UNEMPLOYED IN THE BEER GARDEN

UNEMPLOYED IN THE BEER GARDEN

UNEMPLOYED IN THE BEER GARDEN

In silence
the beer mug passes from hand to mouth
from chapped lip to roughed hand
until the mug’s empty bottom
reflects the emptiness in our future plump faces.
We begin to put up together a great republic
such as has never been seen before on this earth.
There, the poor (always the poor) are lifted onto
pedestals, they have the pulpits and the podiums
the children (remember the children) sing happy
songs at play
and the air crackles with the laughter
of the toothless aged and the harmless impotent.
The rich?
Abasha!
Down with!
The rich are stripped down
to their bare bones and thrown into dungeons.
They are now the hewers of rock
and the drawers of shit.
(They are baking bricks for the pyramids
with grass)
They will now build those schools
those hospitals
Those roads,
which they once promised us.
This time they are going to use
their own bloody hands,
rain, thunder or shine, God!
Raise high the whips, boys!
Yoke them together
let them pull the plough in the maize fields.
Give each a huge hoe
let them shore up the tobacco rows
in the plantations – Lord!
Make them chew their own words!
Make them swallow their own medicine.
Send them into the sewers!
Make them sweat blood sweat and tears –
Make them not even touch the crumbs
from the dog’s table.
Let them see unreason!