Monday 21 March 2011

Blame it on me


When I satirize your despotism
Of your bloodied hands
Or of your devious heart
Driving blade into throats
Choking conscience in stunted growth
Corrupting men’s hearts with untruths
Employing court poets to crown you
Why should that satire irk you?

Why should your stomach churn
If at all your leadership is unparalleled?
Why should my poems cloud your heart
If indeed they are a “work of a nihilist”?

If my poems are “acidic” and a recipe for “disorder”
Where is acidity in the strewn bodies of massacred victims?
Which disorder do I portend for dim lit eyes of famished souls?

If my poems are “dangerous” and “misplaced”
Pray, are the unmarked graves of your victims any better?
Or as misplaced as hopes hang on tree?

If my poems are “inflammatory” and “likely to stir ethnic tensions”
What will you say of cindered hearts and frothing frustrations?
What will you call the barren clouds defaced?

Blame it on me, then.
Blame me.

You have the platform: issue a declaration, press treason upon me,
Classify my poetry seditious, ban me, if all else fails send thugs to wipe me out
Then call it “random acts of robbers”

Blame it on me, then.
Blame me.

See, in the tunnels of my emotions
Lie a power bigger than what you wield;
It rings into the future, it is the past
When these emotions mix with the blood
Of your victims, they can scale wall of your lies
These are my soldiers, I send them with the barrel of my pen
Once writ, not even killing me reverses their power

Still, you can blame it on me
Blame me.

C) Lorot Salem 2011

5 comments:

Unknown said...

dark dark dark

Salem Lorot said...

@ Kim Nelson,wanted it that way with a message. Thanks for stopping by.

Madeleine Begun Kane said...

What a wonderful poem. And I can certainly relate because I write a lot of political satire. Excellent and powerful! Mad Kane

Sherry Blue Sky said...

Wow. So powerful - sending your soldiers so forcefully with the barrel of your pen. You are a strong voice for those who have been silenced. Great writing, poet of Kenya!

Salem Lorot said...

@ Mad Kane, then we are kindred spirits. That is lovely. Would love to pitch tent in that house and rummage through them.

@ Sherry Blue Sky, they speak through me...I am they vessel...their mouthpiece...their anguish burns my soul and the ashes reveal in these writings. If it be true that I carry their message, may the dawn of another day light their unlit paths.

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