Madiba

I will not let Hollywood make my life

into a film. I will not let them make of turned red earth

turned greenbacks. One thing I have learned,

how to bide my time,

and on the night their hypocrisy

is rolled out into Leicester Square, I too will roll

over and quietly steal away

their moment in the limelight. For if reputation

has built for me a prison, the instant of death

is most surely its razor wire breached.

My long sojourn in Table Bay taught me all

I need to know about breaking free. Frailty alone

now censors news from the world outside, no less

doggedly than those cruel warders,

but just as ineffectually. When I choose to leave here

imibongo will accompany me.


(c) 2014 Slush Poet