IF GOD

SPOKE
. AN EPIC ABOUT A MAD POET .

SIMMONS-MARSHALL A. LAME
BOTSHELOENG
Author:

Address: P O Box

Location:

Country: Botswana

Contacts: + 267

Email:

ISBN;

© Copyright 2023 If God Spoke

Publisher: Poeticblood Publishers

Email: lameloetopusetso@gmail.com

Contacts: +267 76 969 956

All rights reserved

No part of this book should be duplicated or used in any

form or by any means, electronically, photocopying,
mechanically, recording or stored in any retrieval
system without the author’s permission. Any person
who does unauthorized works in relation to this
publication will be liable to criminal prosecution.

2
 INTRODUCTION
The book hereby takes the structural arrangement of five
(5) parts that are in fact volumes. The 5 Volumes tell of
a comprehensive path through the voice of a persona and
the characters that intervene along. The 5 parts of If God
Spoke are interconnected by the inseparable themes and
the poetics that parade the legend that is generally about
advancement and growth. The discourse of the persona
incarnates into existing alter egos that are the
characteristics of a youth that must defend his own map
throughout the windy song of existence on earth. It is
throughout the scripts that he develops a thoroughly
responsible stance and an in-depth sense of
accountability. The book If God Spoke becomes a work of
reflection, display of will-power, divine persistence and
an ability to supervise the gifts that come with one’s gifts
within this gift of being alive and being aware of it. It is
an appreciation of intelligence. In Book One: “You See” of
the book, the author begins a wobbly tale about a young
man that runs through existence, living to tell the
metaphors of how he had been conceived; how he
continued to survive smart conspiracies formed against
his wellbeing by 1) a hostile world order, 2) his own
mind. The epic-form part of the book is presented both
in first person speech and also in third person manner of
narration, interchangeably. That first part of the book
depicts how Marshall Daima - a lad with a colorful mind,
examines his own essence, easing his speedy mind while
allowing his inner eyesight to be seen by the reader. The
character in motion does not only look for himself,

3
concrete progress, dignity and mental freedom, he also
yearns for a lost book that he pursues; those assembled
papers happen to be the book If God Spoke. In Book Two:
“Lately I Live Inside a Poem” the letterings that are
contained within the pages indeed accommodate absolute
literary art! The part of the book is a lively epic of a plant
that springs into life in the garden that is the earth; the
character at hand, whose tone by then had become
familiar, appears in human form as a shepherd but with
an air of celestial origins. The persona hears the stars,
then he tells that these starts explode within his own
circle; he goes to combat through a shrinking tunnel [of]
stinking of trauma, the agony of feeling betrayed and
manipulated as well as ultimate resistance towards
victory. The shepherd lives in a poem that is about
overcoming ego, confusions; it is about perfection of
character that comes with healing and firm awareness.
Book Three: “Liberty (I am not Bipolar, I am a King)” is a
mental health memoir, compiled in November, 2021 by a
real-time character that sought freedom from inner
agony (psychosomatic predicaments): the prison(s)
within our minds. Simmons-Marshall A. Lame
Botsheloeng takes the tale through his experiences of
inner intellectual and emotional battles, discerning that
it has also been a conflict with the world before and
around him. He asserts that he is not part of that world
so he longs to be free. The longing for true serenity in a
disturbing world is described as a struggle against
certain social structures and systems and the programs
of the established status quo that is viewed as
monotonous and tyrannical. That chess-like argument

4
becomes a psychiatric diagnosis of Clinical Depression,
Anxiety and, ultimately, Bipolar Disorder. By late 2021,
the persona is admitted into Sbrana Psychiatric Hospital
in Lobatse, Botswana where he carries his notebook and
a pen, observes and makes notes throughout the
encounter. Book Three is a dairy-like narration of the
experience that had to be overcome. The reciter must
proceed to heal himself and those that he can definitely
contact. He settles his sense of purpose and accepts the
intricate fragments of his identity. The issue of mental
health has not only been viewed as sensitive, it has been
shown to be poetic; the young man with the pen proves
to be stimulated by his own natural tone that reveals the
fruits of unblemished perception to be poetry itself, even
in prose. Simmons-Marshall is [one] of those orators
whom were witnessed to be freed by their own artistry,
discovering stability and power in their path to healing,
affirming under his breath that: “if only the masses could
listen.” He inevitably accepts the declared war against
illness and discomfort in order to attest the raw facts
concerning his “destiny”. Towards the tail of that 3rd part
of the book he shows that he would never accept to be
depraved [deprived?] of himself by whatever structure,
so he slices the airs with a sword; it is [a] combat over
justice and the realization of true liberty. Book Four:
“Said a Man” entails titled chapters that are the
expressions of persons who either yell at or gossip about
the dynamic world that they face, each speaking as a man
about the topics that are beyond gender, social
orientation and prejudice. The dressed up speakers define
their identities, their advocacies, views, counsels,

5
attitudes, poems and sermons. As much as the tones
carried are serious, the narrations have also been
somewhat stimulated by humor. The author speaks
through the characters, and at the end he concludes that
the words at hand had, once upon a time, been said by a
man. The final volume of the book, Book Five: “If God
spoke” is an anthology of the compositions that were
noted in their poetic layouts. The pieces are a result of
the author’s free-hand writing. If God Spoke as a whole
has been dedicated to the beauty of our brains. It is an
undiluted gift to literature itself and a work of art as
rendered by the thrilling aspects of language.

6
 FOREWORD
If God Spoke is an offering of the literary arts that have
been punctuated, preserved and compiled as proof of the
firm articulacy of a person’s inner voice. In terms of style,
the recitations and the scripted dialogue are rendered to
be “colorful” indeed. The colors are plaited over the
metaphoric soils that are fertilized by punctual
statements by an author that has been convinced that he
has a point to make concerning himself, the world before
him and its yesterdays, todays and tomorrows. The
various themes that are widely reflected upon are
influenced by the experiences of the author with
awareness of the self, society and the focal factors of
identity dynamics, economics, mental wellbeing,
philosophy, religion and politics. If God Spoke boasts of
an author that asserts to be sensitive to all atmospheres
of the world. I see through all things penetrable through
his sight and other senses. I address what I have seen,
studied, dreamed of and witnessed. That is experience
and raw insight. The nudity of the expressions has been
ward-robed inside the tales that are the chapters of the 5
parts of the book..

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION……………………………………..5
FOREWORD…………………………………………..7
BOOK 1; YOU SEE………………………………...….9
BOOK 2; LATELY I LIVE INSIDE A POEM…...….63
BOOK 3; LIBERTY…………………………………127
BOOK 4; SAID A MAN…………………………..…177
BOOK 5; IF GOD SPOKE……………………..……189
ABOUT THE AUTHOR…………………….…...…203

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BOOK ONE:
YOU SEE

9
 PROLOGUE
At a distant space where clouds had drenched the earth
wet, past the dense communities of trees and the brown
dams that had welcomed the summer of the semi-desert;
beyond the huts where the music hums, a table is set. It
is a wooden desk. A young man walks into the room that
appears more like an office and less like a temple, where
the desk has been set. He is dressed in a dusty pair of
black formal trousers and a brown jersey, made of wool.
His feet are dusty, despite the smell of water in the brown
sand outside due to a recent rain. He has left his sandals
outside by the veranda. Beneath the heels of those
shoeless feet are cracks for he has walked deserts without
sandals during the ancient travels where his kind sought
for rare water, scriptures and other ingredients to
alchemy. Almost two decades and a quarter had passed
since he had been on the planet. He sighs. He has grown;
he has even grown a small beard – that woolly black hair
of a robust lad in the Kalahari side of the Sub-Sahara.
Inside the little office, someone has been expected to
appear to take a seat at the other side of the desk in order
to interrogate him. It would be as if an eternity had
passed since he had sat at the desk, awaiting the foretold
Man of Justice to show up. Oh, he would, before that man,
defend himself; he would state that he has remained
innocent in his crafts and that he had fought for what was
his as well as to remain conscious. He waited, so the room
became dark and then darker for the sun had left the skies
as time rotated like the earth. “Is anyone going to show
up?” the young man would almost yell as if he was aware

10
of his own aging due to the existing delay. “You have only
been waiting for yourself, my child,” a voice that sounded like
his own would respond from the abyss above his mind,
and he would not be certain if to laugh or to rage. To
whom would he express his rage?
“Did you get to finally write that book?”
“The book?” exclaims Simmons-Marshall (that child
Lame Botsheloeng with the old alias “Marshall Daima” –
the shepherd and the monarch), as if he had not heard the
question clearly. He then serves a copy of his hand-
written poems, If God Spoke, smiles to himself and walks
away. At a distance the lad affirms under his breath: “Yes,
I did write the book.”

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 CHAPTER 1
How could I claim to have been abandoned - ever? I had
always received warnings long before trouble could
loom. I had constantly been well-informed, although
being informed had not, by design, meant that one was
entirely educated, trained and wise. I would soon learn to
study just how the birds were able to fly; what they
carried with them and the manner in which their eyes had
been placed on the sides of their heads, for whatever
reasons. I was to express gratitude over the fact that by
the age of 10 I could translate first-hand information into
solid textbooks entailing firm metaphors and fact-based
poetry. Lo! I could perceive without the boundaries of
time and, to any congregation, that would be as foretold.
Mathematics solved her equations right before my eyes.
I was able to carry my own numbers in order to walk a
rather legitimate path that would enable me to answer to
my own children and to God in truth. Inside my head sat
a colossal compass. I perceived the whole world from
both inner and outer space like a mad scientist – a priest.
My words had become the declarations that were to mark
time. During the nights as I slept (whether in my
mattresses or upon a rock among scorpions) I
experienced the world from within (the subconscious)
where philosophies, conspiracies, sciences and religions
would proceed to expose themselves. The world, under
the sun, continued to expose itself along with its
inaccurate by-laws, fallacies, ghosts, parties and secret
files. I became the police, an author to sacred newspapers
and a teacher to the few of my kind that had remained

12
kind. I had been aligned to our poetic order hence I
became the mad poet. The literary pictures at hand would
be recited by way of ink over paper by a young man who
was yet to reaffirm his real names amid a mad world that
might just have been reaching its end.

13
 CHAPTER 2
I have had to learn to own my space and to not be in a
hurry. The tedious job of the world had been to make us
feel as if we had been left behind; as if we had been
delayed in our existence and that our existence was but
unfortunate. But I disagreed. I did not beg to differ, I
differed – quite naturally. My crimes had been my
humble efforts to survive on earth, but I understood that
the only criminal undertaking was my abuse of my
“distinct abilities” to push motives which were but
vanities of no use. I could always blame the devil, but the
evasion of responsibility was sin itself because blaming
foreign forces and others was only turning me into an
angry devil. A devil is the one that serves the ego that
has been imbedded into their own blood; they are
corrupt, selfish and without peace. I was a son and a man.
I had grown up learning to defend myself even through
painting the portraits that were meant to confuse my
murderous stalkers. In warfare, we were all manipulative,
especially during our quest to determine ourselves so
that truth could prevail. My paranoia had once turned me
into a spy and an Intelligence agent. I had been meant to
carry out a rather substantial job in the world so I had to
always look out the window to either wave to the
children or to through [throw] explosives and gunfire.
The reign of Haylal, that old fallen serpent, had been
scheduled to end by 2000 A.D (and then it was calculated
that some 30 years had been the extension) so the
remaining reptilians were still determined to survive and
cause havoc; they would do anything to “find the boy and

14
kill him.” The Son would have to heed the advice to hide
as past seasons had proved just how sensitive he was to
the ways of the world and its relentless arrows. I almost
shook the crown off my skull in the year 2021 A.D when
I set off into the city dressed in a black suit and some dark
sunglasses. I had carried a pistol and a badge around my
waist 24/7. I had sat under trees with the muddiest of
personalities from the open streets because, deep down, I
sought for the hope of their redemption and hygiene. But,
you see, they lied for survival and that had become a
lifestyle so walking among them, even in disguise, had
meant that I also had to live through the lies and that was
dirty, toxic and consuming. According to the
conspiracies, I had been meant to be blinded, poisoned,
drugged and converted into hypocrite and a zombie.
However, I had dropped down on my knees and recited
my hymn: “It’s a Long Walk to Liberation” to the gods.
Even in my sleep I could not be murdered, so I recited:
“It’s a long walk to liberation,
I have faced devils and comrades alike.
They shared my poetry and my energy;
They smelled my roots and the origins of my scents.
They judged my ugliness and set traps – landmines;
The attempts were meant to castrate my soul,
In an attempt to save their own fallen glory,

15
 While insuring that I do not reproduce myself (to burn their
poisons).

I am defensive and willing to abandon my food,

For the birds sing along to the tune of my identity,
While serpents long to taste my urine - out of thirst.
I have been guided, healed, supported and offered Love,
By a Love that has resurrected me after I was hurt, insulted,
And persecuted.
I do not yield, comrade,
For the hour is overdue and I feel relevant;
I remain relevant throughout the long walk to liberation.”
***
My duty had now been to keep my eyes open, but I still
had to be at peace so that I was not carried to hell by my
own wrath and bitter music. People abhorred each other
over their differences, and at times it was just jealousy
and hatred. They did not want to tolerate authority nor
the Laws of Creation and physics so they struggled
against gravity and caused chaos while trying to become
God. It was their own metaphysics. Their descriptions of
God were feeble and self-serving – blasphemy! They fired
arrows from their huts and castles, aiming at the celestial
creatures that had come to stay among them - only trying

16
to help heal wounds or even cure death. The rebellion of
the walking dead had been at its peak. The rebels did not
intend on yielding despite the deterioration of their
minds and bodies. Their system, just outside, was
collapsing and almost on its knees. Israel fired rockets
into Gaza; Putin opposed the horned world order (he
marched into Ukraine where over 700, 000 men were to
crush each other with bullets and bombs in bloody
battle). It was not new. The Son could only state that
“those Europeans should be firing regrettable nuclear-
powered weapons at each other by the year 2030, for it
must come to pass. The rule of the hideous one had been
extended, just a little. The Third World War already
occurring outside would be fought for 25 years, and I am
aware that this moment is an opportunity for me to wash
my own hands, my feet, my hair and my skull so that I
am baptised. My purity and cleanliness are the crown
that I am to protect. I am aware of my duties. I shall
defend the purity of my innocence and light with fire and
law and order, I swear. This is my chance.”
In a dream, a young man chants:
“Lo! The hour has come. I have begun to fly around (with or
without you), for I am with my father. I have saved those that
could be saved because they did listen, and I have left those
whom had to be left to their paths for they were as stubborn as
the United States - aggressive and married to their arts hence
dangerous. Some of them were snakes and traitors. Those were
the fires that could no longer be controlled; they could burn
everything down. Their light had been false for it was with the
flames that sought to destroy the very essence of the Mother

17
Planet. That was not love. It was not light, and it had to be
erased… I mean, these people have been trying to kill me,
including a man named Sir Redcloud and his mafia.”

18
 CHAPTER 3
Sir Redcloud was a Judas. He had received his
knighthood in an evening party in Britain, sharing red
meat and whiskey with overweight European priests and
aristocrats. They had sang songs dedicated to faraway
moons while toasting glasses to the clever beings that
dwell there, the same sarcastic lords that had inspired
Saul to add to the Bible, as Paul. You see, it was a game
of swords – a chess game. Sir Redcloud was very quite
smart. He was aware of his own ancient divinity and the
extent of his freewill. He could have been a better man
had he freed himself from the cultures that had only made
him too clever to the point of self-destructive folly. He
always had carried a knife and a pistol, a shrewd smile,
red eyes and a package of condoms as part of his armour
for long nights of intoxications, corrosive music,
gambling sessions and an undying willpower to fight for
his kind of rebellion. Sir Redcloud had been aging quickly
because of traumas, deep engagements in ethnic cults and
the chaotic affairs of having to live in the same world with
a real-time messiah. He had checked the time and it (the
time) had burned him. The old foretelling tales had been
true; there had to be treason and a culprit on a cross. You
see, the Messiah of 2000 years ago, Yashua, had, through
direct prayer, solicited from his father to be excused from
that cup of sufferance - abuse at the hands of those who
called themselves Jews under a fierce Rome. Yashua had
beseeched his father through prayer entreating to not be
crucified in the scripture of Matthew, the 26th degree, the
39th verse, for he had not come to earth to suffer death by

19
crucifixion but to convey salvation by way of messages.
Men like Sir Redcloud had to be aware that the secreted
fact remained that Judas Iscariot had, at the Garden of
Gethsemane, been transfigured to physically resemble
the Messiah whom he had betrayed and he took his place
at Golgotha where he would bellow, “Eli, Eli, lama
sabachthani…” to a God that would never forsake His
own beloved son. During those times, Son of Man would
appear some 3 days after the crucifixion event disguised
as a gardener with a rather edgy awareness of a fugitive
– as mentioned in the scripture of John, the 20th degree,
and the 15th verse. By the sepulchre, the Messiah had
stood and asked Maria of Magdalene, his wife whom he
had married at Cana, that “Woman, why are you weeping?
Whom are you seeking?” You see, Magdalene, the wife to
the Messiah, had truly been looking for a living man at
the place of the dead. At the wedding of the couple, the
rabbi had been alleged to have turned water into wine.
Yes, wine… men like Sir Redcloud carried a thirst within
their dry throats. “I am the water,” said Marshall Daima
in the evening of Monday the 10th of October, 2023 A.D.
The avatar was complete in its maturity, it just had to
maintain a serious sense of discipline and punctuate its
poetry like a man or a god. The ghost of Sir Redcloud
and his tattered troops would stare at the shiny Crystal
City from below, separated from his handsome nemesis
who happened to be the author of If God Spoke.

20
 CHAPTER 4
These devils telepath. I have heard, in the air, the
nonsense that they wish to portray as truth as they
broadcast whatever point they find important to lie about
based on fear, cowardice and supernatural envy. The
devils are telepathic. However, those who are considered
to be the gods also whistle into the minds of the mortals
that listen and I, Marshall Daima, find incredible the fact
that I can hear, respond and determine facts from
propaganda. Nature and its beings may speak all at once
but the noise does not entirely affect my nature. I can
only feel slightly sick as these alien beings intrude into
my personal space and around my circle so I always have
to retaliate and that has never been funny. An objective
set to be achieved soon after accessing my book If God
Spoke has been the enlargement of the crystal walls that
surround my heart and yard. I shall enlarge those walls
in terms of height, installing a roof although without
hindering my right to fire missiles in order to keep away
the beasts that serve the notorious Dragon of New
Babylon. A very futuristic war had been promised by the
winds as the Aluhum telepath the details of the reality
that had become complex and apocalyptic. During one
midnight, I had stood at the gates of my mother’s
compound, under a starry sky with a smiley moon,
starring at the distant lights from the bulbs of the homes
that occupied the high slopes towards the western end of
the village. As I stood I experienced a vision of asteroids
(which were balls of fire) had been showered from the
skies destroying homes with explosive noise and fire. I

21
would restore myself to real-time, amazed by the fact that
time seemed to be very real although more like an
illusion; that time appeared to be elastic. More
magnificent was the fact that I had access to it (time)
from the past, the present and into the future that ran
inside my veins. I smiled at my inner city, walked back
into the house to make myself a cup of tea while ignoring
the whisperers that were desperately trying to sneak into
my head to plant images that could only prove the
desperate nature of the intended deceptions and threats.
You see, these devils telepath! They control minds.
Fortunately the capacities of the ancestors that had built
my body expose the very sadistic nightmares that are
being forged over my existence by the insecure
humanoids that compete against my beauty. I see
everything even in my sleep because, you see, I am the
wrong seed in the most righteous of ways. In metaphor,
I would confess to be the definition of legitimacy because
poetry permits all statements. I remain the heir to
supreme justice in this cosmos world although my
traditional orders of poetry had been delivered to earth
from another star constellation – that Orion, as a package
by the hand of the messenger Gabriel (oh, the Holy Soul),
son of Rasiel and Zammael. I had long written many
pages, even in If God Spoke, about this world long before
its conception and invasions. I would write into eternity
for this is my season. The literature appears more like
déjà vu for I, Marshall Daima, have been here before, a
very long time ago. I smile alone because I am
surrounded by myself – it is indeed a beautiful
environment.

22
 ***
“Our son remains amongst his kind with a rather
extraordinary sense of authenticity and force. I had
waved at him from a nearby hovering starship, levitating
over an empty farm. Marshall Daima had rushed from his
day-dreaming to that side of the land. He had opened his
eyes as if a dream had just come true. He was not mad
after all, he noticed. I had thrown to him the pen out of
my window, allowing gravity to pull it down to the dusty
area where he had been standing, looking up. Marshall
had spread his arms, dived ahead to catch the pen – his
pen, and he did catch it. He has begun to write into
eternity,” announces the Elder Gabriel once in Ritz, the
planet of Orion, a physical place situated millions of
light-years above the earth. You see, the earthly religious
seed referred to that place as “heaven” for it was Orion.
“He would write into eternity for this is his season,” said
Gabriel. “The literature appears to him like déjà vu
because he, our Son, has been there before, a very long
time ago. He smiles alone because he is surrounded by
himself – it is indeed a beautiful environment.”

23
 CHAPTER 5
These pages were not carved by an exhausted soul, but
the lad (he remains a boy) is admittedly a bit tired, at least
bodily. It had been a long day. He had orated where he
could to the best of his interpretations of the colours
before him under the sun. When he had had a chance to
speak before a local congregation he had vocally
processed and expressed the solid facts that [he] was
acquainted with, referencing experience-emanated
examples. He had smiled from his heart to the best
abilities of his lips, especially to the guiltless children that
stared at him. He had sent words past the sky, working
to undo any wounds that he could detect. He did not bark.
He vibrated the earth around him with the depth of his
inner voice, pronouncing the fact that he was not a dog.
As much as he murmured with clarity, he hoped not to
upset the adults that have had to lead before him as per
responsibility. You see, the boy had worn a long white
coat. He had then plodded away past the rural country
along the white paved road, to the sound of chant-and-
clap music coming from a nearby church. High slopes
saluted him from behind as he walked away. Those were
the gestures of familiarity and honorary
acknowledgement from nature. You see, the land and the
vegetation knew him for he was born there. The young
man had checked time by way of the sun’s position in the
sky and continued to compose himself throughout his
heartening walk 0f 300 metres. He was aware that he was
almost 3 years ahead of time. He would grin in joy, aware
of himself. He saw through time as if to travel through it.

24
Sometimes it was excruciating and mentally engulfing,
that is, having to frequently feel as if one was, at times,
not entirely human as well as the realisation that most
people around him were very close to becoming beasts.
Some had long become beasts (the wise could calculate
their mark: six hundred and sixty six) and the boy only
hoped that it was not up to him to attempt to restore
those that could be restored back to rationality. He
speaks inside his mind as he walks past a dying dam. He
walks to the north where he would cross a little dry river
and stride through the sands towards his mother’s house.
He affirms the practical conclusions concerning the
purpose of his existence as reinforced by his simple
motives. His objectives are the little manifestos that he
recites as if they could be easy to attain. He understands,
however, that his competencies could still defy logic
because he is the one that has seen extra-terrestrials drop
from the sky; he had once or twice overheard the
Supernatural arguing among themselves as creators. He
carried the memory of Badimo that had once come to
earth dressed in white coats to fashion the Adam, the Eve
and everything else, so he knows just how far science can
be stretched to launch hands-on campaigns in order to
reform creation. He had once seen a vast ship floating the
skies over and beyond the orbit of the earth, in fact he
had been inside that throne. He has been above. He has
been in-between planets. He remembers. He was planted
on earth like a seed that had fallen from the skies into his
mother’s nest. He existed as himself within the availed
timeline and space, breaking certain boxes of mental
mirages, delusions and rules. He was the bothersome star

25
in the twinkling skies and he was aware of it. He was
Marshall Daima. He stood at 1.9 meters tall. He sparkled
under the sun with his olive-toned skin; skinny in his
nature; silent but detailed like the melodies of his
whistling – oh, the harmonic poetics. Marshall Daima
opened the aluminium gates and walked into his mother’s
compound. A warm meal awaited him, prepared by the
hand of a very composed woman who had once told him:
“my child, we are not of this world.”

26
 CHAPTER 6
The hunters that served New Babylon had long seen the
star. They had also been tipped by Sir Redcloud. During
a night from an ancient calendar their armies had crossed
the sea, rushing against time. Their trip had become the
exact opposite of what had been the traditional Journey
of the Magi for these combatants did not bring gifts and
benedictions, they carried brutally shaped weapons made
of metal, fire, bones and magic. The voyage had soon
turned dusty as their chariots, horses and hyenas raced
past the Sahara Desert through the shadow hours. You
see, they had come from afar, pursuing a star from the
alleged Orion skies. When there had been an impediment
of lack of light, the troopers referenced the old lightning
that had once marked the fall of their Lord, that old
serpent, from Orion. They entered Egypt at sunset,
assassinating the tomb keepers while deceiving the law-
enforcement departments of the day and forcing them to
surrender the keys and the books. They ran through the
pages of the documents that had once securely contained
the heritage and the integrity of the old monarchies that
had been based on tradition, law and order. The red
soldiers had thoroughly searched the temples,
undressing the desert. They had swam through the Nile
in order to question the waters and the reptilians that
lived beneath. That had been before they hurried into the
Sudan. There they searched and researched. They
attempted to rob Abyssinia but were spit out by brave
Ethiopian herdsmen so they accepted the new commands
from their generals to “move south.” They had not found

27
the so-called lamb, the brown Ethiopian Jew nor the
targeted manuscript: If God Spoke. They burned down
villages in the Congo where the green earth persisted to
defend her children although innocent blood had been
severely spilt by Leopold of Belgium. The hunters had
then landed in the Okavango delta where they sharpened
their spears, roasted some bush meat and reformed their
troops. They consulted with the prophecies from their
old myths, analysed the poems about Horus from Egypt
hoping to confirm their punctuality. You see, time was
everything. They would continue to follow the star into
the Kalahari. The tongues of the beasts that accompanied
their expedition would soon hang out from the mouths
for that was exhaustion itself. They were trying to
capture a very elusive young ancestor or, at least, his
book, before his electricity could spread.

