The Show That Had To Be Poem by Sarah Mkhonza

They say the month of May,
is the month of the aloe,
for aloes begin to flower,
in the land of my birth.

Aloes all around I come,
Fisted, in two these little
hands of mine. The aloe
is as silent, as soldiers
in the night, ready to invade.

They don't even whisper
that the show is going
to be fisted, fostered
and bitter, for I have come
to the land where only
the thorny can sap the
water with succulent leaves
where they claim for themselves
bodies like camels and
march in the dry sand
where the drought roars,
in sandy waves in the ocean,
these shark soldiers in the deep
sandy sea.

Here I stand on the deep end
yet the aloe stands with heads
of leaves, looking at the sky,
Crazy hair, like the dreads
of the Black Madonna, in the
night they stand.

To this day I shiver when the
name death is mentioned,
and they just prick the air
with thorns. Stubborn,
worse in the darkness,
Green in the daytime, these
flowers that grow on stems
so long, they could swath
a fly.

Am I defeated in this show
that had to be? Ask the aloe,
for it was there when I landed,
to be there when I exit. Still
standing on the hills of the
land of my birth.

Did I prick the world with leaves
green and prick it with leaves dry?
Did I stand and do nothing but stand?
Did I march on hilltops with the hair
of the Black Madonna, laughing in
the dry days when there was no rain?
Ask the aloe, for the show still goes on
Like it had to.