Poems by Brian Manyati aka Towandah Ryan

"Food inflation"

Ours ain't hunger pains after a bumper harvest
Lately, twisted fate forced a wrong turn on us
Tilling farmland suspended, a dark cloud had engulfed us
Missiles that time never told were coming, fell like the monsoon rains
Announced wasn't a tranquil break but
fight or fright or flight
Iron hoes had clobbered head to head in the fields
Sirening a so abrupt shift of activity.

May you not say we got bread shortage on the table from nil supply
Rather say, wheat scarcity was our own stitching
Shot down was our willing and able bread winner's promise
To feed nations out of a comparative advantage and nothing else.

Say ours was a taxing choice that traded ploughshares for swords
One more time, kept up gun barrels oiled with toxic sharpness
Amarment sharpness recklessly gunning down our wonderland wheat farmer
Now we are left with even the smallest rivers claiming that they are seas!

May you not say we got bread shortage on the table from nil supply
Rather say, our wheat scarcity was our own shortfall
Than breach masculine desires, we went showboating power -- existent or not
Say that our inflated ego has kept fortunes waning

With this warring,
Food prices have sky rocketed like an erupting Mauna Loa volcano
With this warring,
Displaced are many many families from food access,
worse the physically vulnerable.

---

"Dearest ID mom"

Mom is out on the road and in the open
Temporarily she's christened an Internally Displaced Person
This naming may however, turn out the most unkind to her
Should things end at the wondrous thought effort, phrasing alone than helping out
It becomes a special class tag, lacking on inclusivity than it alleviates her hope.

Mom needs both food for thought and swallowship, not only fellowship.
Unlike immigrant Miriam in a full camp freeing from bondage
Hers is isolated movement out of decent community shelter into a slum if unluckiest.

Mom is far placed on the priority list at this rate conjured by fate.
When will mom earn a right to no trespass of lands she possesses as a passer by?
Like it is with nomadic pastoralism, won't her gains of flock along the way be exhausted through
bartering for the so called staple?
Let's face it, can a nomad woman own own farmland?
Is it not her stomach too is entitled to staple?

Mom probably is gone for days without relief tent,
Parks are full so they say, try next and next.
Today her random displacement is by floods, cyclone Idai if not hurricane Katrina.

Yesterday by an Act of regional development to please any a promising investor
Tomorrow, it is her fleeing conflict of the Mfecane sort.

Mom is in the home and hungry, mom is out on the road and in the open much hungrier
If survival with child depends on food handouts, what if there is none?
Mom is a "GOAT" caught up in between a hard place and a rock
Our attention to detail on the degrees of vulnerability better be not an end in itself.

By Brian Manyati aka Towandah Ryan
tawandamanyati@gmail.com
+263772 815 211

​A poet under VaChikepe and The Hundred Sailors, a poetry music and arts ensemble from Zimbabwe 🇿🇼. Also a Chartered Governance Professional professional.

---