They said they loved us.
They said what had hovelled us this long
Would melt in the ideas they’d put to physical form, fixing the forms, printing new laws to make more feasible new morns where dreams grow, where the beams of oppression become beaming faces facing greatness in all facets of a society phasing out the old, and phrasing in the new, and enacting, and without feigning bringing hope and growth anew.

They said we’d love it.
They said the picture would be bling
To the point of our dreams’ Everests, that they’ll brave the storms of whether to go with the hot or the cold, with the dry or with mould, or the new or the old, or whatever internal or from other holds could chip at our wishes, that they’d protect us, shield us in a new shell more robust than the previous, and keep our homes, culture, and aspirations safe anew.

They said they loved us.
The said we’d love it,
And this they said in words we’d listen to and miss the meaning shrouded like a zombie’s soul within idioms and colourful slogans painting derelict walls of our city gloom, and filling the air of family time with promises of Utopia today, Utopia tomorrow after Hell yesterday, and trickling out as if not premeditated and making us believe in Canterbury tales anew.

But now they hate us,
And hey! We don’t love it,
This stagnation like mosquito larvae infested ponds leaking putrefaction to our already putrefied systems, with corruption and stealing…no… embezzling being the order of the day, and deleting competition or young petitions to fix the predicament with silent words halted by violent wars. This stagnation so old we’ve lived that it even starts to feel like new.

Oh how they hate us
And hate that we don’t love it,
For to lord it over us longer they need us to be coy, kowtow, and shut up like Guantanamo torture secrets or that moment in a gory movie you are caught up between darkness and the bloodied blade and to speak your mind would Soweto you and your family in one instant, and depending on the riches you had, it will be featured, or not, on the news.

Oh how they hate us,
And how we wish we could change this
Situation with feeble will to exchange our lives with joy in the future generations as others before bothered to, feeble strength we are deluded to have whereas Gandhi taught us all by shooting up the opposition with words and Christ-like pain affliction and acceptance.
(c) Nyonglema