Bulawayo

(This poem won First Prize in Lupus International Poetry Competition 2011)

In the playground
we compare notes
to place ourselves.
Where you born then?
Watford. Harrow. London
English places.

I wait. Holding back.
Then I say it, rolling the vowel sounds
slowly on my tongue,
casual like.
Bul-a-way-o.
What? Where’s that?
Low key, shrug.
Africa.
Africa?
Wow. Then silence.
Staring at me.
No one can top that.

I walk off slowly, nonchalant like.
I don’t know what Bul-a-way-o is.
I know it’s in Africa.
They tell me nothing about it.
Too busy with the present,
to bother about that past time in Africa.

I don’t care, I’m different, special,
‘cos of Bul-a-way-o.
Its mine, my place,
I came from there.
No one else does, ever.

In the album, a black and white picture
of small me on some steps in a garden
and an ‘arm-a-dillo’, strange creature,
in Bul-a-way-o.

I like the name
Bul-a-way-o,
where I was born.
No one can top that.

A link to another poetry performance- the launch of the Liquid Gold Poetry anthology Apr 2011

I performed four poems:
If There is A God - about football???
Bulawayo - my birthplace
Matopos - about a visit there[the oldest National Park in Zimbabwe]
Zoo - about the wolves in London Zoo?

How to be happy?

Voices in my head
keep telling me,
you did that wrong,
you said that badly,
you’re not good enough,
you could do better,
you shouldn’t have,
you fucked it up again.

Why don’t they say,
you did that right
you said that well,
you ARE good enough,
you could do worse.
Yes you shall.
Yes you can.
You were brilliant again.

Anna Meryt 14/3/11