Demon In The Flesh Poem by Thabani Khumalo

I am scary looking dangerous creature;
I am surely a demon in the flesh,
I am hazardous to health like a cigarette smoke,
I am an acrid itchy pimple inside the eyelid,
I am the worst form of obstruction and an enemy of rest.
I conjure a euphemistic vow to make you sing a sad song until you die.

I prowl the woods and live there for forty days and forty nights
stark naked under the shining host of the arrayed stars.
I hunt my prey while they are in their deep sleep,
I roar like a lion to shake them awake with fright,
I pounce with all my limbs and a mouth on whatever rises first:
It is meat to me - everything ambulant in the thick of the quiet jungle.

I am the devil that dances to the drum beat
in a circle around the campfire;
I cause the earth tremble by moving around my shaky thighs;
the devil that nurses a goblin in his open arms with eternal love.
I sing sweet melodies, sitting in the middle of a highway where there are no street lights:
no matter what God's people may plunder by day and keep in their silos of greed -
at night I know the world is mine to really savor.
I have my eye on all the wide terrain of hell below,
I will have to seduce the queen that inherited it from her father - the previous God.
I will change appearances until she gets absolutely satisfied
that I am indeed the son of a king that was swindled of the earth.
Life alone is a very funny thing if you consider how everything is mixed up together.