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a
capitalist poem
air is free
time is free
but airtime
you have to pay for
Aryan Kaganof |
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Songs
[for Lucky Dube]
...today the gongs of old lie silent
Silenced by an occupation force
Masked as software in hard computers
The flutes of old have ceased
Sky Omoniyi |
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Tonight
I Stand with Trees
neither rage
nor fear trembles these yearning
arms astonished
in their sudden fruitless, leaflessness...
Ando Yeva |
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Ash
to Earth
A bang
Resonates
A contrived star aglow
And souls
Designated
On flight marked goodbye.
Chukwu
Eke
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Dear
Teacher and Pagan
(To Wole Soyinka)
Dear teacher and pagan,
With prim fronds
I thee wed.
Uzor Maxim Uzoatu |
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ABCs |
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And
South Africa is a fractured mirror
A paradox of schizophrenic selves
Who don’t talk to one another
Who fear each other
Who revere each other
Who loathe
And pretend
And try to blend in
With each other
And this is the time when
you can become
The greatest substance of your dreams
Unless you live in a shack
And don’t speak English
And don’t know what this poem means
Lebogang Mashile |
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A
Memory of Berkeley
Still, on Berkeley’s
Poetry Walk
words are the world’s emperor
and poets are her royal majesties
Nduka Otiono |
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Mandela’s
Cell
I stood among a crowd
of tourists from abroad
and stared into his past:
a cage of bricks and bars
as gloomy and as cramped
as racial bias in the mind.
Chris Mann |
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Postcards
from London I head butt
and scream at a brick wall,
show me the life in the dream.
Nnorom Azuonye |
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Jacaranda
Flowers
there are jacaranda flowers ablaze
and the sidewalk mood to my home is violet again
Amitabh Mitra |
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On
Beauty
In the fading light of the day
I see Beauty walking towards me
on her way home and swerve away
just in time to avoid the oncoming bus.
Mark Espin |
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Samburu
Tshika ngwe ya rona comes from the reeds
They have built Maluti Mountains with their hands
Beautifully, engraved their narrations on sunburnt hills
Leaving their birthmarks on olive caves
Napo Masheane
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Nostalgia
I riffled quietly through his bedside cabinet,
Lifted a hundred quid out of his wallet.
One of those things that Ordinary People do.
Don’t believe me if I say I didn’t mean to.
Paul Abbott
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| _____________________________________ |
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