BARREN FIELDS

BARREN FEILDS

Why is it

that when you sit

down for your meals

you don't think

about all those empty stomachs

in the villages

which your henchmen

tease with bags of mealie meal

so that they buy your cards

and shout your slogans

in order to get their hands on them

to feed their families

that have been let down

by the sometimes treacherous sky

and their barren fields

end

WHERE WILL THEY BE ON X-MAS DAY?

WHERE WILL THEY BE ON X-MAS DAY

As our children
stare wide eyed
at glass cases of sweets
that their poor father's
can no longer afford to buy for them
to sweeten their Xmas days -
where will the shefs* be on that day?

As mother's patch old clothes
that their children can cover their buttocks
and their husbands their crotches
between their perforated trouser legs -

as cockroaches threaten mutiny
inside bare cupboards
faced by the beautifu face of hunger
in houses where once voices laughed
on sunny Xmas days -
where will the shefs be on that day
with their looted public funds

end
*shef - party big shots