These next poems are written by Ndaba Sibanda on the topic of Black Lives Matter. Come show your support by reading and absorbing his words.
From Scars To Stars
There has to be development
You owe it to posterity
To strive for your betterment
There has to be prosperity
Didn`t the parents bear the brunt
Of cultural and social and economic
Scars of history in a sublime fashion?
There has to be development
You owe it to posterity
To strive for your betterment
There has to be prosperity
How They Received Him
He was moving from door
to door asking citizens
to give him a big vote
so that he could become
their next prime minister
They chuckled and looked
at him as if they thought:
here`s a man on a mission
to count the number of hairs
on our bodies in a split second!
From Hogwash To Mouthwash
she was a lady who shared a great fellowship
that nurtured her as an activist and an educationist
at first she embodied a spirit of softness and politeness
later her activism epitomised an ethos of civil disobedience
she delivered speeches that eulogised woman freedom stalwarts
like Queen Anna Nzinga of Ndongo, Winnie Mandela and Rosa Parks
is Rosa Parks not a heroine because she was tired of giving in?
she would ask rhetorically about the modern-day civil rightist
even days after the broadcast, she couldn`t swallow it—
the bitterness of the verdicts, of the votes, of the statistics
the praise-singers and the public media fell over themselves
in a bid to sanitise and sugarcoat what was nasty and trashy
every day she yelled out names , words: boobs, badass, Bobs—
legacy, cancer, cholera, cruelty, crippling chaos, social chasm, curse!!
there was a huge group of citizens who dreamt and drowned in docility
they blamed everything on fate as they put up with the economic crap
I heard people plead with her, confessing they too were tired of the nonsense
she told them: shift from that kind of shit to grit, from hogwash to mouthwash
Dealing With Attitudes
A court judge made
the following remarks:
a privileged people should
have a duty and a conscience
that says we cannot be
the immortal beneficiaries
of the imbalances of the past
because we are living in the present
with its demands for equity and equability
Scandalous Allegations
I don’t believe these lies
that our black bees
don’t have knees!
I guess these shameful lies
are intended to squeeze
us into a smelly sleaze!
Author:
A 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee, Ndaba’s poems have been widely anthologised. Sibanda is the author of The Gushungo Way, Sleeping Rivers, Love O’clock, The Dead Must Be Sobbing, Football of Fools, Cutting-edge Cache: Unsympathetic Untruth, Of the Saliva and the Tongue, When Inspiration Sings In Silence and Poetry Pharmacy. His work is featured in The Anthology House, in The New Shoots Anthology, and in The Van Gogh Anthology, and A Worldwide Anthology of One Hundred Poetic Intersections. Some of Ndaba’s works are found or forthcoming in Page & Spine, Peeking Cat, Piker Press, SCARLET LEAF REVIEW, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, the Pangolin Review, Kalahari Review, Botsotso, The Ofi Press Magazine, Hawaii Pacific Review, Deltona Howl, The song is, Indian Review, Eunoia Review, JONAH magazine, Saraba Magazine, Poetry Potion, Saraba Magazine, The Borfski Press, Snippets, East Coast Literary Review, Random Poem Tree, festival-of-language and Whispering Prairie Press.
Sibanda’s forthcoming book Notes, Themes, Things And Other Things: Confronting Controversies,Contradictions And Indoctrinations was considered for The 2019 Restless Book Prize for New Immigrant Writing in Nonfiction. Ndaba’s other forthcoming book Cabinet Meetings: Of Big And Small Preys was considered for The Graywolf Press Africa Prize 2018.
Sibanda’s other forthcoming books include Timbomb, Dear Dawn And Daylight, Sometimes Seasons Come With Unseasonal Harvests, A Different Ballgame and The Way Forward.
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