A Job For The Hangman

By Roi Guanapo Ankhkara Kwabena

...now take your responsibility seriously....
hang with expediency
hang this legislation for its impropriety
hang the legacy of slavery and indentureship
hang high the ruling parasitic oligarchy
hang the injustice of being in prison
awaiting execution two decades...
hang the plan to empower the sterile
legal vultures of these plantation economies....
hang the banana,
hang the cocoa,
hang the bauxite,
hang sugar cane,
hang tourism,
hang money laundering,
hang offshore banking,
now take your responsibility seriously...
hang with expediency
hang the archaic state of prisons,
be it trinidad, barbados, jamaica or grenada
hang quickly the temptation to ignore
amnesty international...
now take your responsibility seriously
hang the truth up high that the issue
is not only the death penalty but human rights...
hang police brutality
accept the reality that the causes of crime
must be addressed
for the homeless, poverty-stricken, naked and hungry
must not be overlooked...
hang unemployment
now take your responsibilty seriously...
hang with expediency
hang the inability to protect the fishing industry
from pirates or even banditry
execute immediately the notion of nationals
(whether trini or guyanese)
have the right to pollute the orinoco delta
with their drug an’ gun runnin’ activity...
now take your responsibility seriously
hang with expediency
hang this legislation for its impropriety
hang the legacy of slavery and indentureship
hang until dead this system of neo-colonialism .
....now take your responsibility seriously....
then we can begin to discuss
NATIONAL UNITY....

© Copyright 1997 – Roi Kwabena
Reprinted with kind permission of the author.