O, Liberator Corpulent
Now you are just dried skin
Stretched on biltong muscle.
You commanded all
Sold our futures.
All we do is fight
Over your remains.
Laughing in misery,
Cackling like madmen,
Still caught in your web.
Tired, tired, tired,
So tired.
Of, the twists and turns it takes,
To exist thinly between,
Resident monsters,
Fighting for space,
Fat on attention,
Time the only coin.
Another day alive,
I have only myself to blame.
But don’t think me ungrateful.
Everything is trying to murder me.
My life as cheap as a few more cents,
On the bottom line.
My life as bothersome
As a plague run rampant.
My life as meaningless
As words outside the opinion corridor.
I’m just another living combustor,
Scorching the Earth more.
In, this, my demon skin,
This blood-soaked thing,
This apparel emblem of oppression,
Wrought centuries obvious,
Cast over this frame.
The grift of horrors past and present.
The song ridiculous it sings.
So sure, yet so wrong,
The path that has led us all to this,
Ever away from all that makes us.
It is no wonder, this ultimate conceit,
Has only one deadly destination,
Its burden become its fate.
I am not my country.
I am not my race.
I am not my gender.
I am not my genes.
I am not the accent I speak.
I am not the clothes I wear.
I am not the face in the mirror.
I am not my thoughts.
I am not my emotions.
I am not a blank slate.
I am not words in stone.
I am not the I others think I am.
I am not the I that I think I am.
I am I.
Ivor W. Hartmann is a Zimbabwean writer, editor, publisher, and visual artist.