Dear Leaders by Xabiso Vili

I saw you last on my grandmother’s
zinc wall, smiling and promising housing.

She’s gone now,
and so is her
papier mache home and her sandcastle
dreams, burnt by a lack of electricity

and an abundance
of paraffin
and strange gremlins, in the night, that steal

our immortality. Dear leaders,
perhaps you are the gremlins
and your black magic promises
steal too many ancient grandparents.

Xabiso writes poetry, he also lives between poems. He has performed in many places across South Africa, the UK and Scotland. But really, he is trying to string words together to make some sense of living. Google him if you’d like to, he thinks you would probably find more stringed words.