Sunday Poetry: Dambudzo Marechera

In jail the only telephone is the washbasin hole: blow and we'll hear!

Write the poem not from classroom lectures
But from the barricade's shrieking defiance
From the mortuary's brightly frozen monocle
From day's gunburst to night's screaming human torch
From bleeding teeth that informed to underground
Perception of black fire

Write the poem not from the rhyme & reason of England
Nor the Israeli chant that stutters bullets against
Palestinians
Nor (for fuck's sake) from the negritude that negroed us
Write the poem, the song, the anthem, from what within
You
Fused goals with guns & created citizens instead of slaves

Do not scream quietly
We want to hear, to know
And forge the breastplate a poet needs against THEM!

Dambudzo Marechera

(Taken from Poets Against the War and offered in respectful support of the people of Iran.)