28
 CHAPTER 7
If God Spoke had never been entirely stolen, although
some self-righteous men had, for long, attempted to
snatch some pages away from its jar. Some had offered to
publish the poetry on Marshall’s behalf - at a “real good
price”, while some had intended to inspect the direction
of his verses by intruding into the mind of the innocent
author. For Marshall Daima to claim to have heard the
raw speeches of the most feared God of creation stories,
he had to possess a sharp memory. He did not forget
anything. Marshall could have sworn that almost all of
his life had been but a book of revelations ever since he
had incarnated into the planet on the 14th of December,
1998 A.D. He was not a child for he remembered his true
age; he was more ancient than the oldest tree in the
nearby garden. By 2007 A.D he commanded nature to
bend to his will or to that of his preternatural father. He
survived storms and attempts on his life past the years
2008, 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2016 when he had found
himself tucked in a hospital bed in a somewhat
distressing coma. There he had been covered with white
sheets and his body connected to cords that were plugged
to beeping electrical machines. He had been in a deep 6-
day-long sleep following a wrestling match with a very
vindictive dark force that had intruded into his rented
room at midnight. During that coma and its darkness,
Marshall had seen worlds, observed visitors’ voices and
their varying energies, diverse emotions and prayers as
they surrounded the hospital bed where he had been laid.
He would always remember that a certain Christian

29
witch had tiptoed her way into the hospital ward, stood
at the end of the bed and prayed over his motionless body
that “oh, God, may you please just take your son for he
has indeed suffered in this world… Amen.” Sigh.
Marshall, by then, had just been 17 years old. He died on
that bed in Sekgoma Memorial Hospital, Serowe in
September the 17th, 2016 A.D. However, it had only been
some seconds or minutes later that he was as conscious
as the living so he smiled, opened his eyes, grabbed a
banana from a bedside desk, stripped it and took a bite.
There were some gifts (fruits and yoghurt) placed by the
mini-locker besides the hospital bed – and that had been
evidence of love, tears and hope. By 2018 the prologue to
If God Spoke had begun boiling in a faraway lake in his
mind that would soon be warm enough for him to jump
in and bathe his soul. The waters would accommodate his
mind and heart so that by the year 2019 the first scroll of
the book would see the light of the day as he scribbled
away on a piece of toilet paper. Marshall had begun to
feel as stirred as Adam and Eve following Eve’s
rendezvous with a serpentine creature that had walked
into the garden on two feet. The black eyes of the grey
creature at the Garden of Eden had been shaped like
those of a cow; its grey body had been naked but without
any visible private parts. You see, Marshall did not
require to take a bite of the intoxicating fruit for he had
long been aware of its lethal ingredients and nauseating
tastes. He had been one of those characters who had been
appointed to water the tree, not as a trap for Adam and
Eve but as a foundation of the contest of freewill on earth.
The book If God Spoke had to entail a persona that would

30
be anticipated to end the long-begun chaos. That
character would box against rebellious life forms, slowly
but surely, because whatever God had uttered had to be
Law, poetry, life and harmony no matter how
excruciating it felt.
***
The first degrees of If God Spoke had been compiled by
early 2020. That had been a period during which a
‘Global Lockdown’ would be enforced as a lethal virus
had reportedly been leaked from a lab in Asia. That
pandemic had certainly been meant to remind people who
was in control of the status quo as it spread into
communities, wounding medical care and social order as
known by humanity. By the end of September of the year
2021 (when Marshall had become even more eloquent as
a speaker before audiences of pupils and debaters), the
non-relenting secret agents like Sir Redcloud that served
despicable regimes had in some way poisoned the lad’s
purity through medications and other imported
substances. The young man had collapsed to his knees,
allowing stress to strike through his flesh as the bandits
stole his gold, betrayed his transparent affection,
sabotaged his progress and fled back to the chaos of the
adulterous city that had sent them. ASAP, the Son would
rise to his feet again, mumble some astounding
affirmations under his breath, and sip of his water in
order to sleep and wake up during another term as a
fulfilled monk - cleaner than his old portrait. He would
take oath to be more cultured and more faithful than the
deceitful Pharisees of the New Testament. He would lead

31
his mind out of the prison of polluted gospel; he would
keep calm past psychiatric cages and traps while
conveniently lashing serpents out of his path through his
vehemence, fire and love. He rejected many invitations to
fornication, homosexual rituals and the worship of
money. He gathered more first-hand data about the one
that was in control of the status quo as he witnessed the
traffics of the human beasts that roamed earth with him
planting hazards. By the year 2023, Marshall would be at
the very peak of his pyramid of growth. It would be up to
him to perfect his light and align himself to the stars that
would lead him home again, but first he had to dash back
in time in order to recuperate the book If God Spoke.

32
 CHAPTER 8
Marshall Daima had to dash back in time to secure the
letters that he had long received from his elders before
the swift horse-riding hunters could locate his heart. He
was extremely aware of the conspiracies formed by the
commanders of those armies because it had long been
written. They intended to run past faithless gate-keepers
and traitors like Sir Redcloud right into his territory in
order to carry out the commands of Herod. Those troops,
as accompanied by Sir Redcloud, also drove the same
brand of chariots that the Egyptians had used to pursue
the Hebrews across the desert just before Moses could
split the Red Sea in order to save the book If God Spoke
as well as the integrity of the lost tribes. Marshall had
long walked the Kalahari barefooted. He was only armed
with facts, a homely heart and a glittering pineal gland.
He was a monk dressed in an orange gown. He was also
a trained samurai with a black belt of the martial arts. He
was a teacher with an old soul while also being a
shepherd to the sheep. He remained an embodiment of
optimistic elegance.

33
 CHAPTER 9
“This is the world where the blind lead the blind,” says
an elder. Marshall Daima bows his head low as a sign of
respect. He stands before a lord who physically resembles
him to the point of being a duplicate except that the man
is much taller and older. Plus, the being’s tone is more
pronounced, and he is outwardly at ease. His eyes are so
large and piercing that Marshall feels significantly
embarrassed standing in front of him because the man
stares right into his heart. It is as if his eyes are with
sharp lasers [of] corrosive light. Is Marshall dreaming
or is he fully awake? The man (if he is really a man)
exudes authority and formidable honesty. “I am no man,
I am a god,” says the being. “Do you know why I speak
to you, young one?” the god asks the boy.
“Speak to me,” answers Marshall. “I surely cannot know
what you know.”
“You already know everything that I know. It has been a
while since God has been speaking to you directly, but…”
“But what…?”
“But you interrupt God. You tend to confuse yourself.
You burn your little fingers with your fire, and you are
too careless. You do not take anything of the material
world seriously…”
“Should I?”
“You must listen. You need to stand firm because you
have grown. The world outside is very real.”

34
 Is it? Marshall scratches his head and clears his throat.
He is growing taller by the second. “But my lord…” he
attempts to speak, only to be interrupted – a taste of his
own medicine.
“I am not your lord,” proclaims the giant being before
him. “I am you. I am His Lordship Marshall Daima but
from another time. You see, I am the seed of your father.
I am the same blood as you. I am you from another
timeline.”
“Jesus Chr…” Marshall tries to swear, but he is waved to
silence. He smiles as if he has just learned a pleasant fact,
and in turn he says: “I think I get what is happening,
mister. It’s either I am dreaming right now or you, sir,
live inside a book written by an insane poet.”
The man smiles backs and asks: “And you just happen to
be that poet?”
“Yes, of course,” affirms Marshall. “In fact, I am not just
the mad poet, I am you!”
The two laugh together, and the laughter echoes
throughout space as well as under the seas of the earth
and across the pages of the book If God Spoke where
Marshall speaks about the world from the eyes of a child
that had once caught a glimpse of pokerfaced elders
controlling time and instructing nature from a point a
[of] view that had made them gods. He has written about
those supreme brings as they had been recorded in the
biblical Genesis as [and?] have declared that: “Hence let
us create man in our image.” Marshall awakens from the

35
dream. At the end of the evening he would climb down
the ladder of time and walk the outside world with a
memory of his exchange with the gods so that when the
time is apt he would be in a position to state that “God
has said this,” while pointing at a copy of his book.

36
 CHAPTER 10
At the other side of existence raucous soldiers had
gathered like the Ku Klux Clan [Klan]. They had made
a fire, sat around it, polished their artilleries, drank and
danced to their own noise. They would soon establish
silence to listen to a general that would yell at them
Hitler-style. You see, the warriors had been of different
nationalities and ethnicities, but they had been united by
their motives - a common cause. They had honoured the
call of the one that had given out orders as an emperor
and a god. “Gentlemen!” the general had roared. “The
war has intensified as you can all see for yourselves. You
carry the scares and you have seen the boy’s destiny. We
can no longer hope to have him dismissed as some mad
poet or as a sick weirdo that needs psychiatric help. He
has grown because for 2 long decades you have failed to
kill him.” The general had only paused his speech to sip
his whiskey and to puff at a bandaged cigarette. “You
need to fasten the soles of your boots! Sharpen your
knives, we have some castrating to do before the boy
seals the skies. He is currently aged twenty-four….” The
filthy leader had paused again, hesitating as he put his
glass down to calculate the mathematics through his
fingers. He then continued: “we really need to get our
hands on If God Spoke for those are the high orders.
Where is Sir Redcloud?” A skinny man with a large beard
had risen to his feet, and he was waved to speak.
“Gentlemen, we have always been treated like fools,”
begun Sir Redcloud after he had stepped forward and
saluted. “Through my work as a spy at the Intelligence

37
office I managed to gain access to a few poems from If
God Spoke. That was some few years ago when I had
disguised myself as a good friend to Marshall. I had worn
the disguise of a priest, a cousin and a friend although I
never really liked the bastard. I posed with wisdom and
intellectual depth. I was able to comprehend his jokes and
so we laughed together. I even managed to bring him
some harlots here and there, didn’t work. I also carried
to him some alcoholic spirits and tried several times to
pour some down his throat because he seemed to trust
me enough to allow me some space at his feet and at his
desk and bedroom... didn’t always work but his liking of
green tobacco did work once or twice.” 21 000 eyes and
ears of the troops paid attention. Sir Redcloud had
grinned and continued: “he only tasted a pint of the wine,
and then his body resisted. That boy’s blood cleans up his
body like a universe recreating itself. He is incredible
because I later realised that he had never actually trusted
me, he only loved. I believe that in two or three chapters
of his contraband book he referred to me as Judas. In
those verses of poetry he seemed to dismiss my image as
the image of a goat and a traitor whom he would just lift
up by the horns and throw over the fence. Marshall
Daima remains incredible because it is evident that even
in his rage he still smells like love. I have seen that is [in]
his tears as he wept for the likes of us. He carries love in
his stinking breath.”
“But we don’t know what love is, Sir Redcloud,
remember?” the general had interjected and Sir Redcloud
bowed his head low. The general had then proceeded to

38
announce: “Now, I, as your general in command,
command you all to attack at once before sunrise. We
need that book as well as the head of the avatar that has
written it. We shall rely on the sketches and the advice
of Sir Redcloud because he has been inside that boy’s
head for some time, hasn’t he? He has seen his bedrooms,
observed his words as they chatted. He has watched our
enemy in his sleep and even danced to his music. He has
eaten with him as a colleague, so he shall be of key
importance in our final operation.” As much as Sir
Redcloud would profess to remember some verses from
If God Spoke, it was still true that he had now been
reduced to a liar and a perverse beast whose
accountability could not be relied upon. He would be
exposed as the one that had forsaken the teachings of his
own father while serving 2 masters. As much as Redcloud
still believed himself to be a god, so powerful and lethal,
he was deteriorating like the very regime that he served
as a rebel and an apostle. Marshall Daima watched over
these foe from a nearby star, with a calm mind. Even in
his sleep he saw them. He verbally alluded that “these fools
still do not know me.” They did not know him, yet they did.

39
 CHAPTER 11
Marshall Daima had placed a scroll made of brown paper
on top of a brown wooden table. After Marshall had left
the shiny-polished table on his way into the kitchen to
make himself a cup of herbal tea, whistling to the
musicality of common sense, a lady with long woolly
black hair with small strands of white had tiptoed in in
order not to be heard. Her smile had radiated rare
sentiments; the hair over her head had spoken of divinity,
sarcasm and untainted wisdom. Her eyes had shone,
spreading light in the spacious room and beyond. At the
table, she would carefully fold the scroll and cover it with
a large leaf that was so brown it had to be made of gold
– it was indeed a golden leaf. Her scent and her winds
would confirm the title of the book: If God Spoke. She was
aware that the young man’s manuscript was complete,
and that it was “almost astounding” and such an opinion
of hers over the book would dress it with value. She
would smile to the adjacent singing of Marshall (an
incredible tenor with a perfect treble), still unaware of
her intrusion. The lady’s flowery signature as scrawled
below the letters would be the equivalent of an endorsed
publication of If God Spoke. She would grab a piece of
paper and a pen to leave a note on it that read:
“Hey, Marshall, excuse my intrusion. I shall take away this
original of this your scroll like a young woman stealing the
heart of a dreamy young man. I will leave you with a
duplicate of just one volume of this original literature. We are
borrowing it from you for safekeeping and for some marking
by the elders that reside at a place that you cannot describe.

40
 Trust me, you shall have it back at the right time. You have
done a great job – almost astounding. God loves you. Good
bye.
Yours,
Yamikani.”
The young woman would swiftly move to the other side
of the room where a photocopying machine had been
placed. She produced a copy of just the middle volume of
the scroll, titled Book Two: Lately I Live inside a Poem and
placed it on the table so that it remained with the author,
to soothe him or to keep him optimistic. She would then
smile and exit. Marshall would walk in 60 seconds later,
holding a blue cup, sensing a presence and a departure.
He would release the mug to crush on the floor –
CHING! - leaving a liquid-and-glass-mess while he ran
to the door and stared at an empty earth. “My love, are
you here? Were you here?” he blubbered.
***
The earth could not have been empty, for angels of both
light and darkness roamed around. They dwelled among
the civilians that were almost enslaved by gods of
different origins and perceptions. It was a chaotic little
planet almost 2000 years after the passage of the Messiah
amongst other key priests, prophets and messengers.
While Marshall Daima had stood at the doors fantasizing
about the young lady that had passed by to carry his
letters to their baptism, a swift figure dressed in black
had slid in under the open window like a snake, almost

41
using magic to intrude. That was so like Sir Redcloud
(for he had once boasted that he could shape-shift into
any creature under the sun). The serpentine being would
quickly invite in a large eagle that had waited outside and
together they would snatch the duplicate of the volume
of If God Spoke before jumping outside and flying away as
quickly as they could. When Marshall had been restored
from the dreamy melancholy over the poetry of the
woman he adored, he turned around, stared at the table
and cursed: “damn, the book is gone.”

42
 CHAPTER 12
In a traditional courtyard of a rural settlement
surrounded by green vegetation gathered the native
populaces. The sun had kindly smiled down at the
expectant crowd because rainfall had just passed by,
showering the veld and adding smiles to the faces of the
tribesmen for they tilled the land and reared cattle.
According to the position of the shadows of the trees it
was midday. You see, three days ago there had been
rumors of an aircraft that had been seen landing outside
the village by the mountains. It had been said that the
craft had appeared like a star, a starship of incredible
speed. Some herdsmen and hunters had then confessed to
have observed several strange looking young men
dressed in white robes sitting by the mountains. “They
had light with them,” a young warrior had reported in a
native language, “and when they saw us they disappeared
beyond the trees to evade us. We immediately ran away to
report to the Chief, because that had really been a strange
sighting. They could be dangerous, who knows? And we are
not even sure if they were human…” That very night the
customary Chief of the village was said to have had a
dream where he received a letter from outside the village
written by somebody that identified as Marshall Daima.
The Chief had then informed his advisors that the letter
in the dream had communicated a confession from a very
tall man stating that he was the owner of the aircraft that
had recently hovered over the village, and that he was
knocking at their door for their own sake. So, as the 3000
villagers gathered at the customary courtyard at the call

43
of their Chief. A tall man was seen walking out of the
woods, wearing long white robes and [a] smile on his
brown face. He carried a walking stick and a wrapped
package. His was a strange appearance for he was not
known to the villagers. He was the same character from
the Chief’s dream. As he seemed to be of no harm, he was
directed towards the kgotla where the whole village had
assembled. The man had shaken the old chief by hand,
passed his package to him as a gift and demanded to
speak to the tribes. “You may speak, Mr. Marshall
Daima. My people are all ears. In fact, we have been
waiting for you to come and tell us what you expect of
us,” said the Chief, forging a smile but with a wary air to
it.
“Good afternoon, my neighbors”, Marshall had begun. “I
bring no harm. I am only a traveler and a priest, and I
seek your help. I have come to inquire if anyone in this
village has seen or heard of a duplicate of some letters or
a scroll titled If God Spoke. The document in question is
a lost copy of a volume of a book named If God Spoke. It
was replicated from the original that we had in our
possession but are still to recover from another world.
The copy of the book, you see, is crucial to our
recuperation of the original. That copy was swindled
from my lockers by someone whom I had been too kind
to allow into the temples of my home. The traitor had
then fled because he is an evasive devil, and the location
of that copy of If God Spoke has been as vague as his
whereabouts, but, you see, it is not him that we pursue,
but the copy of our sacred manuscript that must be

44
recovered. That book means a lot to the one that looks
over the All, and that includes all of us gathered here. I
refer to a lord over there,” Marshall pointed towards the
eastern skies, “at a place where a king of kings has been
promised to descend from the skies one day to help us all,
especially you, my respectable brothers and sisters, to
confront and defeat the imperialist who, for 6024 years,
has bothered us all. As I have stated, the missing copy of
If God Spoke is vital for the recuperation of the original.
The theft of the duplicate has confronted the integrity of
that whole text which is important for the survival of our
very essence.” Marshall had paused to pace to and fro by
the podium, examining the faces and the souls of the
villagers. “I kindly say to you that if any of you has a clue
concerning the passage of that book, you can have a word
with me from here, so that we do not ruin the next few
years. Our ancestors have been rendered restless for too
long and we have been exposed to external filth for too
long, haven’t we? Good people, I also bring a message of
love. This is a confirmation that ‘yes, I, love, exist; I am
real and I am obliged to deliver sacred scripture to the
reverends to be published and to be made into law’. The
law that I speak of is made of the free poetry itself. It
speaks of an order where the imperial devil would not be
allowed the means to tax us for being alive. By then, he
would have scorched himself with the nuclear
ammunition that he keeps playing with like a toy because
he and his cousins truly have no souls. The book that I
refer to has a poem that states that we would pray no
more as we are to live among the gods themselves again,
here of earth, after destruction and fire. That is the poetry

45
from a world where I would not have to live under
disguise. I despise paranoia, but my enemies have united
all their forces to swallow me. I have never considered
anyone an enemy but, you see, they persecute me; they
oppose me; they attack me. That is why I have passed by,
to know if you stand for or against the cause of which I
speak. I have remained alive, refusing to die throughout
the seasons of trials, working to be the most efficient
version of myself among the snakes that slide under my
heels, and the hunters that attack because of cowardice
and a lack of divine intellect. I have spoken. Thank you.”
Marshall had bowed low and now was just standing
upright, staring at silent faces. They then began to clap
and toot among themselves, he felt safe and at ease. The
Chief stood up, hailed his people to silence and began to
speak: “Mr. Marshall Daima, we have heard you, and we
shall do all we can to help you with your pursuits.” The
villagers would dance to their gods, re-appreciate
Marshall’s message (and his humor) and establish their
cluelessness concerning the lost piece of his treasure.
They did not suggest anything that he did not know
already, but they did express respect. They shared his
energy with him until he walked away into the green
forest where he had set camp. An evening star would
mark his departure. The winds would whistle the facts,
and another rain would forgive the crimes of the land’s
ancient folks, healing illnesses, touching hearts while
approving the children’s dreams for tomorrow. As he
departed, Marshall had admitted that the kgotla meeting
had been as dreamy as poetry but still real - that was,
after all, the poetry of reality. He left with a smile despite

46
his knowing that the Chief of the village had hesitated
and failed to inform him about the recent passage of Sir
Redcloud whom had travelled with a large army for he
(the Chief) did not want to get involved in a major war
and endanger his village.

47
 CHAPTER 13
Marshall had pursued the wrong angel that had intruded
into his royal cottage, following the Intel that he had
collected from the eyes of the chief of the village where
he had been as a priest and a detective. He pursued the
creature with an understanding that it flew the skies with
the assistance of an eagle. The culprits that he followed
would fly with stubborn gestures until they tripped over
their own wings due to the flames emanated by their own
anger issues. The foe fell into the sand dunes of a certain
desert, causing commotion, a dusty storm and noise.
Females from a nearby village welcomed them with
songs and drinks for they were dressed in smart suits and
jewelry. However, the visitors that had successfully
concealed their accident had understood that the local
men certainly mistrusted them and would be ready to
slay them at any moment, either in their drunkenness or
in their sleep at the command of the local chiefs. They
understood that in that part of the world, rulers still
acquired counsel from priests that abhorred magic but
favored science and truth. They managed to make
speeches at night, proving to the residents that they
owned the dollar so they possessed power and the
strength to annoy the whole earth. They demonstrated
vibrant colors and depicted Hollywood stories
concerning the Pentagon and the beauty of the Statue of
Liberty.

48
The man, Marshall Daima, pursued the false angels into
the loud settlement which was already as loud as Sodom
and as populated as Gomorrah. He used the silver coins
that had been given to him by his mother to purchase
some bananas and a liter of fruit juice, resisting seduction
and alcohol before swiftly disappearing into the night. He
had seen his foe. He made notes. He had more important
things in mind such as the love of his life somewhere at a
distant land as well as the recuperation of scripture. His
mind constantly returned to the book If God Spoke and
the world that would precede it. The author would
realize that the thieves had been receiving superior
assistance from their own mysterious gods hence they
were able to disappear from sight. He also noticed that
wherever they passed in their invasions they easily
managed to lie about the children of the soil to make
them look dirty, inferior and barbaric. That was the spell
of the enemy that had been meant to ensure that when he
re-appeared, he would be portrayed as a mad lunatic (at
the offices of the deans), hence deserving to be banished
or killed. At that point, it had become annoying for the
world was being administered into anarchy and death by
the devils that did not care about anything at all, not even
themselves. “I would have to go village to village, I guess.
I shall cross all the rivers and bother the chiefs, the false
priests and the liars that write the books. I shall be
exposed to every eye so that they would see. They shall
experience the forces that fight with me,” says Marshall
Daima. “Those forces do not only fight with me or for
me, they fight for a greater cause including the survival
of the sun itself.” Marshall stares at a large mirror in the

49
rented little dirty room. He understands that his words
had been meant to serve as a sword. The sword shines
before his eyes; it reflects the sharp clarity that he has
earned through long nights of study, the painful physical
training that came with overwhelming mental and
emotional trials. If only that precious lady that had
captured his mind and inner senses could pass by and
offer him a jar of water or even milk and honey… He
wishes that she could fly in with her motherly sarcasm
and the fuel that could help him gain the strength that he
needs to recover his book before it could be undressed,
scanned, corrupted and violated by the weirdoes that
continued to flee from justice.

50
 CHAPTER 14
Throughout his searches, Marshall would spend a night
in the Congo. The lands of the DRC felt as homely as his
own soul. It was so familiar that he almost wept. He
remembered the trees and the melancholy of the native
hymns as composed by the soft winds. It was exquisite.
Although the place was tender, he could not settle down
any longer for he was a man of [on] a mission. He had
picked up a few stones from the brown earth, threw the
shiny diamonds into a nearby lake that was as brown as
the local unprocessed gold, sending verbal messages of
peace into the atmosphere in the local dialect: “na lingi
mboka oyo. Bakoko na biso bo lakisa ngai nzela ya malamu,
mpo mokolo moko nakozonga na bolingo na esengo.” The fish
of the lake would sing to the memory of his image and
voice, reminding the tribes that once upon a time a priest
had passed by. Marshall Daima had ensured to keep
checking around the Equator for the scent of his
writings. He scanned the houses, especially the floors of
the heavily guarded European embassies, for any sign of
his literacies. Beyond his gloomy moods, Marshall could
see the tip of the nearest pyramid past the rainforests
where the deserts began. According to his maps, he could
just jump to Sudan and prostate to his elders in the land
of Mohammad Al Mahdi, to even greet Egypt if he
pleased. Marshall knew and regretted the fact that some
men in the Sudan had imported the laws of the devils so
a civil war raged. The outlaws that he pursued could not
possibly have went there for there the warriors that
adored the message of the marshal would have beheaded

51
them on the spot, and placed the scriptures by the
Sudanese pyramids until the arrival of the foretold
messiah, the Son of Man.

