Chabu, I Salute Your Point Of View Poem by John Sensele

Chabu, how I miss you and long to kiss you, brave brother
With whom I shared not just genes and features
But intellectual prowess, harness of resilience and many other
Characteristics, Physics, rubrics and several musical and literary sub cultures.

Chabu, watching Bad Company videos in twenty sixteen
Draws me back to a motley of music you and I enjoyed in common.
I miss you like mad and feel sad that the thin and dim
Line between consultation and condescension couldn't turn in good time a vital alert on.

Chabu, I hosted your education in my humble home at Chikuni and in Livingstone from Form One
To completion of your journalism studies and industrial attachment at Evelyn Hone
Bank rolled every cost till together by dint of determination we won
The right to sit and beat suspension in term two before we rescued your Grade Twelve examinations alone.

Chabu, you availed me the only pair of shoes my feet wore at college through your labour
At Zambia Star Bar in Masala Location where manual work
Kept you away from a maladroit mane until God 's Armour and harbour
Despatched me to Cosetco to prevent an event where our family would grow beserk.

Chabu, spears of tears dink my memory and sink sorrow into my heart
As I recall the childhood in colorful moods in which I made coy toy cars
Sold to tourists at Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport
To fundraise for your freedom to join a sojourn among our national stars.

Chabu, your class of nineteen eighty nine
Ran the Weekly Post, ZNBC, Times of Zambia, Zana, ZIS and the Daily Mail
At a time when our motherland determined to mine heroes in throes of democracy as a sign
To deploy and employ ploys of a new dispensation for a better political sail, spell and veil.

Chabu, you excelled in the Mass Media Complex newsroom as sub editor
At ZNBC where autotune matched, watched and clutched your brain to ensure
News items and video clips dovetailed seamlessly for your creator
Loves you too much to let you output a fissure creature for sure.

Chabu, I salute you, evoke and promote your memory
For I knew you better than lenders, spenders and defenders
Who with no clear clue how we labored for a lifetime with hardly a diary
But God's grace and greatness spared us a status of deserters, predators, usurpers, wanderers and offenders.


Chabu, I forgive you for spurning in the early 1980s the opportunity at Unza
School of Education where both of us pursued a bachelor's degree
In Education and you surrendered to the tzar
Of impulsiveness in a hideous, notorious riotous rampage for free.

Chabu, rest your chest and crest in peace, though ZNBC colleagues christened you Ninja
Cared for you well as illness took its toll in a Lusaka hospital
Loved, forgave and gave you a befitting burial at Leopard's Hill cos Jah
Decreed so much to our family's delight but mom's torment. God bless you in total.