Children of the day

I was there, at that rally with charged atmospheres and frenzied moans. I heard them throw words around and share their second hand jokes about. I was there when he came, the shouts, the cheers and the waves. I saw his pomp and colour when he arrived, naked people laying their coats on the ground so he wouldn’t touch the soil. I was there when the sweet words flowed like milk and honey and when the bitter interjections found their way to our pallid ears. I was there when he stood on the dais and pushed his meaty fingers into the scaly dry air. I saw his mouth move and dry words tumble out and the eager youths swallowed them like one gulps down dry bread on a hot day. I was standing right there when a lone word caught the ears of the irate body builders and an old man was yanked from among the people and thrashed in public. I shall not forget the surge of curiosity and the sound of hands meeting with faces and feeble legs meeting unproductive groins. It shall not leave my eyes, the sight of babies thrown away and women wailing and blindly trying to escape the melee. I was there when whips were drawn out and growls of war were replaced with screams of pain.

I was still there when the last bit of dust landed back on earth. There amidst the sad clutter lay a lone flywhisk and the whip, the sjambok that was unleashed on the chanting women and their whiny babies, their curious husbands and their clueless grandpas. Children of the day, let us stand up and mourn the setting sun, for with her goes our freedom and our rights. With the setting sun there goes our humanity and our dignity. Let us mourn hope, for he died before he was born, let us mourn all we never had but still lost anyway. Let us cry over the choices we’ve made. Mourn you cowardly father and your brothers with inherent stupidity. Leave not behind your sisters, with succulent breasts that never got to suckle and lands that never got to be tilled. Mourn your innocence, little children of the day, for it has just been robbed by the rogue persona with meatballs for fingers and a stomach enough to harvest rain water. Hope it is, though, that you shall hold on to. We know that clouds no matter how imposing and harsh will never last forever. When morning comes and there are clouds all over, does it stop us from still believing that the sky is blue? We shall hold on to whatever little we have and believe in the future, and that the moon, albeit poor shall light our night up. Wait up, December sun, and we shall hang on to you. Have you enough space for us? Carry us, children of the day and leave us in your bed, for we hunger for light and thirst for hope. Hang on a bit longer then trail your little embers far away. Let us watch your glow as it trails away and watch the tears in our eyes as we mourn your premature departure. Save us, the children of the day, better still, scorch us to oblivion, and we shall never mourn again.