil
We are afraid.

We seek your embrace in troubled times
Yet you are more troubled than us
Can you come back, can we go back to yesterday?

By Batsirai E Chigama

http://zimbabwe.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=5787&x=1

INDEPENDENCE AVENUE

I lost my home to a new road

And they said it was the gains of freedom

My humble burrow in the earth

Was plastered with gravel and tar

Eternally sealing my lips, my voice would never be heard

I yearn for the one they called the dirt road

For then my right to this land was respected

Every day I bear the weight of haulage trucks

Trafficking fellow brothers and sisters seeking the same end as I

My tiny legs knock

And are caught between the hardness of earth and

The hardness of the imposed rock above me

I hear them chant some comrades brave and outspoken

They sing “hapana chakanaka tonosangana kumastreets”

Their voices, distant seem louder than mine

Yet still fall on concrete sealed ears

Them like me the ant beneath the tar

Are on different sides of the road yet seeking the same end

Wings to carry our voices to that place called independence avenue.

©By Batsirai E Chigama

06.09.10

From beyond the wall of present I see

Faces young and old carved with

smiling lines, strong

Defying yesterday’s and today’s pain

dried in cakes of tears beneath their chins

Hear voices of bells shake the very air

The blood of innocent children

A fragrance intoxicatingly loud

Euphoric, clanking like freedom

Knocking on the door of every citizen

Inviting all to drink from the cup of sacrifice.

From beyond the future I see

Multitudes

My brothers and sisters burn the spear of hate

I feel love erupt from the very core

of the human heart.

I behold Madzimbabwe

Clothed in majestic splendor

Endowed with flawless beauty

Her wedding gown a sight to behold

Her smile welcoming all from beyond

Her gaze not flirty but steady

Neighbors look at her envious

Lower their heads in respect

To the virtuous bride.

The spirits of the land have spoken

Even earth refuses to bear fruit

For her children to feed on

Nehanda, Tongogara, Kaguvi?

Your spirits restless roam below

The orchestra of your bones clatter,

calling your children to the winter chastened streets

You wear long faces, we hear you cus,

spit disgusted at our silence.

Nehanda, Tongogara, Kaguvi

Raise the voice of your silent children

Impel the resigned voices to chant,

Chant freedom loud

Impel the choirs of the land to sing

Sing the freedom melody

Impel the drummers of the ngoma

To beat freedom off the tethered reigns

Impel, I, the poet of the land to glorify

Only the deserving heroes

Spirit of the land ARISE.

©By Batsirai Easther Chigama

11/06/08

Like a broken skirt button

Fallen beneath earth

I do not want to be forgotten

I want to rise each morning

With the certainty of sun

That between seasons carefully chooses

when the world should glow

Look, look at me some more

Under the skirts of my mind

In the private parts of my thoughts

There is a black ant, big

It bites my thoughts, bites

Endlessly my thighs twitch                            

Harangued by never-ending

Restless careless words spread

between the untouched inner lips of my soul

The same ant that will, when I am buried

Build her home with my broken thoughts

Of sand “manured” with my flesh and blood

She will unbury me to the ground where

My thoughts once danced and I will be

Ploughed, shaken, moved

 and on other people’s feet

I will be carried

And in my dead silence speak

Of the reawakening spirits of the underground.

©By Batsirai Easther Chigama

18/01/08