52
 CHAPTER 15
Marshall had been to Ethiopia to study, and for the
coffee. He had searched through Solomon’s temples
looking for some sandals of royal fashion that could fit
his feet. He had sat at the mountainous deserts. There, he
had realized that he had to stop sipping much caffeine, it
was awful to his body and brain. He had walked the sands
as a confident native would. He greeted the brothers and
their uncles along, affirming that those Ethiopians were
the Jews that he remembered based on the facts of the
house of Judah. It was those tribes that the imperialist
that had been bothering him had long attempted to
crucify and exterminate through genocides and lies.
Those regimes, as favored by men like Sir Redcloud and
Paul the 13th self-appointed apostle, could and had not
succeeded a 100% in stealing from him, although some of
his poems still lay in their hands. Marshall had placed his
left hand on his cheek, thought about his own progress
in the world and shed a tear. He ate the sorghum meals,
tasted the waters and departed at dawn to another side of
the continental farm. There, Marshall would come across
tremendously tall tribes, so tall that even he with his 2
meters height had begun to feel like a toddler standing
among adults. He shook their hands, explained his
origins and even assisted the Massai in solving numerous
cases related to the curse of witchcraft and some
bothersome spirits from the past. Marshall had recited
his poetry so that the troubled ancestor could be liberated
from an astral lake of the infested waters that spoiled the
afterlife. He made it clear that the offspring that lived had

53
to fix the mistakes of their elders and accept the laws of
creation so that healing could occur in the land of the
living. Although his Swahili had not been ripe, Kenya had
good ears. They cursed mental illnesses and AIDS and
made it clear that most of such disorders had been a
result of alien sciences, cinemas, foreign intoxicants,
imported religions along with their calendars and
deceitful trainings. Marshall had long become a healer
for he had once had to heal himself and those around him
(without much of a choice). He was a threat to the Sir
Redcloud-endorsed darkness that bothered the serenity
of his people. He had waved them goodbye as he rode
away on a donkey escorted by the warriors that rode on
backs of white horses, chaperoned by the roaring lions
that stirred some winds. The people that dressed in white
robes with a willingness to travel with him were indeed
the envisioned mighty white clouds. He crossed the
mountains alone and pursued his book on foot. That copy
of the volume of his book had now become like a heart to
his body. How do you walk around without a heart?

54
 CHAPTER 16
He pursued history all the way through the sand dunes
of the Sahara, even into some offices in Libya. Marshall
Daima had searched through the bookshelves,
translating letters from the old Arabic into the language
of his mind before fleeing on a chauffeur-driven black
Mercedes to the south of Tripoli. A civil war had
exploded just outside. You see, it was just one of the
many wars [he] had seen to the divisions within the
structures of the Arabs that followed the teachings of
Mohammad – the warfare between brothers that had
been meant to rain on as acid for centuries, contradicting
the teachings of the founding prophet himself. The devil
that flew with an eagle, holding on to a suitcase that
imprisoned the stolen book, If God Spoke, had already
passed over Libya by the year 2011. The aircrafts that
had served to bring news from that foe had spread bombs
down throughout the land; the local tribes opened their
ears to a foreign god dressed in a black suit. He (the
adversary) stood at the UN podium, ran his hand through
his long hair, starred at the people through his sharp blue
eyes and began to speak. If only Marshall could meet the
infidel face-to-face, he would turn him upside down with
that hand of the sacred martial arts. Some gunshots had
then been observed a few yards from the Mercedes that
Marshall had been traveling in. Four trucks had collided
just ahead of the bonnet, into a nearby flat that exploded
momentarily to the sound of sirens and the babies that
cried in unison. The people had chanted in the streets to
the smell of the dark gases that were evaporating into the

55
dusty skies in order to paint them black with carbon
monoxide, hate and a toxic smell. The traitors on foot
had fled with their suitcases and shame but without any
remorse (for they had no feelings nor souls). They were
the exact tribes that had long opposed and oppressed the
likes of Marshall Daima, and they were to never find
peace despite the billion dollar bills that had been thrown
at them for their job well-done. Gaddafi was pounded to
his death, perhaps due to his references that he had
confessed against the colors that were being sold as
pollution to the earth globe, while also assassinating the
shepherds that could engage the dragon in combat to
save the already battle-shaken palaces from the
destruction of the war that had now become inevitable.

56
 CHAPTER 17
Marshall Daima would meet a very tall humanoid being
while hurrying through the jungles of Uganda. The man
was so massive that he was indeed a giant, a great furless
ape. Marshall would attempt to pacify the aggressive
beast of an ape through dialogue and even by way of
melody (he remained a smooth singer) but the giant
would only catch the smell of the blood that ran through
the veins of the marshal; it would jump forth in an
attempt to garb him and pull the heart out of his chest.
However, Marshall would, through his breath, reduce
the chimpanzee-like nephilim into a man, a human being.
He would command the creature to cease moon worship
and to refrain from eating raw flesh. He made it clear to
the creature that he had to have a name and that he owed
respect to the local tribes that he had to stop bringing
injury and terror to through winter nights. Marshall
would inform the newly-civilized creature that he was a
creature no more but a brother that was smart and wise
enough to exchange blessings with him as set out on his
journey. The giant of Uganda had said: “I bless your
journey. You shall find what you seek.” As he spoke he
bent low and offered Marshall a gigantic hand to shake
and a bluish diamond as clear as water. “Thank you,
Uganda,” Marshall would reply. “But I must leave
empty-handed to find the only diamond that matters the
most to me.”

57
When the moon had entered into another circle,
Marshall had been without food for days to the day. He
read from the clouds and admitted to the space around
him that he now knew where his book was. Both intuition
and clairvoyance had spoken from a deeper place. He
speaks inside his mind: I would have the volume of my
scriptures in my hands and at my table again by the approved
hour. They would be recuperated from the jealous thief by the
dry Euphrates River, before the eyes of shooting stars during a
nuclear war – the pilots that drive the aero-ships as gods would
speak to me, addressing me with the only title that matters to
me. I am the man and the lamb to my people, and it is only
amusing to get to make it clear that contents of my embodiment
could never be limited or contained by a book. Our intellectual
gold had existed long before Alchemy could become a thing on
earth; long before literature could be introduced as part of the
alchemy that is to be printed out in the form of books.
Marshall Daima had also visited a few villages in
Zimbabwe. He learnt about the ancient folks and nodded
at the melodies of the elaborate strings of indigenous
guitars. That had been the very same music that he had
heard a long time ago while the pyramids were being
built next to his ego in Giza, Egypt. His existence had
been constructed by architects that had proved to possess
access to the furthest star above Egypt. The
mythological lamentations concerning the death of
pharaohs were but a part of that book of his: If God Spoke.

58
 CHAPTER 18
By the ocean that lies at the end of the Namib Desert,
Marshall would stop to explain his lineage of his fore-
fathers to the Herero. He would verbally admit that he
was aware of the crimes of the Germans in Namibia,
advising native mothers and sons of the soil to forgive
the past and its wounds/atrocities because Justice was to
soon enforce itself. They were to resist the foreign
dragon and its tasty bribes. “They should not buy our
soul from you,” Marshall would chorus throughout the
desert. “They can never afford our soul essences. I,
myself, was never for sale like my books unless you are
attempting to help me buy back the land and our Order.”
***
In Zambia were some good people. They were kind and
promptly translated even the most twisted of metaphors
in the dialects that Marshall had been able to quickly
calculate and respond to with a smile. He was permitted
to tie down a buffalo and to milk its breast until a jar was
filled. He had then gulped the milk before reciting a long
poem to the people that had gathered around an evening
fire to see a familiar stranger. They had been at ease
enough to hear him speak about just how tasty the buffalo
milk had been. He had stated that “the buffalo had been
and still is the totem to my forefathers from the Congo
to the green terrains of the east. The animal had even
carried some of my people from the Far East into the
center of Botswana where I shall construct a temple in
memory of these beautiful memories. I hope that there

59
shall be no more noise in South Africa over the several
arguments that shall be raised by an ethnic group against
another. Is coexistence possible among us? The Boer had
long pulled through, through the coasts of the Cape. The
clashes that exist have been a part of a major war between
good and malevolent. May we be freed, and may we free
ourselves, and I have said just enough so that I may find
my book on time.” He then bowed and left.
The land where a huge river used to flow had been left
dry and desolate from lack of rainfall. Pages of a
paperback were laid by the river bank. A flight of birds
encircled the book, singing their songs concerning “the
last days”. The birds would flee to the sound of rhythmic
psalms as recited by a chanting young man. The young
man shines for he is the sun. He walks with a straight
spine for he has mastered the mathematics of how David
had assaulted Goliath in divine combat. Momentarily,
the birds that sing would collapse to the hard and cracked
brown earth where water used to flow; their necks are
twisted by an echo of their old words of treason that they
used to decorate even in their music. The eagle that had
been well-adored by its servants, including that man Sir
Redcloud, grasps for oxygen as it is being strangled by
its friend the serpent that tightly rolls its body around
the eagle’s neck before letting go to bite its own tail. Oh,
the subtler creature bite [bites/bit] its own body to a
slow departure to a lake of denser fires – you see, the
venom is undiluted! Marshall Daima picks the book up
from the ground that used to be that old great river. He
observes a distant sound and understands that “oh, the

60
apocalyptic trumpet is being blown.” He sits under a
palm tree to wipe the dust off his long sought volume of
his book. He smiles, prays to his inner god before
stepping back into his mother’s peaceful house in
Botswana where home had been waiting to read his book
in order to perceive the news concerning the father figure
as well as the details of his travels. “Now that I have a
copy of my volume of literature as well as my voice and
sight, my destiny is fully in my hands. My hands are the
very arms of truth and poetry,” says Marshall Daima. He
wears a gold-patched crown on his head as his gestures
become as simple as his speech. He carries a book in his
arms in a similar way to the manner in which a Catholic
priest clings to his Bible during an exorcism. “The
children that are younger than us shall have much
reading to do. They shall study the manifestation of
seasons as recorded as final manifesto relating to the
events that had long started to manifest in this world and
beyond. My letters shall be read at my school(s). Our
grandchildren of the new world shall know that I had
been a timeless elder. I have roared at the high
mountains; I have sat inside peaceful caves in order to
write and rest from the world. I have been baptized by
giants in a clean lake in-between 3 great mountains. I
have long written that it had been a baptism by way of
water and the poetry of the soul that I carry. I have long
walked the land dressed in my white robes, strolled
across the water and through the fire to a place where my
book of books had been placed. I lay my hands upon the
covers of my long lost scriptures. It is indeed a sweet
book that had been written as an anthology of bitter facts.

61
I had commanded the intestinal words of the texts from
within, because I spoke and still speak as an old soul that
did not create itself but was made and sent. I exit with
the book, to go and serve as a shepherd. Besides the
soulful words in the book If God Spoke, the only wealth
that I possess is my heart and the blood it pumps.

62
BOOK TWO:
LATELY I
LIVE INSIDE
A POEM

63
 CHAPTER 19
TO AN EMPTY HALL
It is with untraceable feeling that a young man recites to
an empty hall. He voices:
“Life, partly, is like a divorce. However, I am not going
to be the lad that points to the past and narrates old
melancholies in the mood of a victim. As much as agony
might be a consequence of living inside a dream, it has
also proved to be a direct result of existing in a spooky
past with just enough remorse, rage, questions,
clarifications and a need for clarifications. That was the
sin that pumped light off the chest of the child that I had
been: memory; the voices in your head!” he spoke while
slowly pacing by the podium, as if he was reminding
himself about existence on earth or just looking for his
own shadows on the floors. The young man then
continued: “As much as the son that I was had been
blabbering about the injustices of yesterday under the
sun and in the shadows, he still sought to be the lad that
would not always point to the past and narrate those old
melancholies in the tone of a loser. The trials that he had
faced had to be the vibrant symbols that would depict the
actuality of the complexities and simplicities of the path.
It was an image of tribulations, lies, threats and insults,
false accusations, a failure to fit in, alienation, bruises, and
scars, traumas against unmatched sight, vision,
awareness and hope. Today I still profess that this man
that you see today,” he patted his chest, “shall not become
an old man that would glimpse at the past with

64
narrations of past melancholies, in the shoes of a defeated
man.”
Of late, he lived inside a poem.

65
 CHAPTER 20
THE SEED
It sprang into life, through the surface of the most divine
of divine parts of the planet. If the earth would prove to
be but a totem to the seedling, it would have to acquire
the means to survive. That would be in order to shape its
own petals for the sake of the assured potential of an
incarnation of a realistic huge tree, with fruits. It was a
prophecy that even the world’s favorite holy books
referred to – clearly or not. The idea had been to have a
shadow during the era of the melting sun – oh, the heat -
as well as security, serenity, water and branches firm
enough to reach into heaven when time permits.

66
 CHAPTER 21
TO HIM THEY CAME
When a tree has obtained its full growth, with muscular
enough branches to bare fruits, it would attract all forms
of creatures that long to keep living even after death,
throughout the garden that is the earth. Alien butterflies
that breathe like machines from outer space as well as
native hyenas that stink of blood (bloodthirsty, indeed)
would crawl towards the tree. There is dialogue between
6 devils as they sit around an evening fire, biting their
long nails. The first devil says: “I want the tree trunk, it’s
mine!”
The second devil says: “The purple leafs would be mine
– they represent healing.”
The third devil says: “Well, the green leaves are mine.”
The fourth devil says: “I want the branches - beautiful
logs for furniture to sell to the monarchs of the world.
The rest I’ll burn in ritual and for warmth, you know.”
The firth devil says: “And I, as a natural ancestor of all of
you gathered here, want the roots and the seeds, and
everything above the tree’s head!”
The sixth devil, the silent one, is a spy, a business agent.
As much as the match that they play could be treacherous
combat over existence itself (because they risk their very
own lives and that of The Tree) still to him, The Tree,
they went. To him they came. He was the baobab of Eden.
He was the law. He was the poetry, the music and the

67
whistling sound that compelled the fox to howl, the cats
to meow and the lions to roar – he was Egypt.
Poetry had to be poetic because life was the poetry that
bothered the poets. The only man in the dusty 4 by 2
metres rectangular university dorm would occupy the
seat ahead of the cement study desk, hearing from a
mobile phone the news of Putin in Russia, NATO and
military mutinies in West Africa. What did it all mean to
him? It meant poetry. One of the most excellent
techniques that he logically preferred to apply
throughout the journey of the poetry that is life was the
resort to look within himself for research, nowhere else.
That was the most tranquil path to liberation and
education. His was the inner eyes that longed for a rather
sober sense of life. There was a leak in the crisis of his
identity that had to be ceased once and for all, along with
its toxic images, oils and voices. The disrespectfulness of
Darkness’ timeline was raw. He sighed. He had to start
and finish working on himself because different beings
had been and were still knocking at his door. His door,
conceivably, was itself the geography of the entrance to
The New Jerusalem. He smiled. The air smelled of the
apocalyptic Book of Revelations as poured out and
reflected by John, he whom was said to have baptized the
Messiah by way of water, and poetry. The Tree was a
peaceful young priest with a fraudulent name - to him
they went; to him they came.

68
 CHAPTER 22
ATOM BOMB
A mail was in, through a brown envelope, slipped under
the door. The lad would settle at the chair by the study
desk of the university dorm. He would take a deep breath
before tearing through the paper to face the scroll. He
read the message – Atom Bomb, addressed to its
rightful reader:
“In your growth, in your shine, don’t injure anyone. As you
burn out the old dust and wash your hands from the grease and
insane attachments of the world, apply caution with precaution
– to the way you interpret your own light. Light shouldn’t
become flammable, should it? You shouldn’t burn the face of the
one whom you are supposed to heal with your love, warmth and
mysterious energies. Even from those that plot to lethally uproot
and exterminate you, do not take offence – relax.
“Don’t be at war, permit “love” to exercise itself through you,
no matter how hurtful and no matter how stupid the past might
try to make you look. These children do not know you, so don’t
kill them trying to show yourself to their ignorant senses. There
is no way “True Love” can judge, but as you proceed to both
judge and love, be careful not to injure anyone (not even
yourself) because yours, child, is an atomic heart, imagine the
nuclear explosion!”

69
 CHAPTER 23
A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW
I, the Shepherd Monarch, explained my ‘view on writing’
to a young man (although he was some years older than
I, he was still a young man – perhaps around the age of
28; I was 24). I stated that writing was more like prayer.
It (writing) was, I recited, dialogue to its depth. I spoke
from a nearby balcony towards the veranda where he had
stood at that moment. He, the man, had once shown
himself to be a profound traditional-poet of native
languages, especially Tswana and Swati. I revealed to
him that I had recently written some letters from heart,
pleading for considerations from authorities of the earth
to be awarded an academic chance to life, as that
expedition of mine in the National University had been
slightly sporadic. Perchance my face and its cheeks had
portrayed brown deserts – dry from dehydration as
evidence of sabotage and, perhaps, systematic
persecution. The sand-dust at my own feet could also
reflect the signs of a man who partially wished that
things could have turned out different, but with an
understanding that his path was still his and that he had
the right to appeal - to claim all the parts of the tree that
he was including his roots and the skies above him. That
was not to mention the fruits, my crown, my sanity, my
radioactive smile, dignity and progress as well as the
poetry of my own youth. The aforementioned stakes
served to sustain the magic of my innocence (the inner
sense) and the innocence of my magic - the simple poetry.
That man that I had been making small talk with would

70
then match away to the noise of his kind. His dreadlocks
(which sat only in the middle of his skull – the “crocodile”
cut), the tattoo-covered arms and a burning cigarette
gave him a grim sense of whatever allure. As much as he
had proved to the university community that he was a
flamboyant poet and an occasional Master of Ceremonies,
he had, at some point in the night while scorching from
whatever chimney he carried inside, hissed at me that he
was a tree and a point of reference for those who needed
the tree for survival. His breath was with heat. An inner
voice of mine would quietly react that “oh, we speak
metaphor now, old guy? I hope my own branches and leafs are
visible to you – clearly. I am very well aware that you can smell
them; you can smell my air, comrade.” The comrade’s
boasting had taken the form of a threat, and an
aggression that would prove to me just how insecure the
world was before us. You see, as time passed in that
university, he would, twice or thrice, take me to a church
with guitars, a large dancing congregation and a pastor
whose suit was quite elegant. Soon we would come across
each other in the corridors of the university. He would
sip his beer: Black Label, 1 Liter, puff at his cigarette and
hiss that “life is life, laitaka”. Otherwise we would meet in
dreams with our different points of view.
Life was life, so I had to step out of my own perspective
or point of view, just for a few meters, in order to hear
the gospel according to Judas, and the ancient serpent at
Eden.
***

71
The shooting of stars in the universes that floated inside
his chest and mind would launch him into an English
essay examination, a very academic contest. He would
slip into a spacious lecture Room 4 of the enormous
lecture theatre. There were aligned rows of brown
furniture and blue plastic chairs. They were fronted by a
white board, a few meters away front the front row,
where images and texts could be projected, just behind
the podium for a lecturer or speaker. The sitting fittings
ascended towards the roof with every row. The young
man, as present by that hour: 0750hrs, was not certain of
his preparedness. To him time was probably still an
illusion. Perhaps he still carried that old human curse of
doubt. He had either gone to sleep behind schedule
during the early hours of the morning or he had simply
sat on the bed starring at his own ego while the clock
ticked away towards sunrise. 7 candidates sat in the exam
room, pens really [ready?]. Numerous invigilators had
patrolled the room in the manner of security agents. A
man in his late-50s dressed in a brown suit, a blue shirt
and a tie of flowery patterns, had then waved at the
students in the manner of a Magistrate. When he had
their attention, he slit open a white plastic envelope,
pulled out 7 scripts, adjusted his eyeglasses and read out
the instructions in the most extravagant tone of
authority that his throat could afford. There was
obviously nothing poetic about that process, including
the tonal-manner in which the man had introduced
himself as “E. Malachi, PhD…” Professor E. Malachi had
then reminded them that they had the time period of 1
hour, 30 minutes until the end of the examination session

72
– “and not more than the availed 90 minutes, period! You
may start writing.” The boy had begun the exercise by
running his eyes around the exam room, he learned that
he was the only male candidate and the six girls
represented six different ethnicities of the world, at least
physically. He filled in his personal details in the
identification slots:
Name(s): Shepherd Monarch
Date of Birth: 14 December 1998 A.D
Age: 24.
The Shepherd Monarch had then flipped the page over
to stare at the only essay question that was printed in
bold letters:
Express yourself, in defense of your critical
decision, from a point of view that defends the
actions of a) the Eden serpent as cursed to crawl the
earth b) Judas Iscariot as condemned or dismissed
for “a guilty traitor” by believers of the Christian
doctrine. (100 marks)
***
An hour later, the “Shepherd Monarch” could only
wonder if what he had written on that paper could be
worth any 100 marks or even half that grade. Life had
presented itself as an examination, and he knew that his
grades were going to turn out to be the poetry of life
itself - uncaring but factual.

73
 ***
During an orange-sky sunset, inside a spacious Faculty
office – with an overfed bookshelf, a large mahogany
desk, a slim computer and a starring portrait of the Head
of State, an old lecturer would unpack the scripts of the
7 candidates. Professor E. Malachi would proceed to
remove his blazer, hang it over a 3 wheeled-chair, and
plug the kettle so to make a cup of Jacobs Coffee before
starring at the first exam script. “Let’s start with the
boy,” he whispered to his desk, “Shepherd Monarch, a
truly odd name.” The odd Shepherd had only filled a
sheet of lined paper with a very horrid handwriting. His
essay would sing to the eyes of the aging professor as he
carefully examined it with a red pen and speculative
authority. After reading the piece again, the old professor
groaned: “even if he might not have attained First Grade,
at least the fellow’s foul handwriting was sugary and
poetic. He sounds exactly like a super version of my
younger self or even better, but who cares?”
The examination script, analyzed and passed through
relevant academic offices, would then be returned to the
professor who would shake his head in sympathy or cold
curiosity. He would flash away the papers as waste
destined for the rubbish can. The professor would
mumble under his breath: “I can only wonder how his
mother feels like over him? What if this was my own
son?” The contents of the essay would only be known to
the student that had written them as well as the lecturer
and God – if at all the Almighty cared about such
Western education systems.

74
 CHAPTER 24
FORGIVENESS
During the movement of the poetry that was life and the
chaos of his own heart, the lad at the desk would have to
melt to his knees in agony, with an awareness of the
melting of time and the erosion of his youth. At the scent
of the changing seasons and his own courage to breathe,
he would have to write his own mail to the devils whom
he had seen from within as they sat around a fire biting
their nails, sharpening their knives and tongues with his
name in their mouths. He speaks as an understanding
shepherd:
“I forgive every weirdo that has bothered me in my own
space, and those that are willing to continue negatively.
I forgive y’all who misinterpreted us on purpose and the
ones that smile around us to obtain via false pretenses. I
forgive those who thought they could steal our identities.
I forgive those that sent threats, twisting words and
insults, to their benefit, you manipulative serpents! And
the one that followed me around as a spy, I forgive you.
I forgive those who used magic against us because they
were cowards, reptilians… I forgive those who sit under
roofs with my name in their salty, dry mouths, I forgive
y’all. I also forgive myself for forgiving you.”

