POLITICAL POETRY By Charles Mwewa _____________________________ First Black
Thou hast trodden the path long paved
By the blood of civil rights’ throng
Of which Dr. King civil struggles saved
Though the road was dark and long
Thy long walk to white house’s glory
Did not in the right’s movement begin
Though Selma to Montgomery
An open door it ushered in.
A savior in chic Obama
Rare, wise and uncommonly born;
Fluent in speech and sane in karma
What fêted an event he won?
Over the top of Mount Pisgah
There the good Lord retired Moses
And raised Luther King to trigger
A crown on first of black bosses. _____________________________________
Democracy
The womb of democracy has twins:
One is freedom, another is peace
And a nation which enjoys both wins
While those nations devoid of it miss.
There is a session of spanking air,
When people can freely make a choice
From elections held freely and fair,
An exact expression of their voice.
A people in their natures fallen
An apt manager that they must choose
Their liberties portly and swollen
He must further, bribes he must refuse.
There are regimes power abuses
They do contain, and rights they foster.
A rule, fraud it never amuses
While its record prove, by a pollster.
By itself democracy isn’t best
Only that all other forms of rule
Which were finer or better or first
Have been inferior and never true.
The strength of a good democracy
Is not in a first-rate theocracy
But in values of institutions
And the rule by its constitutions. ______________________________________
Tip of Africa
At the tip of Africa,
What hilarity and grandeur!
The temperate west coasts
Of the lovely eastern grooves,
The sea, the rivers and oceans,
All together weave
Into a lovely impression.
The land of light and beauty;
You have come to South Africa,
The people in carefree moods
In houses paneled and lofty
By black and blue labors.
You hear the sounds of cars
And see the noises they create:
The best places are here
Where life goes to the brim
In the heart of Johannesburg,
The world’s city.
Here are buried in rands, gold
And its display
In splendorous Eaton center.
South of Africa
Is a-free-country,
A continent at the tip of Africa. ____________________________________ Apolitical Theory
Classics
Thou built reason’s mind, O Plato,
Shaped brain’s wit, thou Aristotle,
And deified politics divine
Whence St. Augustine’s city doth shine!
Hobbes
Thou men, equal in body and mind
Court thee that kingly Leviathan
To appease thine life, short and poor
By these contracts, flawed and unsure
Locke
Thou nature in thy undressed state
Do in liberty instruct all;
Our labours with property rewards;
These laws our happiness awards
Machiavelli
Thou double-minds of earthly reign
Partly foxes, partly lions,
Thrust thy trust in beastly powers
To slay virtue on saintly towers
Rousseau
Thou art depraved, O thinking man
And thy good to thy nature tied;
Born free, yet everywhere in chains,
And in forced freedom thine trust earns. __________________________________________
Hillsboro
Thou city of Hillsboro
By the embers of Wichita
Though thou art only a borough
In thine quiet street once veered a star
Thou art smaller by thy numbers
Yet thou grow the famous and rich
And rarely add to thy members
Desiring thy symbols to reach
Thy people proud and sufficient
Coldly hold to thy horn of race
Whence they gasp like a patient
Cancerously marred in the face
In thine churches emerge a song
Of penance for equality
Whence thy masses in oneness sing
To save thine renowned quality. ____________________________________
Heroes of Freedom
They fought as a band of soldiers;
They died while fighting, as martyrs,
Some are presidents if they lived,
And others have scars to show for.
We meet them daily in grey hairs
These are our truest statesmen,
These our prized gallant fighters,
Pillars on which we live and thrive.
We their brood their glory will save
Never to forget the blood they shed,
And in their footsteps we will follow,
Attesting to hearts strong and brave.
This freedom so for granted we take
With sword and pain was achieved,
Even when many in pieces returned,
Silently, yet very clearly they speak.
In libraries their heroism archived,
In pain and anguish they travailed,
These sons of liberty are of renown,
Heroes of peace, our true veterans!
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