Lord
Today, I’m carrying a spare throat to the farm:
not a hoe, not a sickle,
with brute faith I guard my loins
and trudge to the point where
I set up my camp
To shout down the world
The world, as you know, is the pump-price-of-fuel
Nkkhm: a bird emerges from a hole,
like car from an underground garage,
then flees
O no – it’s a cricket!
Kruuu, a frog comes running, scared stiff
Like a concubine’s chewing’ stick
Then a redneck
All these just because I cleared my throat!
So what’s going to give when I start my shout?
I blow a shout through my ram horn
A shout of rugged airs. But it doesn’t even rumple the calico
Of the bouncers at the planets’ politburo.
I climb mount Armstrong, Louis Armstrong
And shape my cheeks like his mini-universe
and blow, blow, blow
But every shout, every decibel of outrage
Only manages to send the world to a higher orbit
The world, as you know, is the pump-price-of-fuel
Far away it spins
Beyond the reach of tear gas-and-cloud
Beyond the reach of delinquent stars splintered from the Big Bang
Beyond the reach of the spin doctors, paid
Handsomely, very handsomely
To say, very nicely,
In scented sentences
with nicotined lips
That the world is doing just fine
The world, as you know, is the pump-price-of-fuel
What a fatal love for their urbane airs.
Their elaborate gesticulations surely
Have more to do with the karat content of their cufflinks
Than the other point they want us to see:
How little it matters if, they
Started off as dieticians and ended up morticians
– it’s the same number of syllables!
That’s even before they switch on their charm
Backed by a history of histograms
And declare, with the assurance of the rarity of their perfumes
That the world is doing just fine
That many would look back, soon
And say, from marble graveyards
That this was the economist’s finest hour.
Pingback: Shout at the Walled | aihuomaimminentriver