75
 CHAPTER 25
LEGITIMATE TARGET
A fugitive writes on a piece of torn paper. He uses the
moon as source of light (for at night and in darkness we
cannot see clearly). He persists to write, although his feet
are cold and his heart is exhausted. Into the night he
scratches the pen, dreaming of the old candle light and
the simplicity of the cement-built study desk of the dorms
of the university where he once studied, or at least where
he once tried to study. Through that attempted academic
journey, the world would continue to throw at him
serpents and Judas Iscariots. He would fight wars that
would reveal the evidence of the facts as recorded by
John, son of Zebedee and Salome, in the scriptural Book
of Revelation. “Those were - and still - are facts. It is the
exact warfare outside,” says the fugitive to himself, as he
dwells in the foul-smelling trash. “It is the reason I lay
low in this dirt, inside this smelly hole (but just for a
while) because elsewhere I was misinterpreted and
threatened. I try to rest under an old bridge where
sewage waste runs like a brown river, camouflaging my
little light in order to not be spotted, more like a true
preacher evading a vicious Roman Empire.” If he could,
he would swear that the atmosphere did feel as if he was
fighting to remove a thick veil off his face, catching a
more logical perception of consciousness of what life
could be versus what it has been made to seem to be. This
fugitive has to be the very person that should understand
what Jesus, the Christ of 2000 years ago, had meant when
he uttered that “Let him that seeks continue seeking until he

76
finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes
troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All.”
He writes:
“Dear Professor or Prophet Elijah, wherever you dwell.”
That is not much of an address. He continues:
“I do not hide, Eli. I am at a place where I can reserve and
preserve my strength and privacy like any other human
being. People breathe freely, I mean most of them. They
seem to be… perhaps normal or just unaware of certain
things. If it was ignorance, then someone would have to
awaken them. Imagining that I could be a candidate for
the job is not only scary, it is dangerous. My passage
through the earth has been but an episode of raw poetry
whereby I battle ghosts and ancient giants off my path.
Weird coincidences, to me they reveal themselves, as if
they are operated by a pre-programmed timeline or
reality. I sit in the moonlight attempting to reprogram
or un-program the system for good. I dodge arrows and
bullets that are being fired from acutely mysterious and
mystical weaponry. I have never been curious about the
insides of other people’s houses, but to my hut they come
to fill up my sitting room with noise. They harvest the
fire and the peace at my feet, while actually mocking my
wrath and sugary intentions. I feel like I am as clear or
as transparent as the window glass that I used to see the
world through. That was until I inherited a broken past
with a window that had a scar that appeared more like a
bullet hole followed by cracks that spread like rays from
an animated sun. I have seen female assassins dressed in

77
boots and black denims confidently march into my
mother’s compound at 03:00am, when I was an infant.
They brought warfare while stealing some of my
mother’s peace, even in her sleep. I have caught a glimpse
of the hyenas that had accompanied them – the obvious
foe. I have seen old dying souls, yelling at me from the
roof – the iron sheets as laid over and across the bricks. I
have seen terrible alcoholics and addicts that had only
come to steal, rape and try to kill. They were the liars
that ran from place to place trying to evade their
mistakes and lethal sins. Can anyone ever escape their
own karma? I have not been innocent myself, but I swear
I have not bothered anyone else but myself. I only take
cover under bridges and inside sewage holes to remain
out of sight of airplanes because they may spit out
venomous gas and explosives right at my face and feet.
Wherever my names are written, even inside computers,
they are traced by extremely smart agents who track my
movement while recording my progress. As much as this
is not baseless paranoia, I feel much sabotaged and
regulated by those devils, because the keys to my palaces
are reportedly being contained in boxes and inside alters
by an antichrist that could only fear the fact that their
time might be up. My peace is sliced and my fruits are
postponed to the next summer, but I always recover; I
always victor because victory was foretold. Lately I am a
legitimate target. I just meant to ask about my crown(s)
and the timing.”
The fugitive breathes through his exhaustion and longs
for a cup of tea. If he could realize that he could actually

78
make himself some tea, then he could know just how
potentially threatening he was, with such willpower and
simple ability, because he was the water, the plant, the
sugar and the fire – a legitimate target.

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 CHAPTER 26
AN OLD PROFESSOR
Oh, if I could write a book, I would shift the narrative
from speaking in first person to third person. That would
be because at times, I observe life from the top of a whiter
cloud, in contact with the Ozone Layer, experiencing
true salvation directly from the source of it all. If I ever
fall to the standards of the earth-worlds there would of
course be lightning, but I would never deny my father
nor change my shirt to wear a red one. (I am reminded of
the colors of that old professor’s tie sometime back when
I took an English writing examination, it was actual
flowers in their colors, and can you believe it? A whole
old professor who looks like a real Biblical character,
wearing a tie that was just… not childish… perhaps
romantic or just poetic… I chuckle away, it is a little
laughter that lights up the inner child; it means that I can
feel very well, I still have a lively soul in an ending world.
I swear, I would never switch colors; it is both an oath
and a pledge of loyalty. My originality shall stand
eternally, it is the core of my very pyramid. Hear, hear as
I remind the shadows that I was long trained as a warrior
for a possible Armageddon. I have ran for my life as a
child even if it was just in my dreams/nightmares… I
have learned from myself to speak and to read in my own
voice, my own handwriting as well the hieroglyphs and
my own past. I am aware that as much as I have found
peace and solitude in reading the sky from a nearby bush
(where I walk the earth on barefoot and learn of wildlife
and ancient rivers), I believe that I can raise both a pen

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and a sword at the same time, to fight for myself or for
even a bigger cause. The accuracy and factuality of these
words are to be proved along the timeline of the poetry
that is life. Indeed life expresses itself as poetry. I walk
behind sheep hence I am the Shepherd. I also suspect that
I possess the courage to speak for myself and for those of
my kind. That had recently inspired me to sit for an
English essay examination in which I was instructed to
kind-of defend the persona of the Serpent of Eden as well
as Judas Iscariot, the so-called traitor. I have read from
newsletters that the best performing candidate from that
examination of 7 students shall be offered a scholarship
to cross the sea and learn at a prestigious imperial
college. I bit the lower lip. They were not talking about
poetry and art, they were talking about money and pride.
I swear my speech is not a product of jealousy as I have
no idea how I have performed in that examination where
I had been the only male candidate. My overthinking has
even been made darker by the fact that I think that old
professor must really detest me, I saw the way he glanced
at me during that exam. He is such an old nerd, isn’t he?
***
The Shepherd Monarch could have easily conceived
composing a psalm or a poem about that old professor,
had he the chance to stare into his old eyes while catching
the smell of his character. He would, in a stanza, dismiss
the old professor as someone whose life had been but
poetry, a survivor in a new era. He would measure the
old man’s childhood dreams through similes, rhymes and
metaphors, claiming that the old man had wanted to

81
become an emperor by the age of 40 and that he would
have enjoyed to avenge his ancestors. He would
demonstrate that the professor had longed for healing
powers, to become a priest as well as a lethal martial
artist, and ultimately, a messiah. The Shepherd Monarch
would then proceed with his imaginary poem to mock the
old man’s regrets and the fact that he had possibly retired
to writing lame poems, reading large textbooks from the
other side of the sea, writing letters and teaching in a
university as a professor whom could admire his youth
and his free-spirit. The Shepherd would silence his mind
only when an envelope would slide into his dorm through
the small space under the door. He would dash to his feet,
swing the door open but to face nothing but the old earth
with trees, a few birds walking the branches and humans
performing their human activities. The boy’s feeling of
being a foreign force among his own people was both
eccentric and interesting. He shut the door behind his
back, picked up the letter and proceeded to open and read
it, sitting on whatever he could land on. The letter began:
“**/**/2023 A.D
Dear Mr. Shepherd Monarch
First of all I must inform you that I am aware that “Shepherd
Monarch” are not your real names. That is a classic move of
forgery or disguise; I am impressed. I have realized that you
have used this title throughout all the academic trials of your
schooling here on earth, as well as the alias “The Tree”. It was
you who created and titled those worlds (in your head). Your
energy, young man, is a mixture of unpredictability and

82
gullibility. Your craftiness and silence are based on your own
insecurities, but that, over there, is still a fake name!
It was through sending the letter before this one titled “Atom
Bomb” as an anonymous face that I intended to prove to you
that in poetry I could be you from a foreseeable future or I could
be an older brother or even a younger sibling; I could be a friend
or an enemy; I could be a mentor or a secret admirer; I could be
your son or the father you never had. That letter “Atom Bomb
– a nuclear heart” was both an advice and a warning, I hope
you read it, it is divine scripture.”
What the actual hell? The Shepherd Monarch had now
become more enthralled but still wary. The peculiarity
of the matter at that point was 1) the letter “Atom Bomb”
was clearly a plagiarized version of an essay of his that
was once mysteriously stolen from his old notes, along
with a rather sharp unpublished manuscript that he had
written while inside psychiatric asylum 2 years earlier; 2)
the guy was a blasphemer for suggesting that he could
be a father figure to him for his (the Shepherd Monarch’s)
father remained with him – within him. He continued to
read:
“I am known as Professor E. Malachi, from the Faculty of
Humanities as combined with the Social Sciences, at the
National University, of course. However, I have since quit that
old job after deliberating on my utility to the institution, and of
course that was after you had sat for that English
examination.”

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So this is the old man that intrudes at my place of sleep
to shove letters under my door? The Shepherd was now
fascinated, but still wary. Could the old professor have
used a younger agent to drop the mails? Was he even safe
at that place where he slept, read and ate? He would
proceed to read on the basis of the fact that he would
never be close to quitting as an annoyed coward, plus:
lately he was a relatively bored loner.
“It has been a while since I have been keeping my eye on you,
without prejudice. I do apologize for stalking you like a secret
service agent, but perhaps I am a secret service agent. I am
aware that you never received the grades of that English essay
examination that you had sat for, that is because only 1 of the
7 contenders was informed and that was the best performing
candidate – an 18 year old Indian girl that sat on the front
raw. You managed to score a mark of 37%. That is grade D.”
At that point the lad had paused his reading for a
moment, without any feeling. He checked the candle that
was melting to its death on top of the desk. The electric
bulb on the wall had long died of old age. That would be
followed by an episode of pure darkness, and the echoes
of the old professor’s intonation from the letter. But one
way or the other, the Shepherd Monarch was a creator of
light, just as his ancestors were before him. As if his eyes
were but 2 shiny moons, he proceeded to read:
“According to prescribed academic standards, you have failed
the examination. You need to take yourself seriously if you want
anyone else to take you seriously, in this world. I also wish to
let you know that you are not insane nor mad, that is if you

84
have ever observed such thoughts or voices. You are just living
inside a bloody poem. It is real. You have to take the
implications of this letter seriously, especially the subsequent
conclusions. I have been made aware for some time now that
you’re undoubtedly both a lamb and a shepherd…”
The Shepherd piercingly interrupted: “I am not just a
shepherd, I also command lions to roar. I wear the
armband of the Lion of Judah. I am the true and the
living, I am nothing like you, old man, and I am surely
like nothing you have ever met…”
“You shall have to cease referring to yourself as the Shepherd
Monarch, although I have admitted that you are actually a
shepherd and perhaps a monarch based on tradition, but you
must remember that you are also The Tree. You have to slice
the chains of yesterday and your doubts. You have to become
what you already are. You know that whoever you are or might
be stretched beyond the 3 or 4 titles of identity that you might
come up with. When you write your poetry tell your
grandchildren that you were not a shepherd nor a priest, rather
inform that future that you are indeed poetry itself - immortal.
Remind them of the fact that you were a personification of time
and everything, and acknowledge the blessing that it has been
for an old soul like yours to walk the planet again.
“Now I tell you that in this planet, during these ‘end times’, you
need an armor. Your poetry might be your armor and it could
also be your voice but you must be assured that - to the children
of your tribes - you are the armor.”

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The young man’s tea had gone cold. All he had was his
silence, not children nor even a lover nor gold – yet.
“Have you yet read anywhere that it has been taught that the
only fair healer is a wounded one? Mystics demonstrate that
only a wounded healer could perform a fulfilled healing. Have
you been deeply wounded yet by the purity of your own love? If
you are a healer and if you are ever to heal anyone including
your own flesh and emotions, you are going to have to learn
about excessive pain first hand, practically. You shall be
tormented by trauma, agony and a replay of old memories of
the genocide at Egypt against your people. You shall feel for
the same serpents that shall attempt to bite your arm and poison
your heart; the very same reptiles that Noah could not leave
behind before the giant splashes of the Great Flood. You shall
have to be crucified. You must understand the metaphor within
the referenced crucifixion.
“I admire how you [have] wrote about your own Judas
Iscariot. That was a beautiful interpretation, whatever your
inspirations were for that examination essay. You merited a
better grade and if it were up to me you could have attained a
98% grade. It is unfortunate that here only the lords of the
council decide.”
“You mean the devils? The Freemasons that run the
world. The false Jews…”
“What awaits you in this long poem is a heartbreak. Your own
sense of humility and charity shall expose you to poisonous
double agents, threats, demonic oppression and attempted
regicide. Whether you survive the trials to live another day or

86
another decade is up to the choices that you shall make and your
sense of discipline, but I assure you that the Most High truly
loves you.”
“God?”
“I am a fated prophet of God, you see? Your earthly
heartbreak(s) shall be the trigger that would ensure that you
realize that my flowery tie was as beautiful as poetry (I had
observed the funny manner in which you looked at my tie
during that exam). You shall be scratched in your heart and
wounded, just enough to shake the sun. That attempt to initiate
you into whatever The Beast has planned would be done
through a cat - a potential cute pet. That cat would shape-shift
into a serpent from another world. It could be a little witch and
an assassin - a spy. I address you with reverence to the Order
that we represent, that of the Melchizedek. I am Elijah, exactly
as referred to in the scriptures of the Bible: 2Kings, Chapter 1
verse 3. Before I take off in a Chariot of Fire, I must inform
you that indeed you exist in a poem, lately. It is a dream that
you shall have to awaken from, ASAP.
Yours truly,
Professor Elijah Malachi”

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 CHAPTER 27
SHALL THEY HAVE EARS?
I am just a shepherd. You can easily formulate an image
of me – a brown young man, black woolly hair (that
would become white with age) and a voice that sounds
like many waters. I cannot claim to be of royal blood nor
to be of wealthy dynasties, for I carry stardust, a rather
humble DNA, dusty robes and many manuscripts –
accurate books. I understand that some centuries ago our
grandfathers and uncles, some of whom were the gods,
the actual Elohim, ran the Nile on their boats of
supernatural speed. The terminology of the new era in
reference to the description of the speed of those boats
and crafts that could either run the waters or fly the skies
would be “supersonic”. The crafts, the very chariots of
fire that had come to pick Elijah up, were either speedy
or time was passing way too quickly. But, time can never
be speedier than the speed of light, can it? I might be a
rural shepherd but my brain, you see, connects to a
lighter mind. Sometimes I do feel low, but it is for my
sheep and goats that I must pursue balance and steadily
walk the earth. Past storms, treasons and betrayals,
traumas and pains, we move further towards the greener
pastures and growth. We cross over enormous
mountains, seeing gods and mysteries, relying on trees
for fruits, bending low unto wells for precious water and
starring at the nightly stars for a sense of direction. Only
the gods and the few minds that they speak to have access
to the map, and the true geometry of the earth. They can
hear the noise that is being made by a rather chaotic

88
generation of human species over the earth and the
games they play with life itself. When I say that I am a
shepherd, I do not solely limit my heart and mind to the
image and title, for otherwise I am that I am. I am a
shepherd and you can already see that my feet are dusty.
I am a dusty man with only but a stick, a walking staff
that I carry as a third leg. The heels below my feet are
broken – cracked by the hard earth itself because I have
walked the deserts and the bushes barefoot, in pursuit of
my identity and evidence. It was only after I had acquired
all facts that I could claim to be “the true and the living.”
I am aware of “truth” because it was long foretold and
known. I have battled daily just to stay alive, and not only
for my soul’s own sake. I cannot escape my duties as a
seeing shepherd for if I would abandon my flock of sheep
and herd of goats then foxes, jackals, hyenas and leopards
would terrorize and devour them. How would I then
answer to God concerning that livestock? As they rest
before sunsets, I have to ensure that the water also flows
to the roots of the plants at the nearby garden, refreshing
the leaves, for that is the birth of air (oxygen), food and
love. The taxing issue is my own wondering if the masses
and the so-called gentiles (the lost sheep, the goats and
cities) would listen if I told them that I am the one whom
they await and anticipate. Would they listen? Would
they pay attention if I pliably professed to be the
shepherd and the king but not of this cosmos world? Will
they listen? Shall they take heed, verify the details with
the scriptures that they have at their hands and not
dismiss me for a fraud, a sick man and a tricky liar? Will
they not continue to beat me up and make fun of the

89
disgraceful bruises that colonize my heart and soul? Shall
they have ears?

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 CHAPTER 28
BEFORE WE CAME
This is not theatre. It is dialogue on the incessant parable
of existence on Earth as exposed by sunshine and
recorded during the darkness of night. The planet, its
presentations and implications would prove to hurt,
especially to a simple heart that was truly human – very
painful, if not just sad. Perchance the world would not be
as worldly as it was had it not been for pain on the basis
of the injustice that the past still holds. This is to yell.
Why were we always at war? There was science and
daunting smells, cute hygiene, filth, disorder and forceful
order. It was numbers. It was emotion. It was life and
fantasy. We were interrupted in our love, because of that
willingness of ours to share love and light. In the
settings, any form of Unconditional Love and its ego
were a weakness as life had been turned into a filthy
battle. Existing forces would prove to be steadily
equipped with just enough lies, laws, muti, arrows, armies
of wild creatures and the wildest of energies… just
enough to earn us scars at the well where we all met –
for water. Otherwise I would speak of joy. The satisfying
record of having never fallen at the river where skilled
assassins lay aiming at our chests with the sharpest of
arrows. I did not fall in the dark battlefields nor when the
devil invited me to a dance. In Tswana I would state that
“nna ha pina e lela ke a bina.” To the sound of any music at
all, I dance (and perhaps that was a crime against my own
legs and heart). The force of that statement in native
Tswana implied that during invasions I never hid away

91
in a cave with other cowards nor escaped to exile; I
remained exposed to the regimes that held any form of
lust for or against me. “I am here – always… with a
simplicity that defines the scent of my destiny.” This is victory,
and a reminder that we could never taste defeat even in
the face of futuristic struggles, deceptions and brutal
warfare. This is present time joy and the victory of such
joy remains tranquil and as inevitable as tomorrow and
her crowns.

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 CHAPTER 29
A CAT, A SERPENT
My eyes were like that bulb – the moon, until the sun
showed up during the night. The moon fighting for space
with the sun is a chaotic miscalculation in the order of
time; it is warfare. But do we need to fight? While the
birds shouted at the night, a creature, by the window,
replied with an understanding smile. It was warm. It was
homely, melancholic, and formidably non-judgemental
like the mode of God. It was a cat, an old soul and texting
with it on my mobile phone, maybe a hug tomorrow or
some juice would make music relevant, my heart to be
concerned and the idea of having children close by…
gospel realistic. The smile of a cat – relevance, lessons,
struggle, growth, love, innocence, knowledge,
awareness… It was a girl; a woman. “Oh boy, may the
generals of hostility stay away from her vicinity in my
palace, so that it (the cat) does not disappear into the
night because it is barren when the cat is away.”

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 CHAPTER 30
THE CROWN
A cat in a garden full of serpents and poisonous insects is
a good pet and a secret service agent for the good of the
household and its members, especially the King. He, the
monarch, is to walk from the wooden dinner table, a few
metres from the golden utensils and a large silver spoon,
to the large curtain to stare below at the world as it
passes in its darkness. The cat would be upon the table,
licking its own mouth and sniffing at truth – a spy.

94
 CHAPTER 31
LOVE, THE ILLUSION
The cat was slippery in flesh and fur. It was with an
incredible speed of both the tongue and the feet. Its eyes
spoke of a simple ‘cuteness’, so you could forget that it
could still be a direct relation of the roaring beasts that
have owned the night throughout time. Oh, God, the
particular king does not know the jungle, does he? But
he does, he knows the trees and the thorns that lead the
creature home. He knows the shape of the house, the
broken windows and the stinky pitch-darkness. That
would be a terrible place to pass through – the place
where the cat had come from. Oh, the king adores the cat.
He is blind with that emotion. It was a classic trap – it
encircles the heart and his own sight. He cries at the desk
where he negotiates with his God (but God does not
negotiate – or at least that is what he thought he knew).
He would then walk, with teary eyes and an aching heart,
away from God with an ambition to fight for his emotions
or love… or whatever he called it. The king would bow
his knee, bringing his white cloth down to the dust and
the mud, and loosen his lips to lay a kiss on the cat, but
D-A-S-H! The cat would slip off his grasp, leaving a
scratch of his finger – a minor scar. The immense shine
from the centre of his solar plexus must possess a
treasure, or treasures - certainly. Before it had jumped off
the window to flee into the night to the sound of gunfire,
the cat had snatched a golden coin through its teeth,
thinking of a prize as well as the prices of the dirty
streets.

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 CHAPTER 32
THE TRIAL
The trial and its implications had relied much on his sole
response to his own choices. That is how a king was
judged – upon the way he reacted to the world as it teased
his kingdom, even shooting venom-polished arrows –
aiming at the heart of a rare creature. This one king had
even stepped out of the highest window of the palace,
landing on mud. He was said to have been seen by passer-
by angels as he ran through the hedges of the backyard,
skipping over the high walls and into the night. The
night, where he searched through every hole for a cat,
calling high intelligence spies, praying and loosing every
inch of his full sense, because he was in the dark – the
wrong side of existence. As he scanned the trenches filled
with extremely wrong music, sex, head-shaking drugs,
used condoms, old churches, empty roads and a spooky
Earth, the universe yelled at him for being a child of God
(pestering through a layer of Hell). They wanted gold,
worthy secrets, secrets to the basement of the sacred
palace where they had long longed to sneak in to dig a
portal into Heaven through the sacrifice of a young king.
Or was he just paranoid? Had the enemy not hit anything
at all? The terrible fact was the noticeable passage of a
cat from a sinful underground civilization. The pain and
shame had been as real as his own crown and his pumping
heart. He was alive. He starred over the mountains of the
Earth – a tiny yet precious gift to space from the only
God that existed.

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 CHAPTER 33
OH, GOD
If he could have just whistled and rejoiced in the
shadows, in prayer and to the sound of those melancholic
yet smooth strings of silence, he could not have caused a
war, although he was intimately provoked by the noises
that had occupied the Earth during that season. He could
have won a medal of valuable peace, defeating the
demonic. However, he longed for the long route, a
detailed path of questioning and the affliction from such
only led to God. He shook a whole neighbourhood of
darkness in pursuit of one dark cat, awaking his ancestors
along the way, over facts concerning the face of the poet.
All of that was just to end up saying: “oh, God, this life,
your gift, is just a poem.”
“Rest, son, you have done well.”
“Thank you, father. And is it true that I am really pretty,
lovely and wise?”
“Yes. That is why they had to send a serpent - a sneaky,
lying snake. That is also the reason why I had to agree
to let the devil in, to see how you’d manoeuvre.”
“Well, if I have ever started a war or a rebellion out of
my own ego,” he turned to the world, “and through my
own corrupt lust and a good heart, then it would have
just been proof that I am truly one king ye cannot
dethrone.”

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 CHAPTER 34
DANGEROUS LIAR
How could you build a whole world on top of my head?
Alright, I admit that I became, slightly, a part of my own
enemy’s troops, but that is innocence itself and the depth
of my love – I have no enemies. The great evil that you
carried out was applying my own gold, mind and heart
against my beautiful intentions. It is clearly a process
that entails betraying God and everything that you knew
wasn’t false. Truth had you for moments, and you long
had it as you carried it through seasons and eras. You hid
it. Then, like the coward that the devil that used you has
become, you ran away from it. The collapse of such a
mission – a failed one, as well as the aims of such regimes
- as formed off desperation – had been demolition of the
sun. But, all the strength that y’all possess could only
amount to the shaking of the sun, but never its fall. But
why don’t you create your own sun? This one sun here is
to remain with radical shine and extra warmth – a bit too
extra – for any of your hands and bodies to handle –
eternally.

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 CHAPTER 35
A BUNCH OF POEMS
Life, as experienced by a poor brown lad – the actual
monarch – might have seemed to be an interlude of
poetry, but that did not cease the fact that it might still
have remained relevant to keep an eye on the ball
throughout the winds, winters and storms that carried to
us creatures and episodes of ancient Egypt and regular
glimpses into the semi-finals of the world’s relapse just
before the arrival of supreme justice. But, what was the
ball? That was supposed to be the voice of God. It was,
as a final point, stated that “say it and stop 600 books
from being written about it.”
“Saying stuff is worthless in this world; just pointless,
haven’t you seen?”
“Is that what they taught you, son?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Maybe they were children in their most sinful
expenditure as a kingdom of sin; maybe they are still
beautiful spirits where light can regenerate.” The son
threw his hands in the air as if to wonder, or out of
irritation. “Are they too dirty for you, God?”
“You ask too much.”
“Yes!”

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“That is why you started a war. Relax, slow down.”
“So, it’s not about me?”
“Yes, it’s not. I know that hurts but it’s not about you, it
is about me. Even this poetry you could have escaped if it
was not for your curiosity. You should be aware that it is
not about you, otherwise that is why your life has been
but a bunch of poems.”
Explosions continued to rock throughout space, far from
lust and human filth.

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 CHAPTER 36
OLD DOUBT
Through time, a certain monarch had asked if at all his
own assets and those of those around him were not
indeed the devils in the holy books. “Are you not the devils
in the Bible?” How could he exclude himself from the
worldly list? Especially that he, himself, was still asking
questions… Was he forgiving? Was it up to him to
forgive? Did he know the laws? Was he not tied to
emotions and a wrath that smelled like military
hardware? Didn’t he lack the willingness not to break the
mirrors if at all what he saw was not pleasing to his God?
Was he not frequently uncertain of his place in the scale
of good versus evil?
Perchance ‘concern’ was not absolute mockery placed on
him by a sarcastic timeline – perhaps it was love in its
tangible form. Was he not tense with love as it was placed
in a world of a depleted soul? Did he not, at times, feel
contained by the planet that he was in and its
atmospheres? Did he not breathe the same air as the
reptiles, the thieves and the light-hunting rulers and
bandits? Was he not born of sin? It had been epic how he
had stood and persisted in order to proceed with the
process of growth. Perhaps he was to proceed past
rebellions against natural order and the ‘love’ that he
imagined had kept him alight and alive. He had remained
a breathing body throughout eras of poisoned air, toxic
dialogues, systematic persecution, puberty and
germination. If he was to exceptionally slay his own

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doubts and other blockages to the will to rise from tombs
then his breath would viably be an adequate force of
order, activity, attraction and ease. However, through his
many questions against even the most basic of laws and
prophecies, he could always be certain of one fact: that he
was beautiful. He was beautiful, guilty and innocent,
imperfect but aware of irreversible facts, love, time and
his own being.
If he so willed to sit under a tree with the very assassins
that were sent to slice his throat and bring his heart to
the table while swindling away whatever Delilah wanted
from Samson, he was certain of the fact that he was a
beautiful human being. He wished them well. He was
chic, among other facts that he could dwell into with or
without doubt because for any child born through the
physical seed, doubt was as inevitable as agony and faith.

