Have You Been Nudged Or Numbed?

Please look around yourself
whether you are in Bulawayo
or elsewhere, virtually or otherwise,
what kind of news, new development,
play, person, action, farce or comedy
has gently touched you with its elbow
in order to alert or attract your attention?
Has it made you recover yourself and focus?

There is a belief by several people
that some things happen for a reason
just as some curious activities take place
in order to prod us as citizens, observers,
potential voters, supporters and attendees
to wake up from our silly slumbers and trances,
or to look at a specific state of affairs, period,
or person from a different and discerning angle
—but even healthier—to go beyond the fixation
with fallible mortals, personality cults, clowns,
frail and fooling parties and paths, proclamations,
endless promises, predictions, entitlements, entities;
futile and foolish coteries, idle tales, talks and antics,
and make well-informed choices and decisions based
on substance and experience rather than on characters
and claimants, policies rather than on rhetoric and whims.

Without that sober reckoning and action, progress
and prosperity will remain a silly and sorry fantasy.