Scribbling Hard
Poetry (Excerpt from the poem, “Essentialism” by Dimitri D. Kwenda)
The importance held in speaking
Remains relevance in the essential
The cosmopolitan view of the cosmos
Carried in identity through purpose

I find, rather subjectively
That my relationship to everything
Is simplified, vivified through relation
My globe is broadcast from my Zimbabwean nation…

Verse 1
City winds that’ll chime, whispering so sublime
In my rhythm and rhyme, in a prism of time
Occupy fine space in sacrilege to the signs
For the minds of men disregard a life
In the crimes are the sins that’ve turned the tide
Where the freed are a-killing flanks on their side
Black spatter on black, self mastered attack
As a matter of fact it’s a massacre’s hack
To re-enact the past masters’ emphatic attack
On the Black saying that they were saving our backs
So now what do we prove? Were they telling the truth?
That we’re savage animals who cannot be controlled?
Are we truly uncouth if we don’t follow their rules?
Coz everything we do puts heads in a noose
Xenophobic attacks on people trying to live
A momentary relapse into colonial hell
The Islamic movement turned to bomb threats
I’m upset at,” why import the foreign debt?”
Can we think for ourselves in this world?
It’s so frustrating after having had so much hope
It hurts to have to turn on my own people
Who spurn the past curve and don’t learn to be humble
We’re coming undone, the crumbling sons
With lump sums but we’re plummeting funds

HOOK:
In the hour of need with the power to be
What the people who lead have decided to feed
Breathe the clean air and divided the seed
In greed, each decided to leave debris

With power to be what the people have dreamed
The exalted have seemed to abandon our creed
The cream has been licked by a deadly disease
And the hungry are treated to the pain and the grief


CHORUS:
The crayon is falling apart
Your prayer unworthy of God
On the paper you’re scribbling hard
Why are your children living so far?

Let me explain, why in the games you play
You always pray and still can’t find your way
Just keep re-writing those rules
And keep making fools of those who trust in you…


Verse 2
What is my sadness, the blues I could write?
Should I search for sympathy and wail on a mic?
In the desert of Africa isn’t a drop of tear
Even the moisture of our sweat evaporates in the air
We strive for eternity but watch the sand unending
Our hoes are tilling to a lifeless giving
Yet we wake to wishes of escapist sleep
To the same lifestyle of strain and belief
Dumbfound without answers we turn to ancestors
Some prefer church, concern for sermons and pastors
Speaking to the dead is poetry embedded in Africa
Don’t need Europe or America to validated
Wrought into our women these wrongs
But we spoke, we wrote and then broke into song
Longsuffering with sighs and woes
When we know tomorrow’s a slow walk of sorrow
Without the role models to point to the path to follow
Coz those that could’ve sold our souls for petrol
A whole nation betrayed by a few individuals
The agenda on our tables remains rather trivial
Efforts to increase the class gap, elitism!
The skid marks of fancy cars so we can see “Him!”
I’ve see a sad thing and I hope I don’t change…
My virtues shouldn’t tarnish when I have my way!

Hook & Chorus (x1)

Written by Dimitri D. Kwenda