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 CHAPTER 37
TORMENT
To whom would I cry out to, if not to these pages of blue
lines? The poetry of being a live creature in a living
planet has become too poetic when you do not know what
to say. How would I define my state if I cannot even
define myself? I fail to break out of my own mind, maybe
I am selfish and my ego is my own conspiracy against
whatever living could be about. Perhaps I have to
terminate all attempts to make perfect sense of whatever
we are dealing with. That had been an old job for
philosophers and mad scientists, I don’t know if they
have made any pivotal progress in undressing God, I
don’t care. I am as ugly as I am beautiful, and I don’t
know if anyone can appreciate my type of struggle as
beautiful, but I am aware that I shouldn’t care. I start
caring when a member of the environment begins or
continues to poke a rather rough finger into my nose.
“You cannot touch my face, you devil, no matter how curious or
inspired you are.” During times of war (Earth as a seasonal
dimension of Hell constitutes of hostile fights), there
would be voices as promised; hymns under teary and
smiley clouds of hatred and rage based on both ego and
love as well as retaliation. There would be inner agony
and self-containment to sadistic extents. There would be
responses. There would be intolerance even against food
and the Earth itself. There would be a wind of a smiling
brown young man. Have you seen his ears or even got to
stare into his brown eyes? There would be a bird, and
refined blasphemy. The bird is of black feathers. It rises

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its claws from the white sand into the black airs. Time
itself is a mirror as seen by the black eagle that is twice
the size of Mr Goliath as brutalized by David during a
fatal fight that was just a part of a major eternal war.
During day, before the large bloodthirsty bird would
occupy every atom of the astral plane, the boy would flip
flop his way to a nearby jungle, to whistle to his inner
theatre where a Court of Law still sings about previous
injustices. He whistles of when the world was trying to
castrate his dreams and milk his destiny while turning
him into a domestic animal or just a mere ghost. The
trees and the air had bent low, because God’s rage over
his weirdo-s is charismatic as lightning. A serpent rolled
its body down a thorny ear of a cactus leaf and stared at
me for 4 minutes before withdrawing through the top of
an acacia tree into the depths of the little green bush. A
heard of cattle would pass by in their colours; a voice
from previous nights would continue to remind the
young man that he was plodding through manipulation
in its different spheres and to various and incredible
extends. The chair was being fought. The fuel inside his
being was perhaps vital for many thirsts and wars to be
quenched, if at all he wasn’t a self-persecuting coward. As
much as he was a baby of love before the eyes and heart
of God, he was conceivably also a red-eyed devil.
Hopefully, reality wasn’t that dark.

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 CHAPTER 38
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE
These were the cries of a young woman - the cat; the
serpent:
“But you provoked him without reason, and you used me!
And, yes, I am ashamed and hurt for the path I have been
placed to crawl through – that of a lying reptile. And of
course the earth burns with elegant heat. How could I
escape the laws if I myself were the major key getting
twisted throughout the doors of that struggle? See, I was
a spy and a venomous teenager waiting for a fruitful
moment to bite. What if I did bite him? Because at the
moment I don’t remember… ok, I remember everything,
we did try to bite him, didn’t we? We deserve to rot in
Hell and the fact that he looks like someone who has the
keys to the place means that we should all be terrified.
We are to live in fear because the vengeance of the
lordships has long begun. We are evermore in fear of His
image in the son for, oh Lord, we have sinned as a species,
a tribe and a culture. May Justice and its winds not be too
harsh on us as we mourn in our own self-inflicted
violence; may he continue to smile at us with gifts of love,
good prayers and may that beauty last (we have learned
as a family and a false kingdom that the longevity of his
beauty would never be up to us). This child is indeed a
beautiful being – he whom I was sent to break and
liquidate as a manipulative serpent that took its orders
very well. That, over there, as it passes with its cloud and
vibrancies, is a kingdom that we have learned we cannot

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control nor break; it cannot be swayed, influenced
sufficiently nor be toppled, especially not by (or through)
the cowards and the whores that we have become. That
one is an impossible mission for an eternity of poetry and
truth as ordained by supreme orders, et cetera… I am
actually tired of the cuffs; I nearly died in the dark
fighting a war that cannot be won, if at all we aren’t dead
already.”
***
As a poet before God, he had said that he was ‘Child of
God’, no matter how paranoid he thought to be nor the
count of pieces of sharp glasses that lay broken at
yesterday with sprinkles of red DNA. He was to never
cease checking at the mirror because that mirror was like
a Bible. But he was to stop staring at his own feet in his
own mind in order to understand that God was staring
at him. That white cloth of the young priest could not be
stained no matter how much he had been pulled into mud.
Really, getting the child from its father’s sight was rather
impossible for an eternity of poetry and truth as ordained
by God.

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 CHAPTER 39
THE WINDS: TO THE RHYTHM OF TRUTH
My heart beats to the rhythm of truth. Truth stands
against the physical impact of the encircling wind. What
could the winds be saying? Aren’t they meant to distract
you in this bush where devils drink traditional beer to
your name and image? In this bush still, my heart beats
to the rhythm of truth. The truth is that I am not totally
imprisoned in this land; my height knows the clouds and
I am most definitely the root cause of the civil war where
heavy hearts still combat at full length and savagery –
over our precious hearts. It is to the rhythm of factual
order that I reach out with my neck in order not to drown
(in a lying order). It is with ease that I motion my
universe to the ‘rhythm of truth’, although I am aware of
my oppressive lies and torments – those giants that can
only be slain by truth and honest repentances, as well as
a clean bath in the lake that settles in the heart. The next
melody that I would sing, the next hand that I would
hold in love, the house that I shall build, the next chapter
and all other smiles to extend shall be motioned to the
rhythm of truth where the inner climate is serene with
rainbow effects, water wells and enough silence to hear
God.

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 CHAPTER 40
TIME AND EVERYTHING
Once the mirrors had turned (with just enough wind to
blow off the nearest candle) voices began to paint facts
and contradictory remarks, to the point of controversy
and hypocrisy – actual controversy. It was the art of love
and offering it during a time of warfare and an era of
forthcoming magic as spiced by hatred and divisions
among other worldly poisons of the status quo. A red
bedroom would do: curtains, a dusty guitar, old papers
and a sharp loneliness. The mirrors would have to roar
out the most principal of preliminary questions – a query
of identity, quiz and confrontation against knowledge
and sense, that “who exactly are you?” The air is that of a
well-posed authority so that the child does not misbehave
by offering an arrogant response to enrage the Gods. It
is a fulfilment of dialogue that is only a reassurance that
freewill does not truly exist. “If at all you are certain that
you have faced persecution just for trading love for no prize at
all, and that your profit has only been pain, then who are you?”
An arrangement of very melancholic sounds, an evening
fire in a desert and a male tenor would manifest a silent
season of raw violence, underground tunnels to serve as
boxing rings and hospitals, angry poems aimed at the
stars, starvation, agony and bloodshed. “Look at what you
have done, would you? You cannot identify as Love, because
you also need love, don’t you? Don’t you need it? Do you not
deserve it? Would you confess to being wholly human?”
Hopefully the sun would not break the mirrors through
his own emotions and cute madness. Would the mental

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health of the Christ not be mad poetry? “With everything
that you have brought within you right now, who are you? Who
were you? Who would you remain to be – or to not be?”
The direction of time and everything would rely much
on the response. He replies: “if at all I am not Love, then
I am time and everything.”

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 CHAPTER 41
DURING RELAPSE
Relapse - an era when I yell to God to surround me with
order and love. It is a season where dreams are as lucid
as Hell and the words of the book at my desk. The mind,
the devil, is the battlefield that centres the relapse.
During that relapse, I bend even my lies. During relapse
I talk too much; I vent! My eye balls dilate – very large.
It is during relapse that I could probably make great art.
I probably speak to myself during relapse, and to the
walls of the prison where I am contained – my mind.
During relapse, I probably think I’m Christ. I probably
commit crimes in my sense of humour; everyone else is
preoccupied with a serious idea of life at their hands and
ways to feed their inner devils while I just tease about my
ancient pots of gold and a city of mine where I sell
serenity and love for no price at all.

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 CHAPTER 42
STILL A POET
As I age, I only hope that the scripts that have been
laminated as art in my names are not illicit. I hope that it
is indeed art. At times, there would be seasons rough
enough to keep a painter away from his crafts; away from
his peace and away from the presence of a parental
supreme being. Those times of diarrhoea and errors are
clear to be a result of sin itself. This man dirties his own
inner and outer atmospheres through direct contact with
the waste of the world. If he could have kept to the path,
defending it through temptations and thorny routes,
then he could not have earned any more childish scars
and sombre traumas as orchestrated by the betrayal of
his immense love. Like the average child, he learns
practically, and when he heals he would still remember
the walk, the facts, the heritage and the nostalgia of his
dusty drawing room. He would realise that making art
was not the work of a healed man, but an important part
of healing itself as a process – to heal oneself and to heal
others.
The artist could always wipe the spider webs and the old
dust off his old furniture, light a fire and recall the dance
steps. Old guitar strings could still curve the sound of the
old, sweet melodies. Even if he could become blind after
burning his eyes in order to un-see the world, his fingers
would still grasp the geography of the desk and the
location of all elements. His brain was explosive with
time-accurate images as made possible by light. Such was

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quite a permanent sight. He identified the poetry in the
fact that his involvement in the world was inevitable,
because he was part of the earth’s devices (no matter how
extra-terrestrial his sources). He realised that he still had
a homely heart. He might have been away for some
months as usual, tendering to pain and foreign
frequencies that sought to crucify him, but he could still
move his tongue; he could still breathe in rhythm; he
could still see and hear the roaring of the last storm as
well as the trumpets of tomorrow. He was still a poet.

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 CHAPTER 43
WITCHCRAFT AS A GLOBAL CATASTROPHE
As we refer to that shepherd, the monarch, the poet and
alchemist, some impressions and issues of reality that
happened to be as real as his own flesh, he began to
realize, and had to be addressed with the dexterity of a
knowledgeable adult. After all, he had spent almost over
24 years on the planet earth. He had to be steady and with
possession of non-textbook information that would allow
him to acknowledge the fact that his inability to breathe
fresh air properly (not asthma) was definitely a result of
the air polluting alters that surrounded him like
vegetation. Those were some of the chains placed by the
false gods that kept humanity tied to lack of rest, lack of
honey, water and progress. As much as ideas of mental
liberty and material abundance were both a mirage and
realistic revelations, enslavement to untruthful images,
deceptions and mind control were a real catastrophe in
the world of his time. Many young men would break
down before his eyes, conceivably due to drugs and the
illicit pressures that were being enforced by a false world
order. If slavery had been a tragedy of past centuries,
especially for people of his kind: tribes of olive skin,
melanin, feet like burnt brass and wooly hair, then that
malicious catastrophe was resurrecting itself or being
maneuvered back in by the Pharisees of the world. That
enslavement of people’s minds, hearts, bodies and souls
was evidently posing as a direct result of witchcraft,
according to mathematics and a deeper common sense. It
was a catastrophe of a world where neighbors threw

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snakes at each other; a status quo where serpents
whispered into ears of innocent souls during the night
and a world where presidential palaces (and the United
Nations) were at the hands of the smartest liars on earth,
even the humanoid reptiles that continue to await the
expected messiah to prove himself in order to subdue him
or to deceive him if possible, or even kill him.

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 CHAPTER 44
EGYPTOLOGISTS
Egyptologists till the land in pursuit of clues concerning
my origins. They long for the details of how I used to
look like. They, as foreigners and children, look for rare
drops of ancient water to quench the thirst of the masses.
Thirst has been created by mythologies. Facts have been
made to sound crooked or just confusing by the
superstitious beasts that worship the sun while praying
to spooks. They have stolen some of my facts; they have
broken the noses off statues in an attempt to deny facts.
Those are the crimes that have remained as barbaric and
as offensive as blasphemy itself before the ears of an
emotionally sensitive deity. The scientists of the field
open up my tombs; they undress my ancestors (preserved
to beat time and the physics of biology) in pursuit of my
ancient DNA and anything precious to steal or sell to the
curious minds that would visit their foreign museums.
My people were never for sale; we could never be stolen
effectively. When Moses headed some tribes out of Egypt
it was not out of fear but of disgust because the pure stuff
had to be separated from savagery, illicit gods and
goddesses as well as away from the bondage of lies and
spells of the false pharaohs that had invaded my body to
bother my native children. Egyptologists scan the dry
pots in order to paint questionable portraits and books
about my ancient songs and my beautiful daughters and
sons. However, I walk the earth as a living monument
that could never be cut into pieces nor be sold as folklore

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at the markets where liars, bishops and devils meet to
confuse the world.

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 CHAPTER 45
THE EDEN SERPENT
It was that one that had taken orders from a high force.
It is out of what I still believe to be love (the illusion) that
I wish to see the creature restored to its initial value
before the curse that had been cast upon it by a very
enraged deity. “I know you,” the creature had whispered
back matter-of-factly, taking the form of a benevolent cat.
You see, this alien being had come to be seen by my eyes
as a humanoid female, a young woman; texting with it on
my mobile phone…maybe a hug tomorrow or some juice
would make music relevant, my heart to be concerned
and the idea of having children close by… gospel
realistic.
If I had been a “horrible creature” as the other side would
prefer to describe my being, then I would indeed have
appeared in the night to set a house on fire. If I had been
a monster I could have worn a mask, hid behind a corner
and taken a life by way of sharp blade or shotgun, but I
listened to my poisonous emotions. I suffered and sobbed
in my corner. I sang along to the trauma-centered
melodies from my music machine, wrote my own songs
and prayers that had been filled with anger, regret and
blood-sprinkled madness. I prayed to God to defend my
image and to heal my inner heart so that a new sun would
arise and fix my sky for it had become a little dark due to
advancing sorcery and the manipulations that had fought
against my very nature. The deceitful serpent did not

117
perish to a grave perhaps due to love itself dropping into
its mother’s roof as mercy and justice.

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 CHAPTER 46
PEACE
‘The boy, the boy’ becomes ‘the man, the man’ as quickly as
lightning strikes. He surely remembers the faces of his
ancestors. The road is full of ghosts and the spooks that
like to play the role of God. They stand at a distance and
stretch their necks hoping to have a glimpse of ‘the boy,
the boy’ fleeting inside his mother’s compound, even if just
for a second. They have heard the rumors that he had
now become a man and that his current existence was
undoubtedly the most beautiful thing on the planet. The
lad, deskbound in a dark room with some candle light on
top of a wooden desk embraces his pen and some sheets
of paper. He pulls a black copy of the Bible – King James
Version – and opens it towards the end. He then points a
sharp finger at Revelation 12 where it was plainly
written about his mother (the woman) and the Dragon.
***
I, ‘the boy, the boy’ have become ‘the man, the man’ as hastily
as lightning strikes. I yell out from the bottom of the pits
within my chest into the wilderness, the abyss, the moon,
the stars and any space where my voice can be stretched
and heard with echoes. The deafening sounds of my
breath is the proof of life as well as the fact that I could
be whatever I have claimed to be. My peace could not be
milked away by the servants of the forces that oppose us.
They have tried many a times; they have formed allies
and attempted to intrude into my space and bed but my
name has proven too weighty for their tongues to carry

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into the mud. The archangels of the Milky Way that fight
to defend my portrait are part of the peace that carries
me to sleep; they make me a milky cup of tea the next
morning. If the rebellious herdsmen and the paranoid
hunters that drink alcohol to my names would ever get
the golden opportunity to sit with me (again) they would
have to admit the facts that they already knew by saying:
“we really wished to break his heart, leaving a bloody mess. We
wished to take away his peace, but we failed because he is
peaceful – eternally. He is peace itself along with its apocalyptic
wars of chaos over the legacy of peace.”
I peacefully wink at the sun and give thought to the old
professor Elijah, wondering where he could be on earth
or outside of it. I would like to inform him that everyone
on earth - “literally everyone,” adds a devil passing by
with the winds – is fighting something within or outside
and before them. I would also complain to him (since he
came before me) that some people, including the
exhausted devils that pass with the wind, want to use me
as a solution to their problems. But why don’t they create
their own sun?
“What if they cannot create their own sun?” asks an angel
with a perfect smile, just peaceful and sarcastic. I
respond: “then they should bow to my light and accept
life and order. And peace.”

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 CHAPTER 47
THE EGO
Even in poetry I have been bothered by a space-age sight
from a time when the grown boy would be a
comprehensive man with a fully grown beard. By then he
would have to dress up in white robs to walk the sky and
end the chaos that the opposing forces had long started.
But to access his father’s laboratory and thousand year
old temples he would have to eliminate and or
exterminate the spies that follow him even inside his own
head to poison his tea or even grab his hands and legs to
pull away in different directions… The tempered boy
that responds with fire and rain in self-defense is the
unwise youth in me that he must unplug his nerves from
so that he sits and walks with ease, non-judgmental and
non-genocidal. The sun in him that feeds on darkness
through his responsive reactions, e.g. 1. Cursing the
serpent to crawl the earth on its belly since Eden; 2.
Sentencing Adam and Eve to sweat throughout
existence; 3. The war-based manifestos such as the one
given to Jonah for Nineveh; 4. The being easily disgusted
by prostitutes after realizing that they sell sex; 5. The
sharp aggression at every Judas Iscariot whom was [to]
hang on a cross transfigured in the image of Jesus whom
they could not actually crucify. Those retaliatory furies
and wraths must be subdued so that he does [not] waste
ages and precious energy fighting pointless wars. It is
fortunate that he is supernaturally a being that is always
on time although always behind schedule to worldly
expectations because he has his own time and his own

121
calendar - truly unique. He has learnt on time of the
baggage, luggage and garbage that he must expel from
his vehicles and out of his mind and heart so that he rids
of the false identities that viciously attempt to kill him.
In fact he has to kill or heal them ASAP in order to
survive so that he can meet his father that is in him and
to become his truest self with his glowing lights,
decorations and his laws that the world below has to fear
deeply. Their fear has to be based on their awareness of
who they truly are or on what they have done even before
his very eyes as he has always been able to see everything
under the sun and beyond it including inside the darkest
edges of the earth – that planet as a center where they all
met for water and other reserves in their different forms.
The killing of his ineffectual ego could be said to be as
good as baptism by water, fire and poetry.
He must admit that even when he was attempting to be
at ease, to smile wildly, applying his divine sense of
humor, his very jokes brought him to the serious
conclusion that he was indeed the one he thought he was.
The mathematics of nature always proved that the
correct solution to equations always state a universal
answer. It is that answer, the final number or digit(s),
which he has always seen with his own brown eyes. The
multiplication proves just how he can be multiplied, and
how he has divided himself or been divided to create
other things that are just a part of him. The divisions,
multiplications and the identification of X have always
been done through the breath of his father who controls
time. Imagine just how lethal the young man would be if

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he accepted that he was the shepherd and the monarch at
his own territory, acknowledging that he has not been
punished to live eternally in a universe of paranoia,
delusions and madness – Hell itself. No, his very mind
could be heaven if he began to subtract the numbers that
had been added to his reality by the devils that owned
textbooks, calculators and the world through money.
There had been a lot to subtract. That included the rage
that rested in the ocean within him, the same ocean that
could blow a severe wind and bury a whole town city
with warm waves of the salty water that can stretch itself
to suffocate hills and regimes. He had to beat himself so
hard in a boxing ring to the point of coma. He had to
wake up from comas to smile at the devils that had
organized his death-bed even though he was but a child.
He also had to build libraries and write about himself so
that he could spend years studying his own shadows and
wondering if he could really forget offensive past events,
to forgive certain tribes and claim Solomon’s walking
stick as well as his extravagant perfumes. He had to
murder the body-double of his that carried a sword
around, biting his lip, angry at the invisible demons that
milked and laughed at his own anger. He walked the
night as an intelligence agent; a junior lieutenant and a
bitter secret service researcher with a pistol and a pen.
Dark forces continued to chuckle from their hiding
places. They laughed. He had to ambush the emotions
that led him to break mirrors afraid of his own image,
crushing and burying the cups that had once served him
cold tea; burning old papers, the notes from his mad

123
doctor along with the books that had tormented him with
the falsehoods they contained. He had to banish the
ignorant alter-ego that was inspired by pleasure and the
fun of hiding from the world in disguise, the same alter-
ego that would be a Jonah to be swallowed by a whale
due to doubt, disobedience to supreme orders and the
worldly desire to be free from sacred duty. It was
through running from ourselves that we became liars and
thieves that stole from their own parents while being
unable to feed themselves nor to fulfill the prophecy that
stated that our plants must bear fruits, withstanding the
winds, witchery, suffering, trauma and unpleasant
manipulation. For not bearing fruits Jesus would curse a
tree. On the way to perfection and achievement, there
was a lot within a person to slay so that he would be light
enough to ascend with his beautiful mental galaxy past
the highest of clouds in order to meet his pilots and shake
their hands; to salute the angels and the soldiers before
descending with them to the earth to launch a war from
the skies. You see, he would be dressed in white,
invincible to the bullets of the antichrist.

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 CHAPTER 48
OLD POET
As much as I might be a king, I am also a slave in hope. I
sleep in silence, solitude and deep thought. I am cheerful,
although I mourn in my sleep. I am forlorn, superior and
kind. I go without diet because of my melancholy. The
sky is too bright for my forehead. I am a maniac – mad,
annoyed and quiet at dawn. I have questions that insult
my own origins. At times I feel that some elders might
have spoiled my blood, fate and soul. I am questioned
‘who are you?’ because perhaps I’m alien. I came through
the holes behind the hills where language is bent,
jumbled and weaponised. Ancestors were out-of-sleep and
thirsty. They had been abused off royalty and gold. I am
a rebel – born of fate and blue blood. I sit alone as I plot
to summon a flood; to swim in hygiene with newer
eyebrows, bows, arrows and the harmony of silence. The
moon is a distant orange in the darkly shaded vault of
Heaven. My favorite worldly poet’s soulful melancholy
connects me to myself. God is close-by, and my third eye
vibrates. I am a servant, a bird, a bastard, a magician, a
lord, a slave, a lawyer, a psychic-priest, and a weirdo with
an accent to call for silence. I am an old poet – an artist
of the sacred.

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 CHAPTER 49
SUPREME EGO
It has always been about where we had come from, our
growth and the conflicts that developed among us and
within ourselves because at first there were no divisions
– it was all but a single supreme force. We were beautiful,
that is all that can be said, perhaps. Our intentions were
never wild. We respected ourselves and we became elders
– Gods, you see? Now it is almost a duty and a sense of
purpose for some lives to participate in our creation, our
own supreme ego. We have become life itself and we
listen to prayers from within. A giant window of our
ancestry stares at our nudity because we are all children
before our Father “who art in Heaven”. As the larger lives
consciously ran throughout universes in battle, they
agreed that the Earth was but a tiny piece of this creation
and its mightier parent. One of us, an old shepherd, one
of the very few at the hands and desks of our paradise,
came out of a river bank of orange-sand Earth and
through that path of his on Earth - a mad episode over
that world - we had to be staring, judging and seeing
through the most messed up of his prayers, dreams and
pains. It was only painful because he did not want to let
go and face the God he had come from.

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 BOOK
THREE:
LIBERTY (I
AM NOT
BIPOLAR, I
AM A KING)

127
 CHAPTER 50
The nature of my character has either been remarked
upon or questioned throughout childhood. I grew into a
young man with an awareness of certain principles at the
back and center of my head; they were the values that I
had to launch into my head, blood and character as well
as in the shaping of whatever lifestyle I was to lead. The
governing regime seemed responsible, so we were
awarded the chance to go to school and access books,
teachers and other children. I learned at a pace that my
brain could afford and survived past high school(s) and
into tertiary, still “peculiar”, alone and quiet. It had been
ever since my late teenage years that my mental health
had come under specific and general surveillance; I had
made decisions in mid-2016 to consult with Guidance
and Counseling departments and – adamantly - large
hospitals such as Sekgoma Memorial. I had been
concerned about the intensity of my sentiments and the
fluctuation of my feelings. I was to become a patient
under heavy and regulated pills; get appointments with
psychiatric specialists of different races and origins,
accents and purviews and I was to experience the most
acute of psychiatric facilities on the land. That has been
enough experience to craft a literary work on the issue of
mental health. Book 3: Liberty (I am not Bipolar, I am a
King) is a work of faith, optimism, confidence in the
beauty of our brains and information as well as investing
in such. The scripts are as long as my so-called illness
and 3-week experience at the Sbrana Psychiatric
Hospital are concerned, and are written in the year 2021.

