(P.A.M. is for Pan Africanist Movement)
We were not amenable to control
Rendering the country ungovernable
With matchsticks and a bottle of petrol
I Why-Why?
The International Youth Year 1986
Who’s sold out
‘Cos I’m still soldiering on?
Buried gun soldered and caked in mud
It was a sneezing gas
That brought my tears rolling down
In cosmetic/ cosmic climate change
My generation
Sent the country up in smoke
Down on its knees and choked
Ragtag guerrilla
Fleas turn around and flee
Battalion to chameleons
Revolutionary to the core
My bone marrow is iron ore
Hush up & no hush-hush
My comrade darling
I’m smooth-sailing even though ailing
In this land
So sick vile and so sore
It has semen samples
Written in teeny facial pimples
The criminal court
But the animal free-scot
Eating free hake
At the Hague
Yellow poetry
Turned to purple prose
Pamela
Our knot is tied in conflict diamonds
Mbongeni Khumalo (born 15 July 1976) is a South African performance poet and writer, born in Soweto. Author of the poetry collection apocrypha. His poems and short stories have appeared in a number of journals, including New Coin, Global Fire (The Official Newspaper of the World Summit for Sustainable Development: 2002), Tribute, Timbila, Kotaz and Botsotso. He is the 1999 English Academy of Southern Africa award-winning poet.