Poem by Brian Manyati aka Towandah Ryan

Nature's Hunger Strike
The following poem was inspired by Diane Wilbon Park's artwork which appears here on the Poetry X Hunger website.
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All over southern Africa, a drought year or two
Alfalfa is dwindling or easier said, fate without fattening, this is...
Thrown a book as this,
There's no thinking cheap beef suffices dear meatarian
And, where to when destocked, when robbed of natural wealth dear breeder?
Distressed field crop is surrendering without coughing out a relief mealie cob,
Put up to dry out just as logs—heatwave torching ready—in a furnace flame atmosphere,
Plant and body are, all but sun-drying.

All and sundry goes knocking on ancient granaries of folks rural,
As soon, supermarket shelves are emptied of hiked price leftover merchandise.
Much like retrogression,
From computing, crashing to manual re-booting the slowest days ever.
Weather reports are paying condolences in advance,
Informing of nothing but a death warrant paid forward,
It is over, is it?
         ...Fast forward, this is where physical flesh "longs in a dry and thirsty land,
where no water is"
remember them souls...

This dry spell offers no promise of natural food supply replenishments,
chain aggravatingly broken loose.
In-land storage of a precious liquid commodity has become ineffectual.

For instance, damming is under damning circumstances that are
without refill inflows,
stockpiles from last years fast dissipating.

Even rivers' veins and stretch marks, lie open
with depositions at meanderings not anymore a panning secret.
Nature's resolution is to have all its yesteryears' lenience fully suspended it seems.
As communities lacking in resilience "wait for the rains" no more!

Within season, favourable odds of normal to above normal rainfall are under lock and key,
heaven having no room for both duty and liquidity slack.
Quite an ask for a return to innocence to the drought resistant small and traditional grains world,
from here on after.

But, for once nature is acting like a protesting wife, colloquially
on a conjugal hunger strike [sic]
Blameworthy still is MAN, abusive to mother Earth.
Hence, this sucker punch risk of nil harvests, the severest of an unreproducible grieving episode,
occurrent in a marriage of convenience that's without goal congruence
On issues of ecological sustainability net zero.

Die is cast!
All industrial emit malpractice eventually pays a price
unbearably heavy as this,
And, like fish out on the river beds as bare and naked dry,

Ozone layer is depleted
Living creatures are left to die and rot.

Click to hear the poet read the poem.

Brian Manyati aka Towandah Ryan is a poet who has been practicing since 2016 with VaChikepe and The Hundred Sailors (The Sailors Trust). He authored The Milk Men poetry collection published in 2023. His pay off line is together we achieve more.

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