The ManicaPost
Morris Mtisi Education Correspondent
The following poem will be the source of our Practical Criticism or Literary Appreciation exercise on radio on Sunday 23 May 2019…3:30 to 4:30pm.
So keep this paper and follow the brilliance of a plucky Literature student. She will be my studio guest.
Do not miss this one-hour school on radio.
This is your chance to learn from other students and enjoy the services of your local radio-Diamond FM. Who said radio was for music, news and entertainment alone?
The Poem is titled ‘Before The Next Song.’
(1)
Delek, delek, delek
The juke box coughs,
preparing to sing.
Has it drunk blood tonight?
A scratch on the record
Sends the needle leap-frogging.
Smash!
A quick hush.
Someone has broken
his converted dollars.
Like a snake
that had paused to listen,
the noise pours out again.
Suddenly,
Several perfumes rise,
they rush and waft around the room
like panicking widgeon,
bristling amidst human grass.
the beat
of heavy pursuing odour,
marches past
like a clumsy posse
led by a blind, unwashed man.
At last,
the box bursts into a tune.
Deep baritone booms out
slapping the ear wetly
like sweat drops shaken
from an enemy’s fist.
Feet and legs,
Wet clay pillars,
siddle the dance floor.
yellow eyes wink
like a rogeur
in the act.
(11)
Adam stumbles out of the Wine and Wench,
the music still buzzing in his ears,
like a swarm of insistent mopane bees.
Wading in mercury,
Adam forges ahead
clutching the air for support.
Inshide,
Inshide je naitcub,
je people’re danshing.
je people’re performing
inshide je naitcub
Lazerised eyes in the dark
piece to the back of Adam’s brain
leaving potent venom.
A wall looms ahead,
heavily dressed in graffiti,
Slogans and curses,
nicknames of the sacred
Jurassic park monsters
naked men and women
in flagrante delido.
As Adam sweeps past,
life-size graffiti detaches itself
and clogs towards him on wooden soles.
Ten bucks only
only bucks my honely.
The voice is crunchy and yet soft
like gravel ladled with a polythene spoon.
Blood throbs in Adam’s veins,
like Chitako-cha-Ngonya’s drums
beating on new moon night.
Towards a dark copy-cat taxi
crouching by the kerb,
Adam steers his new found Eve.
And, as they pile inside
to circumnavigate the night,
faint strains
of the next song,
this time,
a dirge,
filter from the East
of tomorrow.