When The Royal House Sneezes Poem by Sarah Mkhonza

With a mom born a princess,
I always listen to a sneeze,
That wakes us up at seven,
My village says there goes.

She sneezes long and loud,
She has scooped the earth,
All night in the river with
Her hands, and there goes the
Night of yesterday.

The village runner wakes me up.
He says she has sneezed her last.
I look at the door it is dawn.
Today no sneeze and never will
Be one at seven for she is gone.

She who sneezes loud is gone,
Yet people still come to mourn,
For like the clock she woke them
Up, and they believed in life.
That when you sneeze, you are alive,
Like a person sneezing in the mortuary,
You are alive for one day you will
Not sneeze anymore. Value the sneeze
For it is a big uttering of what is you.
It tells the world breath and
Stuff is still with you,
It wants to get out and do,
With a pen or a handkerchief,
This throwing and wiping
We do with the poem.

This is my sneeze, for I
Learned from this woman,
To sneeze loud and wake
The universe up, to take
Arms of the spirit and fight
For the likes of rulers,
Who tear us apart. Who
Say this that and the other,
When they are sneezing poison,
Into the air full of pollution,
That the dreamers who make money
Have made out of this earth.

To sneeze or not to sneeze
Has become the motto of life.
For when you do you let out
What should be out there,
And hope an idea will heal
When it is spilled into the
Air, and tell others to watch
Out for the poison to come out of
The ones with no seven o'clock
Wake up call, but lies and facts
That are brewed in minutes and
Sent out for everybody's mind
To read and sleep some more.

Rise and sleep no more says the
Woman who sneezed loudest after
Working in the rubble in Aleppo.
People are dying rise and sleep
No more for the princes royal
Now lie in the rubble. How then
Is the world going to rescue those,
Whose buildings pile on top of them
When they leave on the Mayflower to
Nowhere, for the time says go away
As does the rumbling earth around them.

There is nothing royal about death,
As there is nothing royal about life.
It is a use of words we sneeze when we
Want to protect the wealth and give it
To a few, who are born with keys to the vaults
Of gold hidden under the earth they
Walk on. These sneezes cannot reach
Them, but when a small sneeze is heard
In Aleppo, hope creeps into our arms
And we rescue an Omrum. Rise and sleep
No more, says the sneeze not royal.