The Fight! Poem by Niki Nicholas Nkuna

The heart palpitating like the chest of a frog,
The whole body, excited and shaking,
Concentration is one dimensional,
Thinking about nothing else but the prey,
This will be a unique confrontation,
The prey and the hunter ready for combat,

No one is running away from the other,
Both want to lock horns,
Once they beginning to wrestle, they can't leave one another,
They cling to one another as if their bodies are attached with super glue,
Funnily they do not punch one another like pugilists usually do,
They hit one another with their bodies like it happened in the late 70's with bump jive,

All kinds of sounds could be heard from the solitary boxing ring,
The audible one is the heavy breathing as they slowly begin to tire,
Funnily the heavy breathing sound becomes more audible as the fight progresses,
Some little yelling sounds, there and there, would intersperse
Likewise, those little sounds would also have progressive noise levels,
Some of the sounds interchange, while you hear a whispering sound,
Suddenly you hear a sound, reminiscent of the sound of a person being strangled,
And then you hear the sound of a goat, interchanging with the sound of a person being quietened by a hand, pressed against the mouth,
To prevent him from divulging the truth about who ate the fruit from the Garden of Eden,

Relief only comes about when the bell finally rings, for the end of round whatever,
There's no referee,
Obedience to the ring master is unbelievable!
The ensuing silence after stoppage……unbelievable!
There's no winner by the look of the two bodies lying prostrate,
The fight has been special,
It had nobody to intervene,
It was a fight to the finish,
The ring has been solely to the disposal of the two fighters,
No corner men,
The ring master, nowhere to be seen,
But will know when to ring the bell when it's time to do so,

Signal come from the moment a fighter lets out a cry,
An unusual sound, a muffled cry as if somebody is being staffed with something in the mouth and is wrestling with the attacker for Bell Air,
The compressed emotions and all those myriad sounds, when they eventually reach a crescendo,
The cut off is like the conductor stopping a performance with one stroke of a stick,
The silence, like a grave yard the following day after a burial,

The verdict,
They've had a gently persons' fight,
The eerie cries, muffled sounds, and heavy breathing, are signals for an enjoyable, exhilarating fight,
They fought like they were heating one another with sponges,
No one bled after the fight, no bruises but happy faces smiling like apparitions in the dark,
The only thing visible, being the white and shining teeth,

The fight looked dangerous at face value,
For the fighters wore no hand gloves,
No boxer shorts,
They were completely vulnerable to one another,

There were no judges too,
No need, for there's nothing to judge,
The verdict has always been a unanimous draw,
No technical draw or knockout,
No defeat of one another,

The fight always decreed to take place behind closed doors,
No spectators to witness the competition,
No external noise but the noise of the combatants in the ring,

Like the traditional boxing match, the tempo increases towards the end,
Both fighters become very much frantic as the game nears its climax,
They fought like their life depended on it despite being lethargic,