NOWHERE TO HIDE

Like a desert wind

Sweeping footprints

Of yesterday tears

And like midsummer drizzle

Teasing the blushing sun

That is my love for you.

Like a moth to a candle

Rainbow coloured dreams

Wing in the broad smiles

Of our times,together

Where ever you go

I will be with you

Like an obedient shadow

And I wrap myself round you

Like a halo round the moon.

Where ever you are

I am that aura you radiate

The scent of your perfume

You wear everyday

I am those sneezes, groans

        and snores

You make everyday

Like a butterfly

In the Collector's Bottle

You are in my hold.

No matter how you run

There is just no escape

Where ever you are

Where ever you go

No matter how you try

There is just no hiding place

From my love,

                      its so real.

        -dougwa-

ROAD TO YOUR HEART

A long 

and winding umbilical cord

That melts into the distant

Disturbing

sparkling fantasy of a mirage.

A snaking dusty trail hemmed

With rosemaries, pansies,

fennels and violets

Fading like a refrain of a lullaby.

A sad mourning song

Of a windy August night

Voices of homeless times

Joys

and tears waiting to be discovered.

Dancing

images of light and shade

Merging heart-shaped silhouttes

Against the glow of hope and fate

Frail dreams

walking on a dusty trail.

Sometimes I struggle alone

Toil, grope, fall and

cry alone

When you fail to understand

me.

And I trudge on

in the windy night

Toward the holy grail, heaven's ecstacy

To voices in the dark

calling my name.

         -dougwa-

GOOSE CHASE

I have been drinking wine

To douse the burning tip of my mind

Worries chewing at my nerves

Like the filter end of a rich Havana cigar

Woes of this world turn my whiskers

Into drab willows of misery

My nights into endless nightmares

And my thoughts rattling and jarring

Like the business end of a mechanical hammer.

Dreams clad in limp loincloth

Revisit me from the dark

Urns of history

The salad days of our beings

And their neauseating euphoria

When in drunken trance we siezed

Conscience by her arms

And threw her on her back

Splayed her legs

And smacked our lips

As blood spurt out...

I wipe my mind with the back of my hand

Trying

To brush away the dregs of the sordid rituals

We once enshrined.

A plump shiny green bottle

Buzzes around my mind irritating

Reminding me of Death

Hanging mockingly

Like a pendulum over my mind seducing

''O Sweet Carrion

You are food for the elders!''

And my sins in their hordes shimmer

A deathly pale round the nooze

Suspended from blushing heaven's bottom

My mind's eyes shed crystal tears

Giving away bucketfuls of Chiyadzwa diamonds to regain

Long gone and lost innocence.

I shared a bottle of wine

With my new-found friend, Today

Clinking glasses and minds

Then a green bottle in full flight

Was caught between the grinding bellies

Of our glasses and minds

Bloodied fleshrot bespattered our intelligence

And our minds rushed to the wash basins retching

A brush with the fetid breath of the past

Left the gums of my mind barren and obscene

And together with newfound friend, Today

We covered our private parts with our hands

Ashamed

At the nudity of our thoughts.

She knocked at the door of my mind

Eyes shadowed in wet grey paint

Lips smudged in scarlet smiled at me

A Good Morning

My palm hiding the discoloured teeth

Of my inner-self

I muffled a Good Mourning to her, but

I felt a warmth spreading

At the base of my belly

Her milky-white mouthful was inviting

A milkyway blaze trailing into deep future

''I will flirt with her'' my mind whispered

But then the rasping sandpaper touch of her lips

Bruised and bloodied my thoughts

And I saw red at the future.

I must have swooned

From the First Lady's fistkisses of philanthropy

Doling out sweet nothings and promises

At a ceremony sheathed in royal pomp and dignity

Where the guests dressed like Harlequins

Mesmerised us with the crablike dance

And flummoxed O poor we

With democratic mumbo-jumbo and lingo

And the Povo touched with feeling

Donated oceanfuls of diamond tears

And their sincere prayers a mutter flutter

Into the heavens for beloved leaders.

I broke Biltong , my past, into the pot

To give life to ailing friend, Today

With my fingernail I peeled off

The tomatoe's tough ruddy jacket

To make sauce

And I heard a rumble of objection

From the August House

And the Mujibhas and Chimbwidos' angry yawn

Gave a chilli spice to the dish

And the food touching Today 's lips

He sneezed and broke wind

Startling ghosts of old nostalgic memories

That had took seats at the kitchen table

To wing away to the scrapyard

Their home beyond the rusting horizon.

Perched on the anthill of anticipation

I roll my thoughts

Into a big joint of mbanje

I suck and grey fading puffs

Of wishes spiral into the bored sky

Each a crippled dream

That was bulldozed at Churu Farm

An ambitious dream that was displaced

By the Operation Murambatsvina

A dream that lost an eye and limb in the food riots

A dream that lost its balls at university

A dream that fell from the 11th floor at the Towers

Into the Taxman's hat

A dream that drowned in the opaque beer tank

At the Uhuru celebrations

A dream that lost its breath

On top of another man's wife in Mbare

A dream dumped and disowned

Only to find home at the bottom of the Blair toilet...

To find home in the sympathetic clicks

Of poets who have lost their voices.

The stub is burning my fingers

Minds run out of fuel and fire

The angry verbal lash

Of the emotionally wounded

Is a stub licking back at the wielder

To be snuffed out and discarded

On the ash tray of hopelessness

The grave yard that houses all

Once active minds.

-dougwa-

THE HARD MASHONA

With blistered determination
We cling to the life-giving hoe
Bending double on wobbling hope
We scrap on the bored earth
Begging for a mouthful.
A gift bestowed upon us
Like King Solomon with many wives
To multiply and fill the world
Is to fill the world with smiles and flowers
The rainbow family
The best out of the worst
The blest to school the rest.
Like a stamp and a letter
We stick together
Bleating and bleeding together
Looking in the eyes of the foe
We sit huddled round the dying fire
The embers bequeathed from our past -
The spirits in the wind chanting songs
Of love and peace.
Our eyes have gone numb
Gawking and hawking without cease
The sullen skies of old hope
That invisible palm outstretching
From the melting clouds of distress
''O ye get this vital itaal''
Mannah from your sleepy gods(dogs?)
The pendulum knocks
Against the walls of our minds
Reminding us of our covenant
With the gods of belief
To live our lives as an explanation
The story of the plaintive shadows
From the land of black and white rainbows
And rusting sunrises and sunsets.
Look into the splintered mirror
And you see the dream
A frosty webbed apparition
On the misted glass
Disbelief?
Then scrap on the dirty lozenge
On your underwear and sniff!
Till death do us party
We will always declare our presence
Beaten on one cheek
Donate another cheek
Once beaten twice shine
Do not let your bitterness glow by night
For one day for all this
Toiling and drowning in sweat and blood
Someone will pay.

-dougwa-

the hard mashona is an indigenous cattle breed very resistant to severe drought conditions. it is amazing how this breed survives in most cruel times & i have told myself that hard times never kill, in fact they leave you much stronger.