Not a Guitar

Based on a true story.

The story is told that Maplanka was dead
lying motionless in hospital.

The only proof of life
came in the murmur of his vitals
whispers that even the machines
could barely make out.

The doctors, at a loss
said we’ve done what we can
This is beyond us now.

But Maplanka’s daughter of fourteen
said my Daddy will live,
snuck past the nurse’s station
holding her guitar.

The same one he had bought her
when she was only just 10,
the same one that made him angry
when she played it too long.

She remembers him shouting
Put that thing down, Maidei!
Do your homework! Clean your room!
Priorities, my child!

In the hospital room, time stops.
She listens, there is nothing.

Pulls up a chair,
sits down, guitar in lap,
finds a pick in her pocket,
stops again, starts to cry
Her daddy is too still.

What she’d give right now,
for him to scream out again.

Pick meets guitar string,
and she plays for the joy,
of the days when he held her,
and said he was proud.

She plays for the pain,
Of the days when he took this very guitar away-
Said, “I’m giving it to the church!
It’s taken over your life!”

Plays for the love she felt,
coming home from school
to find he had returned it,
to its stand by her bedside.

For the words that had come to her,
“Thank you, Daddy for understanding-
this is not a guitar. It is my life,
and now – may it give you, yours.”

All the times that he cheered,
“Play Maidei, play!”
They echo in her head,
Too real, too loud.

She strums everything she feels,
into this song,
He taught her the lyrics,
in his stern words, and his hugs.
She loves him for all of it.
How will he ever know now?

The story is told, that Maplanka was dead
until at the nurse’s station
the lines on the screen
started to dance.
Say amapiano, say dancehall,
Say afro beats meets hip hop.

Play Maidei, play.
This is not – a guitar.

– Iz Mazano

Inspired by Jamie Foxx’s Netflix special.