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 CHAPTER 51
We knew about mental centers from a young age. We
were kids; sometimes it seemed funny – mental illness.
They were funny – persons with psychological
challenges. We saw them in the village: someone’s
uncles, sisters, brothers, neighbors and tribesmen and
women of the road. They now had names. As much as
encountering a person with mental complications could
be humorous and refreshing (because we made fun of
them), it could also be violent and frightening. Illnesses
of the mind seemed to vary. Also, we saw them at
‘Mental’ (the term used in our regions to refer to
psychiatric facilities). They seemed to speak to
themselves or at least the voices inside their heads –
practically hallucinating while some screamed, sang and
or danced to whatever music and rhythm. Others wet
their pants – they stank and moved like Hollywood
zombies. While some were formidably aggressive and
mandated forceful escort and chains, some paced in
silence. That was what we saw from the facilities. They,
on the inside, got to witness measures of custody,
interrogation, manipulative interviews, mind reading,
compulsory drug-induced medical treatments, vaccines,
24/7 impolite security as well as, for some, death. As
much as I am aware that mental illness can cause
death(s), I do not suggest that I have knowledge of an
institution where patients may be subjected to
persecution. However, the world is plainly not always
very hospitable to persons that exist with incapacities. In
great extent, I am exposed to the logistics of being in a

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Psych Ward with members of staff and passersby that
look at you in funny mannerisms. As per mentioned, my
character, natural being and state of mind have
substantively been established as part of a rather “weird”
being… by random peers as well as trained medical
officers who are said to know the inside of our bodies and
minds like the backs of their hands – really? I affirm that
at times the air that I breathe is too heavy because of the
colorful climatic conditions of my heart. Sometimes I do
feel weightless, young and old with a lot to say to anyone
that can listen. I can imagine freedom, maximum comfort
and a longing for joy; I can laugh with green nerves as
long as the sense of humor is relatable and genuine. I am
aware that at times – in my metaphor – I am an
enigmatically tall devil from a long time ago with an
impatient tone and an immediate need to be left alone. I
am aware of the likelihood of an over speeding BP, too
much humility even to thieves of the streets and a
resentful fury that coexists with a remarkable smile and
a vengeful sadism that might be anticipated of anyone
who has numerously been labeled as “a little strange.” On
the 13th of October 2021 I, said to have relapsed and for
the first time, was driven off in the back of a rushing
ambulance – to Mental.

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 CHAPTER 52
I was born of earth - my skin and home could show. As
the child that I was grew into a man with a beard, he
never sought any kind of justifications, at least not
directly, because he was respectful, grateful but still
curious. Without much of a choice I had gone on to open
my eyes to a world that shone in many colors. I bathed
in sand, chased butterflies and admired the movement of
clouds. Motion of the world seemed to change without
neither much of a warning nor respect to time because
they were part of the madness of Time – the very same
Time that determined my energies and moods. I had an
incredible innocence that might have been wary to the
most suspecting of eyes: How could you be innocent if at
times you appeared as if you were seeing ghosts? How
could you possibly consider yourself an ugly duckling
with so much of your beauty? How could you not figure
out that we were going to fight you for who you are? I
was new in a forceful world that carried a very old scent;
it smelled of the same old wearisome moods of greed and
envy at times [and] it was noisier than my instructive
silence. I would sit behind the house to rehearse and heal
in the darkness of the distant shadows that lingered
around away from members of the household. I would
learn the rules, the vagueness of the origins of their
people, their pleasantness and limitations. As much as I
was aware of my surroundings, the scarcity of water and
facilities, I was also aware of the presence of an area
within my chest. That was where the engines of my law
and order hissed through snow and warmth, jungles and

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deserts as well as a lack of back-up, fuel and space for the
branch that I was to unfold. Mine had been a tense
willingness to reach even the most complex of objectives.
Those ambitions would thrive despite an overwhelming
reality: lack of resources and dignity, lack of customary
elders and known names, lack of God’s favors and the
stubbornness of fate and destiny as well as a lack of the
peace that it takes to fight in peace. I realized that I was
stimulated by communications as a system and an art, so
I joined debate teams and clubs for writers and played my
part whenever I could, that is, whenever I would be
inspired enough to make an appearance. During the year
2021, I willed to admit that I might have been at the
center of the academic journey that I had imagined for
myself. I also admitted the fact that I needed to work
more in order to improve my grades. I effortlessly
divided my time to my long-term craft of introversion: I
walked alone, slept alone, smiled at my own terms and
wept alone. I remembered how to thrive on my own and
I healed alone. Whenever there was a chance for detailed
and stirred dialogue, I opened the world to my inner
gardens. I was aware that I could never be close to being
sick with narcissism but I knew that I could be loud and
refreshing to those in my vicinity. That was the reason
that I was to learn that such was strength to reserve. I
could tell that I was a work of art and it was probable
that God was kind-of done. An era of being mistaken for
“shy and weird” was past. At times when that God was
too formidable for me to resist, I would leak and follow
my energies around the rainbows that they painted,
spreading humor and ‘The Gospel according To Lame

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Botsheloeng’. I was willing to risk the calm of the sleeping
ocean within me as far as inviting the devil and God to
the same table was concerned. I was a child, I failed. The
very same heart that I had carried with so much patience,
pride, faith and reverence had smoothly established itself
as a battleground and an illness. I believe that the year
2021 – I was to reach my 23rd birthday that year, was
the point where I had to stop fighting, collapse on my
knees along with the weight of the universe I carried and
sigh: “God, I am tired.”

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 CHAPTER 53
My identity was simple. I was a simple son who could tell
that he was aging into a man and that life before him
mostly consisted of freewill and decision making – those
pleasures of autonomy as both pleasures and curses. I was
rural and curious; I liked the silence of the night; the
smell of rain and the smell of scent of old books - dusty
and brown with art. I was aware of social hierarchies,
family, human conflict, loneliness, vibe of hopelessness
and the large terrain of the deserts I walked, time,
survival, God… That I was an error of nature I could not
accept. The journey of having to make sense of our
identities and destinies had forced me to learn to disagree
boldly, even against my own ego or against the God that
had long been published to our people, at times for profit.
I was no hypocrite or thief. I had to be thankful if at all
the several people in my life had not long judged me for
a crook and a puzzle. I had been aware of an awareness
and exposure to mature facts at an early age as well as
into ages of struggle. I punctually expressed gratitude to
the people that had showed a care as I grew up, heartily
acknowledging their effort, patience and presence and
the significance of such in my path. The childhood that I
had led had not been of prestige and extra meals –
obviously. We fetched drinking water from afar using
wheel barrows; our extended family shared the same
floor for sleep at night. Cousins, siblings and aunts went
about their onuses: going to school; fetching water;
cooking; sweeping; sewing; drinking beer; going to
church, et cetera.

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 ***
Freewill, the responsibility, right and chance to choose
and to choose what to choose from, existed as a beautiful
curse from life (because your very own decisions could
easily be the death of you). Freewill existed at our hands;
my Mother would soon remind me over the phone that
my life was completely in my hands. “Reetsa ngwanaka,
botshelo jwa gago bo mo matsogong a gago…” I preferred
effort, goodwill and at least honesty if at all truth would
fall like a martyr. I chose myself although the handling
of all the aforesaid ideals of love, commitment, passion
and courage could temper with the health of my physical
and mental existence. That I was an error of nature, I
could not accept. I had always ensured to listen to the
whispers that whispered that I was a colorful piece of
ancient art and the paint still smelled new, refreshing,
magnificent and ugly to those who had smaller brains -
too small to admit without envy.

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 CHAPTER 54
A long time ago I should have realized that I was ‘a
sensitive man’ – extremely sensitive to everything.
Anyway, I did eventually. The realization that the reality
before me was a busy part of warfare affirmed itself
bringing stress, regret, self-esteem issues, relapse(s) and
a recovery that and been part of baptism and healing. It
had been insightful and really useful to learn that the
only hand that could baptize my existence was mine, in a
theoretically diverse and mad world. It was a world of
greed, deception, lust and treachery; our beauty was rare
hence we had to assume our positions of combat and
royalty in order to defend ourselves. The chance that
there could be nothing we could do to change our
systematic discomforts as African communities had been
depressing. I had reaffirmed that I had things to believe
in as well as clarifications to make and a life to live. I also
had a condition (according to the medical files filed at me)
that had [a] medical implication: Bipolar Disorder. It
was a diagnosis of which I had had to agree to as I had
sensibly learned of how open I remained to
misinterpretation due to my butterfly wings and the
atheistic straightforwardness of modern medical
sciences. In fact, I had to admit that a major part of that
diagnosis was on-point and relatable, but I refused to be
dismissed simply as a case of some weirdo with mood
swings, mania, delusions… There had to be data that
explained the way I was dynamically entertained by my
own thinking, the rhythm of my heart, the agony of my
yesterday, dust from tomorrow and the winds. Within

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the metaphor that hang within my vision I had to remain
a gem from both land and sea, a prince, a shepherd, a
teacher, a lord, a priest, a poet, a singer and a king. Once
more, I was a sensitive man and that was part of my
sensitive environments. I was aware of other people’s
feelings in the air we shared. My heart felt sorry for the
worlds that surrounded the little man I was. I had
naturally been taught by nature to have sympathy. I had
been a mirror, surrounded by other mirrors inside my
brain and I had to interpret all reflections and the
diversity of what they might have meant. I had to accept
the doctor’s diagnosis and the remark that I
tremendously needed help, a therapist and or a friend to
speak with sometimes. Such a realization had to be
followed by acceptance. I accepted and tolerated the fact
that my hormones were my own elixir – the water in
Mars. I also convinced my memory and vision that my
names were of a night of blue, purple, white and black
stars and that people would not believe that because they
had been asleep when God was weeping. I had accepted
that an extremely sensitive solar plexus was probably my
version of HIV/AIDS, cancer or diabetes to deal with;
my very own Egypt to fee (hence a Moses had to exist).
I accepted that I was not fine. Secondary sources
generally describe Bipolar Disorder is a mental illness
that is marked by extreme changes in moods from
periods of mania to periods of depression or both at the
same time. I could not utterly disagree with the diagnosis
because almost all its issued symptoms and implications
had seemed familiar and relevant to my malaise. Anyway,
I still had an aside that the nature of my being becoming

137
a result or part of a medical condition could be farfetched
and conclusive. I had known that to describe my internal
environment could and would be detailed and artistic
with fairytales and metaphors thus the psychiatric
specialist had written down that I was impulsive and
restless, delusional and talking very fast…The apparent
agony that I recurrently felt became more apparent after
senior school. At the age of 16 in 2015 at Mater Spei
College, Francistown City, I had once snuck my way to
the school clinic to complain of the rate at which my heart
was beating as well as a sore pain that rang melancholy
and a feeling of displacement. I had lacked the energetic
and intellectual capacity to complete the task of
describing the feeling but the nurse, a Catholic nun, only
shook her head and firmly informed me that I was
perfectly fine and I should return to the classroom to read
and take my studies seriously. See? I was slowly
becoming a clown. I had access to the data that proved
that through my social existence I, like other people, had
mostly been misinterpreted, misunderstood and glanced
at with prejudice. After skipping the authoritarian gates
at Mater Spei for my own good and for the good of
everyone else involved, I found refuge at Swaneng Hill
School where I continued the quest for a definite solution
to the sharp needle in my heart. In pursuit of clues and
consolation, I constantly bothered the Guidance and
Counseling department throughout mid-2016. I soon
decided that the regional hospital was an inevitable step
for I was beginning to hurt. A Cuban psychiatrist at the
Psych Ward of Sekgoma Memorial Hospital concluded
that I was clinically depressed with insomnia, anxiety,

138
unstable moods; she prescribed green and brown pills
(named Fluoxetine) that would make me faintly drowsy
and numb throughout my days, until I decided to quit.

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 CHAPTER 55
Once seated under the canopy of the ambulance I could
not have been dramatic enough to imagine just how
Mandela had felt during the trip to Robben Islands. It
had been earlier during the afternoon of October the
13th, at the University of Botswana, that I had learned
that I was not to travel the referral journey on my own
per protocol. The nurse gentleman who had attended to
my troubles had jumped into the back of the vehicle
ahead of me. It had been a bumpy journey to the town of
Lobatse. It had then also been a smooth journey. The old
driver had been economic with time, ringing the
emergency sirens through traffic if he had to. I had
listened to the sound of my belly (I had been without
much of a meal for days possibly because food had been
of little importance during the “relapse episode(s)”). I had
then simply joined the health officer in his silence
although my thoughts had, on their own, been enough
babble. He stationed the mobility of his eyes on all of my
gestures and body, from my flip-fops to the last string of
my hair while also jotting down sentences on the medical
report that he held at his hands and lap. As the ambulance
positioned itself to enter the old town I could make shape
of and size of the hills – nearly obese – that sat upon that
side of earth land. I could sense my faith and a
disappearance of fear versus the growing disappointment
from a possible sabotaging of my ‘plans for the year
2021’, academic progress, career and dignity if at all my
sentence was to be long.
***

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The week before the 13th of October had been part of a
lap of a familiar and annual struggle that I have against
Earth herself from mid-July until pre-October. It had to
do with the weather as provided by the seasons. The
winds of the Kalahari would sound as if the devil had just
passed by. In the year 2021, I had challenged my
capacities of spreading my wing and involving myself in
as many endeavors as I could manage, for good or for
worse. I was a former star from space anyway; I had
ideas; a tone; complexion and skin of my ancestors as well
as uranium and character – was I not art? I had convinced
myself that as long as my energy was stable, reliable,
professional and understanding I was serving my heart
well. I had believed that opening my doors to both angels
and trained demons was part of the gospel of God.
However, I was to learn that good and evil could not
coexist at all. I grasped that I had to fight against several
foes including myself to a certain extent. I established
that my role was neither limited by geography nor the
unfairness of the world. I did fight by sharing my energy,
orating in humble tones and sacrificing my integrity, joy
and progress and by the 13th of October 2021 I was
exhausted. I was tired of the centuries of silence and the
noise that bothered me in my mares; I was offended by
lack of recognition as I seemed to be “nobody” in “real
life.” I was fatigued. Sleeping had not been part of my
routine for several days. I overflowed with notions,
energy and an intellectual gravity. I told the truth to
those in my vicinity who had the time or interest to
listen. I drowned and resurfaced from under my own
ocean of vigorous sensations. During the afternoon of

141
October the 13th, I leapt my way to the UB Clinic and
begged the security attendants at the entrance to allow
me to see any nurse from the Psychology department.
The officer, a young lady in her early thirties, had
casually studied me before dismissing me with an excuse
that the medical officers whom I sought to see were not
available to assist in anyway. I had cursed under my
breath and swung round to walk away, my eyes leaking
tears from the prior ocean. My exit had been that of a
farmer whose fields had been raided by a bird species
ahead of a drought. They were human; they realized that
I was at war and my forces were in mutiny, ruthless and
self-attacking. They waved me back. I was placed on
scales and my BP, temperature and weight were recorded
before I sat on a bench by the corridors for over 25
minutes while the nurse on duty was reportedly still
seeing another patient. It had been out of a lack of
patience that I began pacing and knocking at the office
door before I whispered my type of profanities and
making it for the exit and out into the burning sun. I
squashed the medical report cards and prepared to head
wherever my devils and gods called out, depending on
the strongest. “Hey, hold up…” I was a mental case and
the nurse that attended to me got to see my tears as
interlude by smiles, a bowed head, bold eye contact and a
remarkable restless. He resolutely got to draft me a
sentence to Sbrana Psychiatric Hospital. His inevitable
dialogue had then been to clarify that the intent was to
allow me “to rest and recover back to your senses. You
are too intense. We need to get you back on medication.
Your next of kin would be contacted…” In fifteen

142
minutes time an ambulance yelled its way to the south to
the town of Lobatse.

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 CHAPTER 56
Through the winters and sadistic summers of our semi-
desert, awareness and attitude was my loyal arsenal. I
had been a lad of hope and, ultimately, effort. I was to
invest in my heart, my truth and the evangelism that the
founders of the modern world remained a debt to. I was
Pan-African – aware of my mother’s modest efforts, the
expenses of contemporary life and the fact that
somewhere in the Bible that we read from God had
authorized the use of obligatory force in the process of
claiming what is rightfully yours as per His. I was myself
without much of a choice and having to live to experience
my identity was adequately inspiring - it meant that I
was never to completely run out of hope. I was to value
life and learn of ways to gain strength each time I fell
from the weighty data that I carried. The carriage of such
without known names nor title under a busy Capitalism
was practically heavy. I remained curious, upset,
vengeful but peaceful and willing to communicate
progress. Points had existed in time when I had
calculated that my registered names had not been enough
to express my ideal identity and its madness. I possessed
affection and serious respect for my mother; she had been
the sole woman that I had thoroughly known before my
alluring sister - smart and responsible. As much as I had
figured out that the life we lived was a maze entailing
decision making, long before I was born I made a natural
decision to breathe to goodwill and facts. A very long
time ago I did wonder if my priceless solitude and
preference of silence had a thing to do with a rather

144
awkward character. “No,” was the answer I had imagined
from God on my behalf, “you are who you are until you
find out and then the world would catch up. Thou shalt
not be dethroned.” In 2021, as in the years that had
passed, the season of late July, August and September
chose to play a rather isolated melody in my system and
I the air that I breathed. The days were ticking hours of
melancholy and somber nights - silently interactive as
well as tiring sunshine. As part of the individuality
muddles that I was going through I once wondered my
madness in spring was a natural response of my body to
being born in a wrong climate. Where did my hills and
rivers lie? Which tribe? I would have confessed without
shame that at times I did not feel at home at all within
the peace and heat of our calm and prosperous semi-
desert republic. As much as I was certain of the logistics
of virtues of optimism and effort I was wary enough to
notice the relevance and impact of courage. By June 2021
I had become tall enough to invest in my hands, voice,
brain, art and truth as well as compromise and passion. I
had made it clear to my mirror that “the alchemy” had
long been complete and the sky could be the sole limit.
The sky had been a mirror. I had to see myself in the
clouds. I was an evolving baby boy. Space around me –
both empty and occupied – had seemed free and sage. Ah,
knowledge. I had remembered that I had been a truth-
hunting work of God’s strategies. Knowledge was a
common antonym of innocence; innocence both as a stage
in human growth as well as a state of mind and character.
Although doctors and scientists of the modern world
could tell me that I was delusional and maniac, I was to

145
remain a loyal lieutenant general to the truth that boiled
in my blood and mind whenever I reached out beyond the
Ozone layer of my own space. In a century where
decision making was as important as money, I had been
willing to carry my kilograms of such innocence and
awareness into my world and manhood. In the spirit of
reminiscing, by 2011 at the age of 12 I had already been
literate of the tsunamis that my kind had been and would
be facing such as contact with pure evil, slavery,
genocide, pandemics, broken dreams, marriage, sex,
suicidal energies, generational poverty, et cetera. I was
ready to face the world that fed on people’s souls, their
wit and kindness while crippling their strength as it had
done in September of 2016 and ultimately in October of
2021 when I hurried away to seek exile at the UB Clinic.

146
 CHAPTER 57
The nurse (a Mr. Kaelo) had positioned himself at the
front of the inside of the canopy of the ambulance – some
sort of throne where he would judge me from. That
awkward journey to Sbrana had been at a rather high
speed in km/h. As much as ‘my nurse’ had seemed
professionally at ease and outwardly experienced at the
part of his job where he had to handle the likes of myself
– unstable and potentially harmful, I could also tell that
beyond that expert tone he was curious, moderately
mystified and concerned. He had the capability to admit
that parts of my parables about my ailments could be as
existent and as tangible as science itself and the science
of insanity. I had ensured to look at him in the eye further
than the brown that offered me access to the man in him
and did my best to convince that mine was an ailment
that was perhaps a little further than a puberty case of
clinical depression, mood swings and anxiety and the rest
of the textbook diagnosis that had filled my medical files
from the past 5 years. As much as I had done my
intellectual best to describe my falls, deltas and deserts,
the nature of my predicaments had been as clear as the
sunset in my own eyes. I had not only hurried to the
university health facilities with the hope of being offered
pills that would tie me up and make me ignorant of my
veld fires and the jungles that had to be cleansed but also
of the chance to ask an enlightened elder of just what I
might be. With the honesty that comes with the nudity
of bold speech, the storm that bothered me from within
was visible to all passing eyes that could not only see but

147
feel and hear time as well. The nurse had not required
much time to conclude that I was unstable and in need of
urgent immediate assistance. I, throughout the journey
to the penal colony, had smiled to the melancholic
folklore in my hurting throat and silently spoke to myself
of the season in my space, God, values, future strength
and hope, time and the gold in true legitimacy. The
engine of the ambulance had roared on and the
gentleman in green uniforms continued to inspect me
closely while making notes on paper. Few verbal
exchange occurred during the 45 minute long rushing.
The nurse had plainly informed me, with a smile, just
how much he mistrusted almost everything I said for he
said that I was tricky and incredible at it. I was soon to
read from the blue medical report files:
UB Clinic 13/10/2021 (1st consultation since closure of
schools) BP 135/94 mmHg rate 79b/m Temp. 36.3°C S –
M/ 220m, know client with F31 came presenting with a … of
not being emotionally okay. (Defaulter) - Can’t express himself
well. - Client restless, wandering aimlessly (pyschmeter
agitation), loose associates – restless, squashing the cards, flight
of ideas, wiggling of fingers/hands. MSE: Wasted, psych
meter agitation (restless), odor of cigarette at residential block,
but denies ever smoking weed (marijuana) or cigarette, loose
associates, speech pressured. *delusions of grandiose - Not
suicidal though, psychic mood, depressed today, says he was
high (manic) last week. - Not verbally aggressive. Not
adhering to medications, says “inner civil war is a war inside”.
Had apartment in Gaborone. Flight of ideas. A – F22

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(unstable) – Defaulter - (Relapse) (Habitual defaulter) Plan –
Refer to Sbrana for Admission. (Signed)
My file had long been marked “F31”. I had simply
suspected that it implied that my illness was utterly mild.
I had also suspected that it was as it was easy for anyone
to imagine a 22 year old young man at UB to develop
abusive interest in narcotic substances and proceeding to
suffer from the use of such. My interpretations of the
classification had been imprecise against the scientific
estimation, as I read soon, detailed it as “disorder
characterized by repeated episodes of depression as
described for depressive episode, without any history of
independent episodes of mood elevation and increased
energy (mania).” It was examined by secondary sources
that brief episodes of mild mood elevation and over
activity (hypomania) could exist immediately after a
depressive episode and an F31 patient would always face
manic-depressive depression, melancholia, vital
depression and endogenous depression as well as mild or
moderate or severe episodes of depression and extreme
psychotic symptoms. If my initial hypothesis about being
mistaken for a case of “substance abuse” had been an
accurate reflection of the symbolism of F31 and the
newly earned F22, that would have been an imprecise
insult because my ethics and choices had, for a long time,
remained firm – morally, logically, culturally and
scientifically. However, I still valued a thirst for
knowledge and experience that no child of God should
regret.

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 CHAPTER 58
I was in, long after the restless ambulance had screeched
to a halt in the parking lot. There, in greenish blue, stood
before me the Sbrana Psychiatric Hospital. I am in! I was
in past security, glass doors and into reception where my
identity and crucial details were confirmed and I was
ushered into the waiting room. Only a few spots of the
long brown benches lined across the hall had been
occupied by old parents who seemed concerned or just
sad. Some minutes passed before I was invited into a
spacious office and instructed to take a seat behind the
other side of the wooden desk. The nurse from UB
remained in the office on an extra stool by the door. My
temperature and blood pressure were collected and
recorded and I was verbally served the same questions
that the nurse at the door had interviewed earlier at the
University of Botswana. After approximately six minutes
we left the office and I waited on a bench in the waiting
room. On this occasion I assessed another potential
inmate in the notorious cells of Sbrana. His name was
Twenty. He feared the Covid-19 test but we both had to
go through it and we did, through our nostrils. Twenty,
decorated in dark green tattoos, had carelessly stated
that although he was uncomfortable with been poked
past his nasal cavity, his nose was used to physical
activity because it had sniffed drugs for a while. A young
Motswana male doctor had assessed us separately in the
spacious office; he had administered discussions where
we spent time talking about just how sick I was.
***

150
The hills, the hills, the hills. One feature that the old town
that I now walked could not be robbed of was the hills.
They lay as huge slopes with floors of brown rock. A
charismatic young security officer with his shirt tucked
in and boots that sparkled had led us (Twenty, my
accompanying nurse from UB, a Sbrana medical officer
and I) to the other unit of the vast reformatory. It had
been an 11 minute walk; I could measure time with the
same tune that I had used to read my humanity, the mood
of the hills, God’s silence and the specifics in my blood. It
had been a peaceful walk free from handcuffs and military
hardware because Mr. Twenty and I had been declared
stable despite the very stable instabilities that had just
been considered to officiate our reception and locking up
from society “just for a while.” The hills, I judged them
well; I had always boasted to my crafts that I was a man
of accuracy and mad intuition. We were chaperoned into
the Male Rehabilitation Ward past iron bars that kept us
from the reach of staring patients from another side,
roaring in silence, thirst, wild greetings or reprises of
foul language. I was ushered into an office where my
temperatures, heart beat rate, weight and blood samples
were collected and confirmed against a virtual system. It
could have been amazing just how government
computers digested all our data, scars and origins but at
that moment the only protagonist of technologies
remained my worries against time and reality. I had
stripped naked and grabbed green uniforms that had
almost been thrown at me by a rather sadistic and
impolite old man whom I easily assumed was a warden of
some kind. My properties: bag, cellphone, bracelets, the

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clothes that I had worn into the place and my ease were
carried to a secret locker. In a manner that smelled of déjà
vu from the TV series Prison Break, I was escorted to the
section of the ward where the patient community crawled
to their own rhythm, conversation and visible disarrays.
After the security officer had smashed the metals and
chains of the lock behind me I had taken a step forward
as well as a breath under my mask and entered the maze.
(It would be a maze of emotions, remorse, apocalyptic
identity calculus, remarriage of flesh and soul, rage,
forgiveness, conversation, growth and progress and
understanding that good and evil could not coexist).

