SCORCHING SUN
The little one lies under an acacia tree,
Dry snot and dust caked, moustache like,
Its sunken eyes dull and lifeless,
Peering into the distance with unseeing eyes,
The little one’s once chubby cheeks
Now, nothing but a haunting skull and skin.
The little one’s mother lies on the ground,
Barely breathing, clamped in death’s vice,
Her lips parched, her mouth dry,
Praying for a drop of water,
A drop that would never be.
A dust storm gathers, whirls and rages
Ripping her of her loose rags,
Parading what remains of her to all and sundry
A BAG OF BONES IN SHRIVELLED SKIN.
As the piteous duo succumb to starvation,
Impatient vultures circle smiling at the bounty
Vicious, joyous and celebratory.
An overfed lone hyena laughs from a distance
It’s a windfall for the scavengers
Hyenas and vultures dine in plenty
Though fighting, on the brink of murderous frenzy
Fighting over fresh corpses
In a far-off place,
The local mheshimiwa is a busy man,
A helicopter, rotors still turning vomits him.
He’s popular, a man of the people.
At the podium, against political enemies,
He launches vitriolic political rhetoric
Amid the crowd’s euphoric cheers and ululations.
A man of the people,
Campaigning for his presidential candidate.
In the capitol, at the capital,
After a weekend of draining campaigns,
Mheshimiwa hops from office to office
Ostensibly fighting for emergency funds and relief food.
The funds fatten his and cronies’ bank accounts,
The relief food is repackaged at night
New stock for their wholesale shops.
Days later,
Under an acacia tree,
The teary eyed mheshimiwa
Condoles with the ‘dying’ for the ‘avoidable untimely deaths’
Of their beloved.
Mheshimiwa politics and castigates the inept government.
For he’s a busy man,
He boards a waiting chopper, rotors whirl as it hums to life,
Leaving the helpless folks,
Shrouded in a blanket of asphyxiating dust,
And truckloads of political promises
To feed on amidst a crippling famine.
©S.K. KYENZE
12/10/2021
