Chicken Roast

A Protest Poem

Chicken Roast

Puff your plume in anger and fight, c**k, delight the owner of knife

smear sting with pollen and flap your wings.

As I said : Twist  arms and keep them bent

roll the rug and come down the terrace after disturbed sleep

Shoe-boots�"-rifle�"whirring bullets�"shrieks

The aged undertrial in the next cell weeps and wants to go home

Liberate me     let me go    let me go home

On its egg in the throne the gallinule doses

asphyxiate in dark

fight back, c**k, die and fight, shout with the dumb

Glass splinters on tongue�"breast muscles quiver

Fishes open their gills and enfog water

A piece of finger wrapped in pink paper

With eyes covered someone wails in the jailhouse

I can’t make out if man or woman

Keep this eyelash on left-hand palm�"and blow off with your breath

Fan out snake-hood in mist

Cobra’s abdomen shivers in the hiss of feminine urination

Deport to crematorium stuffing blood-oozing nose in cotton-wool

Shoes brickbats and torn pantaloons enlitter the streets

I smear my feet with the wave picked up from a stormy sea

That is the alphabet I drew on for letters.

( Translation of Murgir Roast )

1988

Repeat Uhuru