In the sad hotel that drinks a swamp,
You breathe malarial air and enjoy
Frog music piped in from the dismal swamp.
Bits of your life measured out in bars,
Your thoughts gripped in clamps,
Your lips pierced through
With fish-hooks, locked shut,
Silenced over the stab of a clipped
Tongue that stabs the steel bar clutching
The teeth gnashed for dinner.
You dunk salt balls into the soup
Of bitter tears raging through our land.
Fried cockroaches, rotten beans
Baked in the perennial salt
Whet your old ulcerous hunger
As you journey from nowhere to nowhere
Stopping at the sad hotel that offers
No respite to despotic tyranny.
For many years you have silently swallowed
The bitter cassava of tyranny
Served to you at dagger-point.
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