Mpho Ramaano Poems

Boom! Boom! Boom!
Pistol bullets take the skies
in the red traffic lighted streets of Polokwane,
some crazy monsters flee the wheels away
...

Tell me your problems,
Tell me your quarrels,
Tell me your concerns,
Tell me what eats you within,
...

some ailment ate my father,
they say he died of pulmonary tb,
his death certificate says so too.
with pressed lungs and loose stomach
...

i watch our sickly kids,
mamas and gogos with wilting flaccid bones
collapse in the long open-ended queues
in public hospitals
...

outside the university in turfloop
donning identity of the defenders of revolution
in the hype of petit politics and hooliganism
some criminal drunks tagged sasco
...

Come lucky Christmas
they come home
carrying faces of Marabastad,
Witbank and Johannesburg
...

This poem is pregnant
with the black bloodshed of 1976.
This poem is constipated
with slavery of the poor.
...