Blank Thoughts Poem by Phillip Nine Mafunga

Empty streets stretching towards ends unknown
A town square meeting called for all who care to hearken
Ladies and gentlemen, baboon presiding: agenda still unknown
Unspeakable questions; thick confused silence
Now I know that peace is neither quiet nor silent but rather salient
For in the silence of souls fate determines our tomorrow

Masked evil in us walks the pavements of our today
For human happiness is not a destination in itself
Instead, it is born in the pathways of our self-redemption
Our sorrows and pain entombed in the belly of our yesterday
We have wearied the soil with poison and famine we reap
Wrinkled and gnarled, she bares her wisdom to the unforgiving sun
In the silence of gathered souls, the town square is in fog!

A page unfurls in this dirge
One reads of a burning life beyond the age
The silence of the damning voice unto them in the echelons of power
Desiring to survive; spoken so loud in the quiet of myriad thoughts
Sonorous thoughts gathered daily in the freedom square of our struggle
Dream of a better tomorrow and build muscles of the newly born!

PHILLIP NINE MAFUNGA
6 May 2020