The Equalizer

This coronavirus plague otherwise
Known as COVID-19 came as a thief at night
And kills as a murderer at sight
Human it is that brought it to site
Unbeknown how far it will fright
Whoever mocks it, it’ll strike
Human ignores our world is no more afar
But a global village alas!

Unlike any other known virus ever
This’s dubious, stranger and monstrous,
Afflicting every nation on earth
Young/old, rich/poor, man/woman, peasant/noble; blind to race.
In this dire times we look to
Those who seem to hold power but
Shouldn’t we look to He that is Power?

To combat it, everyone is on a lockdown
Economies are strangulated and in cardiac arrest
Systems are in chokehold and collapsing and
Fear and gloom and doom and pandemonium fill the air
But I believe in the human capacity to overcome.
At the warfront are medical personnel
Essential services providers are
In the trenches – our heroes our heroines our warriors
Ode to you!

We come together as many parts but one body, some
Rendering melodies at balconies, at sparse streets
Soothing our neighbourhoods
Collaging with one spirit of love, performing
And proving that in unity we’re
Too blessed to be stressed
As we stay home to nest
We shall suppress its progress
Until its cure attest.

In this forced pause of
Commerce and industry
Hustle and bustle,
We breath clean air
See clean waters, healthier eco-system
Perhaps a lesson and an opportunity
For us to reflect and change our ways and
Be good to the rest of creation.

–Chuck Ibezimako © March 2020

Praying Mantis

Though thou art insect as
Though thou art vermin
Thy alien triangular head maketh thee look odd
Thy bulging eyes, thy swivel head maketh thee creepy

Though thy name emanates from prayer and spirituality
As thy spiked forelimbs pretend prayerfulness
But that posture is deception, a fraud for thou art
Not pious, not prophetic, not peaceful
But a calculated and cold serial assassin

Like thy cousins the termites and roaches
Thou art vile and parasitic
Thy infestation is toxic and exterminating
But unlike the roaches and termites
Thou art also a pet to some

Praying mantis in delaying tactics
Staying active and saying kaddish
Praying mantis preying in atlantis
Fearing and frantic thy victims pray God grant us
Thy ubiquity sends shivers down their spines
Thou exterminate the pests
Thou art farmers’ aides
Prospering the crops, vegetation, the ecosystem

Thy specie is an alarming 2400 and over
Though thou maketh a curious study, and
Though looking harmless, those who under-estimate
Thee do so at their own peril
Thou prey even on thy own kind
Thy mating cannibalism is shocking and despicable
Munching thy kind alive while intercoursing

Thou art still, a symbol of patience
Thy razor-sharp teeth and spiked jack-knife forelegs
Slay thy preys in an instant
With the viciousness of a marshal artist
Praying mantis, praying mantis
Preying in the mantras
I play in semantics
                                                                                                    Chuck Ibezimako © February 2020

The Locust

Never again, never again.
Never again shall the progress of this
Insect be allowed into prosperity
Within the affairs of the lives we live.

Unimpressive does it look, flying with over-sized
Flapping wings, over-sized legs but smaller hands.
Alone it’s powerless but with the ideal environment
It  hatches and multiplies into billions in matter of hours.

As though seeking notation through the earth
With odd odyssey it dines like a chopper
Moves swiftly at great altitude through vast and
Distant lands and like swarms, devastate the land
Leaving desolation in their wake.

Green and lush vegetation within minutes turn
Into mere white stalks and barren land.
These beasts so immense as to cloud the sky
Their appetite so rapid and voracious.

The infestations come in quick succession
The annoying locusts chop off the leaves
The swarming locusts cut off the nodes
The creepy locusts pick up what is dropped
The stripping locusts devour the bark
Leaving white stalks  in fallow.

It’s unimaginable what
Moses wrought in ancient Egypt.
It’s awe-striking what the US experienced in 1875
Expediently let’s expel these
Agents of destabilization
And apostles of backwardness
Before they hatch anew!