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 CHAPTER 59
When the days of my stay were enough to constitute a
week I had already conclusions and policies concerning
the place. I knew where I wanted to sleep. I preferred my
space and silence although I had admitted to Mr. T that
solitude in the environment was almost impossible.
“Completely impossible,” he had replied, frolicking with
his dreadlocks. I had spent my first night lying on a blue
mattress at the far corner of the cell that I shared with
Mr. T and two other patients. It would always be
inevitable to remember the great size of the cells – square
rooms, large, spacious, probably 6 m x 6 m. I had made
my bed on the floor because it seemed ruled out that
almost all public facilities were to always lack utilities
one way or the other. I had been fed pills, so I snored
through my way into a deep sleep to wake up to a dark
silence although someone just kept passing gas. I
fathomed that it was hours after midnight or even
0300AM. I took a deep breath, related events from the
last several hours and sighed sluggishly. One thing that
I remained grateful for was the possibility of getting
good rest along with the services that the rehabilitation
system had to offer. During my second day I picked up
the blue blankets, staggered down some 22 stairs and
into my new cell room. I positioned the mattress on a
surgical bed that I had adjusted with the instruction
assistance of one ‘nerdy’ patient who was obviously
weary and fat from Olanzapine. I remembered those pills.
Later, I explained to Mr. T that my migration had been
inspired by the fact that I had found an unoccupied bed

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at another cell. He nodded. I went back to the bed whose
position was by a window on the first floor that had
offered a grand view of the hospital and the nearby
enormous hills. The hills, during the day that I came to
the reformatory, had been brown, sad and dry but I had
faith in and over them. A few days later as some of us
wept, laughed, listened to silence, healed, prayed, swore
and went more crazy the skies above turned dark and
dripped moodily. Rain was a sign of hope, strength and
victory. By then I had moved from two more dormitories
pursuing space to own and company where I would be
free from extreme cases of infirmities and the chaos that
other people always brought. At my second stop there
was a self-appointed leader whom had arrived on the
13th. His authority was not in a bad way at all. Twenty
(20) was his name, a number – established a sense of
order hence the hygiene and the ethical consciousness of
the cell was civil and controllable. I did not want rules
and discussions because they were part of a branch of
anxiety in the tree that I was. At the third room in my
itinerant an overweight brother snored to the extent
where I could not hope to close my eyes – that was
probably the reason he had the whole cell to himself. I
pulled a mattress out at around 0300AM and sought
refuge at the adjacent cell. That was the room where I
was to be informed about picking sides. In my new cell
room I was to meet a new roommate in the morning. A
bed spot and the three mattresses that lay around Chris
were unoccupied. I did not need to be told that the
occupants of the spaces had either been discharged from
the facilities or they had simply moved to other cells. Kat

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made it clear that everyone had the right to choose where
they were to sleep (as well as company). Chris would
inform me that I was welcome and that he was in no way
a bully for he had once had to learn about the
consequences of such the hard way. He could not have
been a day older than 26, he was slim, energetic and dark
brown with a fade-haircut that matched well with the
Mandela/Lumumba road that ran through his hair. He
told me that he was from the ‘hood’, had completed
Ordinary levels at Ledumang Senior School and favored
alcohol, Friday and weekend fun, fashionable South
African music, girls and the company of his boys. He also
admitted, with feeling, just how much he missed sex.
When Tautona and Kat joined him for a night-chat they
would tell tales about the most chaotic and fun parties
they had attended around Gaborone, the expenses of
CBD, the trickery of girls, the drugs they liked, their
favorite car models and their wildest of their experiences.
I had borrowed a novel to read when I, Mike, Kat and
another babbly patient who preferred yelling to speaking
had once been escorted to the library by a pleasant nurse
dressed in blue. Focused reading was impossible amid
such dialogue(s); sometimes my unnecessary opinion was
sought. The woman was one of the most generous of
members of staff. She was welcoming that I even found it
only fair to return the pen that I had swindled from her
earlier that week. Another enthusiastic young woman
was at our service inside the modest library that had
shelves that could have used more books. I begged for
computer services so that I could type certain scripts of
mine. The young receptionist was more willing to help.

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She had delightedly switched [on] one of the two
computers, confirmed the internet connection and
ushered me to a chair. It was unfortunate that I could not
get to type even a chapter of my book If God Spoke for, as
reminded by the nurse in blue, we had medications to
take at 11 o’clock. The time was 1045AM. I bit a lip, rose
to my feet and searched through the shelves where I
noticed that I had either already gone through what my
favorite collection could offer or I was just not interested
in the literature. In a room of over 300 books, I could not
find one. I resorted to Christine by Stephen King - a book
that I felt could have taken a different artistic passage.
Anyway, it was a European book from a poles apart
background and setting – different from where I had
been bred. I was different as well – a thin, brown African
young man faced with a society of diverse roots and
values. Of the over 700 pages, I marked the end of my
reading at page 200. I liked good endings anyway. I had
much inspiring thoughts, a heart to attend to and a brain
to read.

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 CHAPTER 60
As one old patient named Peter or Peter Pan had once
counseled, I was not supposed to worry about the world
outside. It was an advice that I had to stay calm for I was
there to serve time! Everyone had their problems to deal
with. Peter, half white and in his mid-fifties, made us
aware that his was a domestic ordeal involving a
stepfather and inheritance. Rokoro was an adolescent
whose innocence had been tempered with; he simply
bothered people and replied to the response he got with
battle-ready postures or tears. He moved like an
animated combat robot. Mike seemed eager to exchange
assaults with Rokoro on a daily basis. Rokoro was a child;
he would weep in order to laugh at another moment. I
remembered remembering popular media depictions of
central African child soldiers when I first observed
Rokoro. His name ‘Ogaufi’ meant that God was close-by
to his people but the boy’s mental health suggested
otherwise. On the 17th of October, Rokoro had even
skipped the long gray walls of the court-yard that
surrounded the space where we could walk about, play
soccer with a sox-made football and interact in other
ways sitting or standing. He had betrayed the integrity
of the prison space and he was said to have been caught
somewhere towards the top of a hill that overlooked the
town. Rokoro’s title as the youngest patient in the Male
Ward was to be wiped soon when two Form 3 patients
were admitted in. Mike was a student from the
University of Botswana. He was energetic in spirit and
physique. He never seemed to be out of topics and stories

157
about the Mafia. His was a type of energy that could be
justified by the reference of sedatives, pills and injections
on his side. Mike had been admitted into the psychiatric
hospital for alcohol abuse, or at least that was what he
said. Everyone, I realized, had weaknesses that they were
either willing or not willing to speak about. I had mine
as well, such as the ancestry that bothered me in my
blood and the fact that money had become the elixir to
almost anything. I took my pills, slept, bathed and waited
for the daily meal and tea time. I ran my calendars in the
back of my mind. After seven days the rules and routine
of the Male Rehabilitation Ward were more than clear.
We had breakfast at eight and then we would choose
whether to go to sleep or roam around the interaction
yard or watch BTV before having our names called out
at 11 o’clock for medication and a fruit. “Mosweu! Ogaufi!
Ramaphane! Babusi! Tebogo! Tebogo o kae? Hurry up!
Tautona! Mogomotsi! Oagomotsa! Ngoma! Peter!
Botsheloeng!” I would step forward and reach out for a
disposable cup of water and the pills that were being
handed to patients by the nurses on duty. At 1330hrs we
would appear for lunch, then we would bask in the sun or
in shadows that concealed us from that sun until the
serving of dinner at around 1930hrs. Bathing was a
personal choice for each of us to make, for example, I
never saw Mogomotsi bother with the bathroom; he just
lay down on his bed in the silence that he replied with to
almost anyone that tried to speak to him. As much as the
routine was tedious and depressing I still favored the fact
that I had just enough time on my own to listen to my
head and heart while also getting enough drug-induced

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sleep. I also got to learn to dance to my own rhythm in
an environment that provided no media nor fun except
for the lone BTV screen; the use of phones and
interaction with the outside world was illegal. The
administrators of the cells had the power to control what
we heard, how we interacted, how we felt, what we ate
and what we did. It was fortunate that I could admit to
feeling my body and soul recover from the exhaustion
that I had carried into the place from the heat of the life
of a thoughtful young man. I had had a block of ice that
had encircled my heart; in order to crack such cold walls
that the government had found advantages of
establishing such specialized medical facilities; perhaps
we were in safe hands. Different patients were admitted
and discharged every day; such a system exposed me to
the diversity of mental health issues in Botswana among
Tswana men, including a silent brother from Zimbabwe
– Mr. Moyo. There was a sense of sanity, spirituality,
unity, inevitable intolerance, peace as well as the clashes
that were health but most importantly the brotherhood
that was to ensure that we healed together and lived
together with diverse difficulties.

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 CHAPTER 61
On the 18th of October, Mother had ensured to travel
across the country to pay me a visit despite the strict rule
that forbade direct contact with family or visitors. They
had probably felt some pity for nature. I had awoken with
a start the morning of that day and I had taken a cold
bath because the hot water tubs had long stopped
working; I sang to the walls and the sign of a coming
rain. I had peered from the second floor bathroom
window; the sky had been emotionally unstable like most
of the patients in Sbrana likely, including myself. Lately
the baths had been long for I had gotten accustomed to
retrospection, interpreting the most complex and the
simplest of my dreams and determining reality from
biased illusions. Before I had jumped into the cold bath
to self-baptize, I had booked at the Staff Lounge to have
my names listed among the patients that demanded to be
seen by the doctor. It had been the longing to be
discharged into the free world and taste freewill again
that had caused excitement, anticipation and panic. My
name had been the last to appear on the aforementioned
list so I went to bathe and pass time (also because my
sense of hygiene was now impeccable). It had been when
I was still entangled in the melodies of the cold water vs.
my body when Tsaone – a 15 year old patient, yelled my
name from the corridors. “Simmons!”
“Yeah?” I had murmured in response.
“The doctor has called for you.” “OK. I am on my way.”
Dressed up in the light green uniform that we wore

160
regardless of hour or day, I had [sat] on a half-
comfortable chair and ran my eyes from the senior nurse
that sat at the corner of the room to the man behind the
large desk in his fifties. If the doctor had introduced
himself, I had not been able to hear that part but his
accent was Central African and rumors were that he was
of Congolese nationality. He had begun by demanding to
know if I heard voices of unseen figures, if I believed in
high powers and if I felt as if there were some people
conspiring against me. Only a week had passed since a
delegation of Medicine students from the University of
Botswana and a doctor-lecturer had asked me the very
same set of questions. As far as I had been concerned, that
part of dialogues was monotonous and tedious. Such lines
of conversations, I had felt, were not to assist my
situation in anyway. I had responded to the doctor in the
No’s in order to prove that I was unwavering. However,
I had been concerned of the actuality that my malady
could not be utterly cracked by science. The doctor had
stared at me as if I am mad and dismissed me back to my
cell, declaring that I was at an abnormal state and that I
had to remain under inspection while on medication and
that he would soon come to see me again. I had been
aware of the manner in which I would be expected to
behave and sound before the doctor himself. The
medication that he had referred to had been expected to
tie down my spirits and make me “normal.” I had been
spitting the tablets into the toilet for over a week. That
evening, as we gathered to be fed our different
medications, the nurse(s) on duty had instructed me to
open my mouth. “Are you confirming?” I had asked

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rather sarcastically. “Yes,” she had replied boldly. That
particular lady in blue uniform could have not been a year
or two older than I was. I had seen her on different
occasions in that hospital rubbernecking at me with a
particular attentiveness. She looked like she cared; I
knew love when I saw love. I had quickly swallowed
three pills at once, opened my mouth, wiggled my tongue
and grinned at her. I could now be certain that they could
tell when we were and when we were not under
medication. They were not methodically strict when it
came to security and the regulation of what we chose to
do with our time as part of a rather manipulative
rehabilitation methodology, but they could read our
minds and they willed to show us that they were in
control, even just for the sake of it. It was a kind of
manipulative rehabilitation. I had left the doctor’s office
under fiery temperaments, that is: I was both angry and
sad but the anger had been more dominant. I had spoken
for myself at the end of that session though, explaining
that I was a student at the National University and that
I had examinations, dreams to chase against time and
responsibilities to return to (these because he had
evidently dismissed me for an illiterate ruffian from some
broken town). The bald-shaved, coal-black, specs-
wearing man had retorted in his heavy accent that “ah,
you are a student? Do not worry. We will take care of it.”
“Did they release you?” one patient had asked outside the
offices in the waiting room as I walked out. I had simply
shrugged. Oh, Mum. I was recalled from bed by Tsaone
an hour later. The young mate was affectionate, kind and

162
practically caring for all the brothers around regardless
of their condition. “What’s up?” I had asked the boy.
Tsaone had once casually mentioned that his admission
into the mental facility had been due to a failed suicide
attempt – a third one. “Your mother is here to see you,”
he said. I remember cursing in English – in Sbrana we
spoke English a lot – before rushing downstairs and back
into that disconcerting office. Sometimes it had the odor
that had made it seem as if those desks and closets had
been owned by German Nazis in the 1940s because we
indeed considered ourselves to be the Jews, trying to
pray our way out of a concentration camp. At some points
it had been as if the workers in the office had been trained
to sound like tyrants unless a patient was in luck to fall
into benevolent hands. My Mother, the lady of my life,
the pillar of my childhood, adolescence and early
manhood was there when I hurried my way in. She had
been offered a seat on a low red couch. I was reminded to
put my mask on properly. I had replied to that Covid-19
protocol with rage, feeling safe and powerful close to
Mother. I settled next to her and watched the senior
nurse fumble on where we could have our private
dialogue as the waiting room remained engaged by
several patients that held the hope to be seen and freed
by the Chief Psychiatrist. I had asked my mother if she
had been well and she had said that she had been well – a
maternal attempt intended for the enfant to worry less. I
could tell that she had been worried and that my
detention in the mental sanatorium remained an
overwhelming fact for her. She could not believe that it
had gone that far. During our brief exchange I had made

163
sure to boast of my fine health, my weight gain, my
hygiene, strength and some small victories. I had even
attempted to convince her of the fact that she probably
mastered more than I did: the fact that God was winning
and the devil had become a suicidal hyena. When Mother
took her leave 5 minutes later, I rushed back to my heavy
breaths, prayed that my mother would travel safely and
fell asleep to the sound of thunder outside and the
lightening that whipped through space. It rained, it
poured. The moon was somewhere in honeymoon or in
exile.

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 CHAPTER 62
The recorded amount of time that I spent in the
renowned facilities of Sbrana had served as a training
period of some sort. It had been a vigorous invitation to
adapt to new seasons and the social environments that
rendered our bodies and minds with little time for rest. If
Mother and I had not been given just under 2 minutes of
my 1,056 hours stay in the place to interact I would have
informed her of the extra colors of mine that I had been
discovering and just how challenging my path had been
before I had surrendered my way into mental asylum
with a bleeding soul. I would have informed her about
my victories as well as my renewed strengths; the food
that we were been fed; my sleeping patterns and the fact
that some patients earnestly claimed to worship pythons,
lightening, devils, et cetera. Some had apparently
accepted their roles of spiritual natures; affiliations to
organizations such as African Secret Society and Free
Masons (if at all those existed with substantial
structures). Kat had even bothered me in my sleep and
warned me in the morning that I was “playing with fire.”
We were sick! I could have revealed more to my mother
had we the time. The Rehabilitation Ward of Sbrana, just
like the Forensic Ward, was a fortress for warfare, foul
language, bloody boxing and intense mental
examinations. I could have told my mother about my
peculiar role as a villain in the cast of my nightly mares.
I could have told her of the distant trees that I could jump
to with the dexterity of a bush monkey. I would have told
her of just how I had discovered that I could apply

165
intense rage as a defense mechanism. During that chance
to speak to my mother I had mixed up subjects and topics,
this and that, details of past drug tests, social interactions
and my plan to reinstate buoyancy against the forces that
opposed my being. Mother had stated delicately stated
that she had been impressed by the fact that the duty
officers had convinced her that I was in a much better
stare than when I was brought in and that my release was
undoubtedly imminent. I had defended my sanity and
innocence and underlined each of the words as uttered by
Mother. We had been interrupted and informed that it
had been 4 minutes already and my old lady showed
herself out. At that moment I had felt numb, arrogant,
teary but comfortably steady and impressed by the
readiness of my courage. I was thankful for her visit.
Lobatse was a long way from home.

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 CHAPTER 63
At some point during my medical incarceration I had
been questioned about the state of my self-esteem. That
topic had been on the table for discussion when I was
interrogated in the presence of a group of Medicine
undergraduates from the University of Botswana. I had
admitted that “yes, how I feel about myself has always
fluctuated like a life cycle.” I had reflected that at the age
of 14 at boarding school I had figured out that how I
dressed determined how I felt before other people - my
heart had suits of different makes. The 9 student doctors
(some of whom I had come across at the busy corridors
of the University of Botswana campus; one was a debate
teammate) had encircled me and listened to the line of
questioning as sent from behind the desk of two veteran
doctors while also examining my responses as if to read
my mind. The questions had remained as according to
the textbook – tedious, but the two doctors seemed to be
very curious about my responses, in fact they seemed to
reference their human hearts with a willingness to accept
their potential limitations. They had asked if at all I had
felt uncomfortable or intimidated by the sitting
arrangement - I was literally in the middle (the central
point) of a circle. I had ensured to joke about those sitting
positions when I entered the interrogation room: “I am
being surrounded, wow, lovely.” I had nonetheless been
aware that humor in a mental institution could
potentially get you in trouble as a joke could be
misinterpreted for lunacy. Being diagnosed with Bipolar
disorder I admitted, could imply that at a certain moment

167
I would not be generous as I felt but frantic with my own
regrets, hopelessness and a readiness to carry out acts of
sadism once I was out of the cells of Sbrana. As much as
I could be loud and talkative at times, sometimes I only
preferred my silence and solitude. I abhorred advice and
detested empathy. On the 25th of October in that office,
Dr. Congolese had undoubtedly noted with ease that I
was avoiding medication as I had seemed to be too sober
for someone who was supposedly under heavy dosages of
mind-altering tablets. I had remained authentic,
intellectually intricate and awkward in character. That
evening after Mother had long departed from the visit,
leaving a heavy rain, I was instructed to open my mouth
and to stick my tongue out. I had playfully asked the
nurse if she was performing a confirmation. She was.
They did not trust us. How could they trust us with our
own lives if we threw away the meds that were said to be
meant to help? We were sick and it was easy to tell or we
were the personified proof of just how the world had
become. From that moment I calculated that taking the
pills could be the only way out of the walls of Sbrana, so,
in order to impress the doctor at our next appointment,
I swallowed the multiple lozenges of the paralyzing
Sodium Valproate and the sleep-inducing Quetiapine. By
being suppressed by those drugs I could hope to get to
finally leave the green walls. I was exhausted because, in
my own terms, I was a Noah that had to build an ark
without any tools, labor, funds nor wood. They had all
said that he was mad until the genocidal storm landed.

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 CHAPTER 64
I consulted with a young female psychologist on two
occasions. She had done well ushering in an atmosphere
of her own – a relaxed dialogue where she did her best to
make me feel at ease. Her two sessions had been almost
refreshing. She was no more than 5 years older that I
was; she was yellow with brown eyes and she could smile
brightly behind the surgical mask she wore. I hoped that
young psychologist’s kindness had not just been part of
the job that she had obviously been trained so well to do
and that she was a truly beautiful woman with a good
heart for we needed such to mother our subsequent
generations. That had the speed and the direction of my
thoughts. Many of the inmates obviously longed to flee
both their thoughts and the place itself. Cases of
attempted escape had been common. The patients
designed and distributed propaganda among themselves,
suggesting that ours was a ruthless condemnation into a
very organized piece of hell and also that the fruits that
we were being fed were vaccinated for whatever sinister
reasons. I had listened to conversations that suggested
that certain regimes of the days were aware of our voices
and that had ensured to contain, detain, sabotage, control
or kill us. I had rolled my eyes and continued my
attempts to read a novel that I felt should have never
been imported to Africa in the first place. When I finally
abandoned that book, I ensured to make notes of my
sufficient inspirations expressing my conclusions on
nature and my nature as well as the direction of the plot
in the manuscript that I was to subconsciously give the

169
title “I am not Bipolar, I am a King”, even if writing in there
meant I had to steal a pen from the nurses’ office. I had
access to authentic encyclopedias within my own
common sense and – once more – I feared not a thing.
Awkward moments were of course normal and natural,
but I was to apply hope in my path and make certain that
my adversities were to never amount to the fear that
Roosevelt had feared was the only thing that his people
could fear. On the 3rd of November 2021, I impressed
two female doctors (the same ones from that first
interview where I had been surrounded by medicine
students). They cross-examined me, with caution. They
had smiled, warned me of the menaces of defaulting from
pills and about the danger of toxic environments and
wished me well. I had smiled back, chuckled my way out
and sighed a gentle “Thank you.”

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 CHAPTER 65
It had been just after a fortnight of my internment in
Sbrana Psychiatric that I could tell that I had
significantly benefited from the vacation. I informed the
walls and the skies beyond that that I was ready. I was
prepared to return to my blue world, to re-establish a
more firm personal regime with firmer personal policies,
hygiene and wrath as long as what was mine in God’s
truth was concerned. I believed in justice and the
significance of the right to be left alone, free from
manipulation by the forces that persecute some of us. I
reserved respect still, especially for those who earned it
just by being fair-minded like the brothers that I had
learned to live with at Sbrana. I affirmed that in a world
of diversity, separate identities and freewill respect was
key, in fact, I, myself, did not bother anyone but myself.
I had a clue about the asset of self-love as both an art and
a metaphysical science. Love and the love of effort were
a part of the faith that was driven by awareness and
knowledge. Some folk among us seemed to have
unrestricted access to knowledge, if at all they did not
invent that knowledge. Knowledge had put them
profitably in control of the modern era gods and the
status quo. The world remained manipulative. The world
owned God, but not the one that I had clues of.

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 CHAPTER 66
During that evening of November the 3rd, my aunt had
brazenly walked through the doors that had been
unchained for her and her eldest son. Their footsteps
were an exhibition of fresh air; their air was familiar and
soothing. It had been a coincidence that as they took the
turn from the entrance and towards reception I faced
them from the east while making my way out of a long
and spooky corridor, dressed in an old, long blue gown.
I felt my own thankfulness and remembered just how
uncomfortable my own gratitude could make me. I
slowly attempted to remain calm as the three of us
marched to the pharmacy unit, seeking directions
through the infrastructural maze from the security
officer who had been my favorite – respectful, tidy and
professional, unlike the other mucky uniformed beasts
that had always disputed among the patients. After a 10
minute walk to where auntie’s wheels (a white Corolla)
had been parked, we rode through Lobatse and then
towards Gaborone. As late as the hour of the night was,
I appreciated their patience, compromise and their
sensibly steady support. The hills - they had been aware
of my breath and they thumped to my steady exit. I
listened to the night and the night listened to me. Then
I paid attention to the amusing chat about a recent
wedding of one of our own that I had been unable to
attend. In a world where good and evil were never to
negotiate an armistice nor reasonable resolutions, I
claimed the royalty in my character and walked the
pavements of the University of Botswana again, drowsy

172
from medication. After the seven consecutive days of
penning “I am not Bipolar, I am a King” I did my best to
catch up with everyone else’s reality, school work and the
silence of introspection and striving by myself amidst
heavy ambition, practical opposition, limited resources,
loneliness and God’s whisperings. It had been easy to
realize that it had never been I who had to catch up with
everyone else but rather the world itself that lagged
behind in doubt, pessimism and envy.
***
After organizing the handwritten scripts of my complete
work: “I am not Bipolar, I am a King” I had toasted a coffee
“to art and victory.” The night of November 13th outside
my dorm and around the university campus had been
noisy as the youth were partying with microphones, loud
speakers, beer, drugs and their fun. I had, with a pen,
expressed my longing for dialogue and a chance to open
up and align with the facts. That had been the intent of
this collective literary endeavor. I understood that I had
to do my best to become the best version of myself as a
member and part of society. I accepted that nobody was
going to bow to my ego nor serve me any favors on the
basis of sympathetic empathy. I admitted to myself that
perhaps my adolescent mood swings had matured with
the aging of my bones making me somewhat ‘anti-social.’
It was the heavy intuition that had been overwhelming
to the child that I was – what the religious man could
refer to as a major prophetic authority. I remained
infatuated with certain principles and the several persons
that had understandably fascinated me. I had religiously

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worshipped a routine that had perhaps been beyond my
resource supply. I longed to afford peace and dignity. As
usual, I recovered from my inner torments and
restlessness; I embraced every part of my journey of
growth. I tolerated the clinical depression and the
sensitive unpredictability of our wellness. I provided
myself with the opportunity to keep healing and
approved the fact that Bipolar Disorder could not even
make up 5% of my “extraterrestrial” identity. I was
human and normal with physical and psychological
boundaries and truly distinct abilities. I was a painting –
dry and ready to walk out of canvass into life; ready for
my 23rd birthday. I was prepared for combat, diligence,
activism, the possibility of possibilities, the inevitable
challenges of life, the future and its legacies, more colors
of my soul and the God that I spoke of in relation to
ourselves. In a world where we were put in mental
prisons rather than in laboratories to work our science, I
would grow into myself with an understanding that good
and evil could not coexist.

