That foolish youth was buried yesterday-
At night. In
darkness. Without tears.
He wore a permanent scowl
On his face that bore scars of knives;
The top two buttons of his shirt were unbuttoned
To reveal a chest the size of two concrete slabs sitting on each other.
His gait was of a prowling violence
In human flesh;
Where he stepped, clods of soil whimpered
In mortal fear.
Old men in my village asked him, ‘Son,
Why can’t you make peace with people?
Show us your tasus-riddled,
pus-infested buttocks
So that we may prick it with thorns and make you whole
again.’
He would brandish his fingers at the old men
And throw words carelessly the way a drunkard would do
When hopelessly drunk in high-noon.
He had dropped out of school and would speak
A smattering of English:
“Me, we are the ones
they call bad, friend; wrong number!”
“ What is this
staphylococcus telling me? Do you even know what staphylococcus means?”
We buried him, that foolish youth.
A decomposing flesh, so vulnerable, it was a pity.
No one cried: the dark figures that hurriedly buried him
Just shook their heads
Those fingers he brandished in anger
Were frail, hopeless, decomposing flesh.
When the mound had formed on this unmarked grave,
The village sighed.
The staphylococcuses
had the last laugh.
C) Salem Lorot/ echoesofthehills 2017
~
The prompt given by Susan this week was on unity. This was my attempt on this subject.
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