My bro, Magunga, says the story of my shooting
is too good to remain in a defunct magazine.
My own thinking is that sometimes even deficient stories & poems,
lacking not just meat but basic versetamins and proseteins,
make it into prestigious magazines.
And sumtymes the Good lose all function, oft thru death,
or some other crippling or debilitating condition
(and stingy Stephen Hawking will not lend them his wheelchair,
or even a black hole to SoS information from).
But
the night I was shot (melodrama – the Night I Nearly Died)
I had just listened to Prince, and the Revolution, sing:
‘ … live life, to the ultimate high. Maybe I’ll die young,
like heroes die. Maybe I’ll kiss you, goodbye, in a wild …’
(man, you gotta google this shizzle).
And it was a Friday night and it was alright,
and I was hiding from the wheezing bullets in this chicken-shed place,
and I had chicken-shit, and a fat gal’s bum in my face,
and both man and fowl were scared, shitless.
Nevertheless when the shooting stopped we emerged to the street
and I thought I’d peed my pants except it was blood. But, I survived.
and have lived life to only one sort of high; and its all been liquid.
Like a pint of blood donated to a pavement (and yet stones say
they ‘cannot get blood out of a human’ ? ?). Propaganda.
I have given blood to a stone, bled for the stone gods who,
like Stonehenge at sunset circumference my heart, waiting
for the sun to go down Fridays, for the human heart to dissolve
into dusk, so we can drop the mask, and bleed again.
Osivotya Ssebo, bro, so you got shot?
Ndio, so what?
that’s as close to Death as I ever got
we became homies.
We took a selfie.
with my arm around his dark-robed shoulder
and with his scythe resting around mine.
**FIN**
© Tony Mochama Ontita