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 CHAPTER 67
CONQUERING FORCE
I fought devils in prison and freedom. I am now fully
aware of the different types of love that exist and that
existed around me. My vicinity: the first treasurable gift
that I was awarded by life; life as part of the God we live.
Animosity, intoxicated with the deepest of admirations
justified divisions of the world as well as the shame and
cowardice that was involved in the craft. It was a
realization that: “oh, these hyenas actually love me - deep
in their hearts; if only it wasn’t for their lustful red
tongues! They can feel the vibrations of my modest and
humble rhythm(s), the cadence of my facts and my
respect for hygienic podiums. Why do they keep coming
to me if at all my existence is threatening to them?’’ I
informed the devil(s) of the two choices that they had - it
is either you kill me or you stay away from me for we
obviously cannot coexist! I, the paramount son of the
center and the central south, had always been aware of
the shape of the pedestal that God had always meant to
construct, to avoid having to send another Noah and
more floods. Like a devoted general I had known from
frontlines that theft was part of a very well manufactured
ogre that ran the UN, the status quo, ballistic missiles,
calendars, and terms of peace, diseases and laboratories.
I could differentiate from honorable love and slavery. I
was a simple man: I either licked my wounds in silence or
chuckled neither in opposition nor support. I remained
neutral like the judicial courts in my heart. I preserved
vast respect for silence and a fully-backed tolerance. I

175
knew of God’s genuine priests and worldly pastors who
could not see beyond the silver spoon and the curses they
were cooking up. I earned scars, routes to exile at an
early age as well as a consciousness of the precision of
destiny. I saw serpents, bandits, lovely souls, thieves,
alchemists, elders and our history. The harmony of my
hopeful voice calculated time with impatience and a
different kind of patience, poetry and growth. Ah, I
finally grew into a man at a pace that had naturally been
planned by the Earth. I stopped whispering and roared
through the semi-desert into the complaining winds that
sped through moody rains, insanity and education. There
now existed enough space and time, enough to get
impatient with the impatience of being patient. It had
been and it was still a war of mine to fight after 22 years
of physical training and existence. Otherwise my spirit
or soul was but a 4000 year old nurtured force that roared
from within – a conquering force!

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BOOK FOUR:
SAID A MAN

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 CHAPTER 68
SILENCE
The reflection of the stars had been a summons of a quiet
night. The children that play with the evening dust
chuckle past the mystery of the night. Everything is old
and new like the children – innocent or not. The filth
(impudence and vulgarity) has corrupted the innocence
of the worldly masses. It is the dusty and futile brawls of
such tribes that are to be sidestepped, even in
abbreviations. Under the stars, a man sits at a fire, utterly
toying with the idea of Peace and the reality of such. It is
a seat that he himself has made with wood, bricks, the
element of fire itself and an agitation that had driven him
to seek a clearer sight of God. The firewood burns into
the void of the adolescent evening – young but still as
dark as the surrounding spaces (the same observed
surroundings that are to be avoided by any refined heart).
It had been through the exercises of the surroundings
that he had learned - the hard way - to avoid the
traditional policy of Avoidance and to stage a last resort
warfare for territorial integrity, the righteousness of self-
defence as well as the defence of the will of God and the
architecture of harmony, legitimacy and silence. At the
firing of stars, planets and God’s other rockets, a man
could now understand that the silence that he had long
pursued remained but a pursuit no more. “Time is real. I
can feel it. I am at ease. I am as certain of my chlorophyll
as the green in the trees; the purple in the flowers and the
melanin in my skin. Above all, I believe that above and
below – here - is the silence of God(s). As every profound

178
son must, I believe that mine is a confirmed identity, any
sceptical ear or eye should refer the query to God. My
heart is one with all the colours and the taste of all the
flavours of nature – beautiful nature. The ugliness of
those desperate thorns is nothing but nothing – nothing
but the inopportune pollution of distant kingdoms. As
much as specific chiefdoms may have crafted their own
anarchy, I am rather amused by the sweet tone of this
apocalypse. I am here. I am alone with myself, my noise,
my God, my peace, my art and silence,” said a man.

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 CHAPTER 69
CAPITALISM
“I work under scrutiny with firm dexterity like Noah. As
long as I have done God’s dirty labor here on Earth, I
shad be at ease, with freedom, muscle and love. My
painting is worth the Mona Lisa and a whole Swiss bank,
but since trickery and dishonor are at authority, don’t
reward me nor deliver my well-deserved salary. You
search yourself, forge anger and lie. Go on and gather the
profits, the coins, and the silver as those are your God
and the very heart of your life. Mine is simple, calmer and
sensible, so OK, don’t pay me,” said a man.

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 CHAPTER 70
COLD TEA
“Mine or ours rather, is not just a tone of blind optimism
but a belief in the purpose of the gifts that have come with
our identities. The harassment of our assets has been a
confirmation of insights on infidelity and evil as casted
down to this world outside…” – I pointed out the
window – “where hearts and minds still house the roots
of the darkness that roam our streets. Is it not the very
same logo that administers everything? Who controls
the value of gold, departments of the status quo and souls
of men? Let me tell you, mate, this timeline feels very
much programmed; we are inside; maybe you and I could
consider breaking free at this very moment. You know,
we could at least continue to honor the conviction that
“we are our ancestors’ wildest dream.” Our parents loved
us – they really did. It is us that must ensure to split
down the walls that already exist among us, to jam the
constitution of the wild master and to tear up the pages
that have long interrupted our literature. We would
release the roaring lions; we would dance in the rain and
build proper fortifications. It is only then that our
gardens will get to grow again over the rusting blood of
the slain warriors that - the bones of our ancestors.” Sigh.
“Do you know why we are not having tea with a very old
Lumumba or Thomas Sankara right now? Because those
sons of ours died for a supreme course as the martyrs that
did not shoot back. I must say that the predictable
military offensive of the Kremlin into a supposedly
sovereign terrain (Ukraine) in the 21st Century is a direct

181
parade of just how we have to shield the value of our
values - with swords, applied passion and energy as well
as our God-given boldness. You have always been on the
right side of nature, at least until your norms and
civilizations were viciously violated and raped. The
commands of malicious mafias from caves and offices in
embezzled lands have to be intercepted, especially in our
homes. Our lands and our minds are our lawful areas.
The structure of the imperialist’s desires must be
jammed. Their cowardice and crafty robbery of
atmospheres, food, sovereignty and everything else must
be expelled back to whatever abyss they had sprung
from. My opponents are of the hell that they founded and
now that hell has become a part of what they are and
what they fight for. Let me whistle in peace for the
unconquerable beauty of my children. Liberty broadcasts
itself through the whistling of the winds that accompany
the rainy seasons that have always [been] followed by
rainbows of delight. Speaking of storms and cold rains, I
think my tea might have just gone cold,” said a man.

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 CHAPTER 71
GOD CANNOT BE KILLED
At some point, when a certain son of the stars and the
earth was being persecuted by co-occupants of the
dimension where evil was long cast, God had to speak.
The child is both of the past and the future; a child of the
beautiful and the sad. God intervenes for the sake of His
integrity. He intervenes on the basis of the child’s faith.
Such a mediation is like that of an excellent referee
coming in-between a brutal boxer and a tired soul in the
ring, in order to cease a bloodshed; to protect a precious
life as gifted to nature by God. The battered boxer - a
dying youth - had been dizzy from a beating that he had
not anticipated. Through the paths of the child, he had
had to admit that God had been both the referee and the
physician – the parent. The sport of life had proved to be
just prejudicial. It was a path through hard rocks and soft
sands at times. At times there was milk and reasonable
honey because, for the child, they had been guaranteed.
Such a black and white perception of life was the
psychosis that the world’s employed doctors would soon
paint that child with, behind closed doors where they
studied his mind in awe. They know much – the boy would
think to himself – but their knowledge of the homicidal
masters has its own limitations because God cannot be killed.
The operations in the young man’s vicinity and those
from afar, he had been aware, had been part of the
enemy’s old ambition, craftiness and a rather bizarre
desperation to capture a clear image of his nudity. He
would then be placed in cages as a slave over the most

183
eccentric of justifications. That was cowardice that had
accompanied the curiosity of the resentful devil. Envy
was a deadly manifestation of admiration and greed. He
understood the aforementioned attributes of viciousness.
He knew. He smiled. He acknowledged that he had
crossed over the most demon-guarded of prisons. He had
always been aware of the burning iron and the sound of
hammers as terrifying giants work in his backyard. He
had experienced confrontation, violence and suffering,
but he masters the value of hygiene and its order. He is
aware of his own evolution - not as a monster as alternate
gospels might suggest, but as a man with a heart. He was
a man, he could see. He had once become a warrior – a
trustworthy agent. He had earned scars and experiences
with the acidic smell of stubborn evil. He had grown
more aware of the need to defend the gates. He has had
to witness the explosions and hear the roars. The
gentleman has seen the nudity of the divine. He was born
of it – the struggle. As time span into the known and the
unknown, he stood at his mirror with a book, a sword and
a rose. He stank of hope, or at least that is how he sought
to interpret his aura. He remained with vision. He was a
star – a whole planet of facts and legitimacy. He was with
a heart that buttressed the echoes of the lost verses from
original manifestos. His origins, the transparency of his
being and of course his sanity had had to be questioned.
He hears the hyenas mourn outside. They burn from
their war that has been waged off dust and lust. He smiles
and silently sips from a cup of truth. “God cannot be
killed,” said a man.

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 CHAPTER 72
I KNOW YOU
“I have seen you – a prisoner within time. I have seen the
curiosity that toys with your sanity. I have seen the
questions that run over your face and within you. I am
aware that in accordance to Freewill, it is you who
decides what to do with your sight. I hope that your very
own interpretation of stars and clouds does not murder
God’s precise plans for your soul and flesh while you still
walk the earth. I hope that you do not spend most of your
decades while in the physical form computing my smell,
the origins of my heart, my intentions, my desires and
my God. Such would be a waste of the substantial impact
that you could have achieved with whatever art God has
sanctified your kind with. I can trace your thought to
your most recent ancestor. I affirm that, in a stealing
world, everyone reserves the right to fight for self,
perhaps even for family or bloodline, region or tribe, but
you have learned the hard way that I, myself, am not part
of the dusty brawls of your ethnic tones and your beloved
hierarchies, heritages and innovations. I hope that you
are not to bother yourself or my kind with your crafty
curiosity. I am aware that you long for longer clues into
the depth of my names, but, son, you cannot calculate and
understand everything. I am aware that the little of me
that you have seen and smelled is ugly enough to keep
you awake for numerous decades, and it is for you that I
feel pity. I know that you sit through nights with your
pens and scriptures, you draw my ancestors and
highlight the bones as if I am part of the physics of your

185
world. This is just my blood, flesh and bones - they would
never be enough to overthrow God, and so are you. I am
the mystery that you cannot murder. I am not your most
recent ancestor nor an enemy of yours even in your
blurry dreams. The complete facts that you cannot
comprehend have been brought to you through your
blurry dreams and your mathematics as you are very
smart. I know the lands in your nightmares, and I know
that you know that I know about the gravity of time, my
present and our future. The best way to avoid a pathetic
war against the Supreme laws is to be serene, manage
your envy and your rage. Son, the most efficient way to
use to reach elders and the rooftop of your ancestors’
house is to respect them. All of you are my children and
I know you,” said a man.

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 CHAPTER 73
FAREWELL
The world has been said to exhibit symptoms of the end.
That ending world had, for long, put beauty and carnage
on display. The world continues to paint itself from the
blue of the skies to the green of the gardens and the red
of the blood that wells from previous genocides. It would
prove easy to attest that perhaps justice would ultimately
be enforced - by an apocalypse. “Well, mister, who did
you say you were?” asked accented voices of those that
listen. They ask: “What is your name?”
“Farewell. My name is Mr. Farewell - farewell to our
troubles and sorrows. Farewell to our scars and fears,
and farewell to their sadism and greed. Farewell to our
denial of serenity over worldly trash,” said a man.

187
 CHAPTER 74
LONG MAY WE LIVE
“It is through the black and white of our flags and the
skies above us - the cold winds – that we are reminded to
remember to take care of ourselves, to full extents. I offer
apologies to my body for the poor hygiene. I apologize
over the justice that we might have obstructed through
our crimes and sins. I long to be as tall as the full height
of my bones (in metres). I long for myself and the full
weight of my flesh, blood and bones. It is a deep longing
for originality, security and a striking flexibility. I
complement the shadows and my mind. I complement my
bones for staying intact throughout storms and during
my humble fight to survive. I reserve gratitude to my
physical structure for walking towards the things that I
truly love and believe in despite our bleeding hearts past
the eras that challenged our muscles and the extent of
our awkward dreams. The blue and black skies have for
long persisted against ultraviolet drops of acid. It is the
inevitable convectional rainfall of what we fear to
embrace. Lust, envy, greed and humanity’s lack of an
exact sense of reconciliation have long touched the
Ozone layer, the 4th dimension, as dominated by
dynasties of the Serpent of Eden. I was long robbed of
my innocence, but I am to drive to a place where I can
rest my body, for another fight tomorrow. I boast of alien
strength and knowledge. May we live long, to free the
dream,” said a man.

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BOOK FIVE:
IF GOD
SPOKE

189
 CHAPTER 75
BLACK MILK

There is a madness that hisses in my solitude and smiles

whenever I fake a smile. It is the delicate illness in the
prison over my head. It is the peace of being closely
pursued by colors in my sleep; the yearning to join a sky
of a different color. My forefathers used to fly over here,
long before we were taught foreign tongues, a new God
and wrong politics. The aforementioned are the exact
gospel that had started the civil disobedience at Eden. I
was wreathed of a beautiful insanity, benevolence as well
as love and the honesty in whatever lies may lie in pasts
and futures that meddle with my present. Some peers of
mine, through the rudimentary decade and a half, had
convinced themselves that I might be some-what
"unusual" as a child, because I am elderly and I remain in
possession of God's book of poetry. The scripts - ancient,
brown and a little torn, were immeasurably just a little
too plain to be fitted into any Bible of the world, weren’t
they? It is the warfare in the Qur'an, the flowers in my
heart, the black milk, the light and the gold.

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 CHAPTER 76
CHESS
I prefer pushing the curtain aside for light, I don’t respect
wires and lambs. My passion is scribbled in black ink. It
is the infatuated light that might blind the eye. I want
treasures and news from God, a smiling sky of new
moons, and Heaven’s ancient lies and music. It is future
truth and drama through an old window - it has seen the
Devil confront God, a war that nobody has won just yet.
Both swords are sharp, it’s awkward. Kings lie and
children are murdered. Sometimes we win, sometimes
Hell wins. Check mate!

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 CHAPTER 77
GAUCHE
I am awkward. I walk alone - thoughtful, tall and sad. My
neck is bowed - respectful, haunted and free. I know
beauty and bravery but I demand no love nor noise. I read
books in the dark - alone with abuse. I look for light, pain,
ghosts and old calendars to mark old days that marked
my death. I am stuck at yesterday, chained and yearning.
I master comedy, but hide my humor. I have perfumes,
roses and I smell bad. I miss old guitars and old touches
me, especially art in my own tongues - twisted, African
and bold. My heart longs for villages faraway, the Congo
and mountains. I met romance but once - godly,
tormenting and strange. I sang badly in the church choir
and God laughed. I don’t worship nor pray much now for
my music is awful. Mama is probably the only woman I’ll
ever truly know. I am to work myself to sleep, and seek
paradise, but I am too lazy, careless, soft and shrewd. I
am severely artistic and arrogant – I can’t make friends.
I adore my misery, solitude, bipolar and Ecstasy. I eat
alone without disturbance and annoyance. Sometimes I
share words, and faith with the men I meet, I confuse
them, insult them and leave. The world is too ignorant
for good sarcasm and prophecies.

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 CHAPTER 78
POLITICS AND GOD
I met some boy today. He sounded very forty and serious,
as usual. He spoke no slang. He had a wrist watch and a
key, spectacles and a fat book from Oxford. He doesn’t
know that I know that God can swap books whilst
ignoring old verses – no longer holy; change His Bible
for another story like mine to tell to exasperated people.
The boy hopes for a large flat, a smart wife, and a degree
to know crime and parliament. He wouldn’t believe I
have a much cooler pride: I am aware of both the true and
the ignorant. I have long read the laws. I know school
gates, and politics too. I stand over his simple sarcasm
and the insecurities within his pride. He dresses like the
jesters that take stage to demonstrate whatever thoughts
Shakespeare had been attending to paint. His tie
strangles his throat and his hopes for a check, a deal, farer
deadlines, sex and meetings in failed offices. These
suitcases of my visions and ideas he can never
comprehend. I have told him that he’s eating a lot, he
should stop! The dish might be wrong, hasn’t he tasted it
in the rap songs? He ought to realize that we, the thugs
and farmhands, merit forks and honor as well. It is but to
affirm that a man like Tupac or somebody that looks like
him might have made a good enough president, vibrant
beyond Bush, to ambush whatever bigotry might remain
in the bush. That leader would purchase crayons and
headphones for boys, distribute condoms and books
while excavating prisons. I like it when people take note
of life and the fact that they may be hotter fires outside

193
their own chimneys; that somebody might have more
coherent flames and a thing to say if they silence their
entitlements, sicknesses, quarrels and noises. I spoke to
the boy in simple poetry. I hope that he then realized that
all along he might have been pushing the wrong gates by
trusting in his own lusts, exiled missionaries, bank notes
and foreign messiahs. His is a fake accent. He pursues
solace in perfumes and the computer in his backpack
while he reserves doubt for the air-bending wisdom of
humble monks and other kids in town. He is to accept
that all this time, he was trying to become me. It is a bad
race for him, because maybe politics and God are God.

194
 CHAPTER 79
THE LAST KING
That which shall remain for all time - that is the labor
that lives would be given up for. He carries a giant guitar,
but can he play? At the moment, as we seize it, the airs
could use a melody, string it! A cry for calm tears over
the jungle; a dying pain of distant angels across the
rivers. It is the fight to play on just to say that we can
play. Old man was haunted by this forest. Their kind
would always be Far-away demons that Shakespeare the
hunt. The old king died from a spear and blood welled.
After the storm, a prince overlooks over the Kilimanjaro,
over the similar black gardens that dream of Zanzibar.
Time is bent as the wolf flies. Sky love – the blessed
poison misleading the sacred night. Africa bows as sin is
born, the sin that would crack skin of greed and demons.
A dry Tswana desert hopes for ancient waters. Hold up
the infant dragon as portraits are made on the pyramids.
He roars of royalty and sees God. A red tongue, fatal
smiles and holy wars. Bath me in gold and tell the sea to
hum again - a forbidden song for old graves with visions
of life, ghosts pulling chariots chained to a language of
lies. Bones are prepared to crack for true harmony and
truth of beauty, well painted hope and rain. It is art by
spirit of rage, innocence and pain. These are calls for
sharper swords unused; battles to be won across the holy
land; thoughts on new books, chapters and statues;
burned monuments and the bones of Goliath, Judas and
God’s fraudsters. It is a call for verses and straighter

195
highways. The crown has to be upon the right skull,
clean tables and the right hands.

196
 CHAPTER 80
PURE INTENTIONS

I had nothing but dreams. They were the fuel that kept
me walking under the sun. Under the sun, I paced steps
of fire. My insides were too warm and my only hope was
not to explode and meet my demise at a young age. My
tomorrow was muddy. I was out of peace, like an Arab at
the dishonor of the Qur'an. I (we) had been educated at a
young age that the path was supposed to be white like
the smile of Romeo, mine was to become a brown gravel
with rocks, serpents and pirates. During that youth, I
never utterly experienced a Juliet of my own, it was just
anxiety, peace with my inner paintings and the
laboratories in my mind. I was from the neighborhood; I
was disgusting and I was, in my world, royalty. My
hands were out of hygiene. I was a carpenter and an
architect. I was a sailor of the sea, a warrior, a fisher and
a speaker at the courts. I wanted to have a voice for the
sake of both my newer and older truths - ancient,
reincarnated and plainly abandoned. I also craved to have
a voice in order to express memories of the maps that, for
long, have had to be trailed, and a silence that would hum
in a new season. I longed for such a voice to be part of an
era of remembrance, a peace-based bloodshed,
forgiveness and reconciliation – to imaginable extends.
Bloodshed and the sacrifice of our falsifications, passions,
greed and - what else? I wanted a voice that was enough
to negotiate, or at least try, an ultimatum for honor,
dignity, healthy factories and marriage to the only dove

197
that could fondly wife my nest and soul. I long for such a
right with concern for my future children (our children)
that bother me from my balls.

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 CHAPTER 81
A DYING MAN
I can’t feel myself anymore. No more than last week’s
strength and perfect sagacity. I have to speak with God
in clean meditation – that is the only way for me to grasp
faith, interpret time and the movement of the Earth. The
Earth is confusing, sad and awesome. I only hope to die
young in regret and exhaustion. Sometimes these dreams
are as hard to reach as God Himself. The marathon
demands strength and hydration, but I am without
muscle and water. My forehead doesn’t vibrate in
wisdom anymore. I have abandoned myself, my immortal
rituals and sacred missions. I only worry about eating in
the next hour, and a warm place to sleep tonight in the
winter. I have skepticism in meeting love once again; I
think I am going to die alone - sad, poor and thin with
regret and the monotony of aging time. God’s sharpest
sword would be planted through my chest - penalty for
ignoring prophecies, inner man, faith, talent and my own
dreams.

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 CHAPTER 82
THE ONLY WOMAN I KNOW
1. The only woman I know - the Tree, hopes that
the red in my eye isn’t Hell. And I hope she would
never pray for an early departure, with the
thought of it as freedom and relief. I would mourn
her for centuries, alone with mellow silence,
sadness and gratitude. However, I know that she
is ought to cherish life, because she is the only
woman I know.
2. I love the peace in my sister’s voice (the daughter
of that Tree whom is the only woman I know),
but is she truly peaceful or has the man that had
told her of love been nagging her? Are there
hush-hush arguments from long distances in the
night? Is she worried about bank accounts, jobs
and the future? Is she concerned of the disease
that had been painting the Tree’s face dark? Of
the mountainous distance between her and her
daughter and my sad tone on the phone when I
ask for money? Or is she vexed about the perfect
puzzle of my sexuality. As much as some
phenomena remains obscure to man with his
moustache, it clearly scratches the hearts of our
women, almost left to fend for themselves and
even fend for the man with his mustache, football
and charisma. They fend, through ambush and
bushes past thorns and deceitful hyenas. We are

200
to recall love, the same way that I recall our
childhood gardens from long ago when the skies
were still very blue.

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 CHAPTER 83

SECOND COMING

I walk alone under the sun with remorse and courage.

Alone by myself, I am prepared to face bullies and myself.
I am of foreign blood, exotic moods and an unknown
heart. God had left me for a while, to fend for my true
edibles.

I work myself like a gold mine, it is almost alchemy. I am

still building a city, my love; once my sky is silent and
peaceful, I would arrive in the night like a thief, with a
suitcase and faith. We would go on honeymoon to the
pyramids and to God’s black tribes.

THE END.

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 ABOUT AUTHOR
I was born Lame Botsheloeng, in December of 1998. The
south of Serowe (Motshegaletau) in the Republic of
Botswana as a place of birth was home, school,
graveyards, church and hell, sometimes Heaven. My
mother was alone, calm and modest. She taught me how
to talk, speak, walk, laugh, smile and pray, and respect
her and myself, people and God. We would drink black
tea in the night, playing cassettes from the small Omega
radio and jackals howling in the background would end
the day. We would pray and go to sleep, with faith and
hope. I would close my eyes and write a verse in my slow
moods, in bad grammar. The verses were chapters of
ideas of effort, policy and thought, melodies not yet
composed by our old civilizations, meek poetry and the
perfectionism that made me prefer pens and papers (and
oration – without much of a choice) even though I was
not aware that that was writing itself as a craft and
virtuosity. I was never satisfied with my skill of word and
logic, as I believe that growth of intellect and the capacity
of self-expression is as infinite as the pursuit of wisdom
and insight. My reading of publications and authors that
interested me, and the rest of the learning route, was
never disappointing nor spiritless. I read at
Motshegaletau Primary School, then went to boarding
junior school in Mothamo CJSS, then reluctantly off to
Mater Spei College in Francistown, Swaneng Hill School
in Serowe and then made my way into the University of
Botswana, Gaborone. Lame Botsheloeng - the occasional
not-very-clever kid who could still get desirable grades

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if he took his time to study and understand the bourgeois
and rules. I continue to learn - physics and science,
astronomy and astrology, listening to God, focus,
rebellion, love and loneliness, professors and books in the
library, mental health, family, recreation, politics, noise,
newspapers, medicine, freedom and myself – both as a
boy and an African. I am Simmons-Marshall A. Lame
Botsheloeng. I hope to remain inspired, relatively
innocent and free from fraud, greed and money.

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