Rivers Of Rage

I have seen rivers of rage
Seen brown faces brimming with breathlessness
Their heart beats pulsing with weariness
And yet more brown faces too
Their skins seering in pain
Ribcages roaring with phlegm
All feverish and feeble
Seen them through my glazed and glassed eyes
As I pondered my hypocratic oath
My stethoscope and skill at service

I have seen nurses kneel in numbness
Exhausted by their mass kindness
Seen them sigh and surrender
For they too, have caught the rhythm

Seen the undertaker take the hill of bodies
Seen him pile his pick Axe and seen him too among the bodies

I have seen turbulence so violent
Whole villages wiped while I waited
Coughs and fevers long thought
Long thought easily managed
But now vast they defy dosage
My colleagues died in the diagnosis room

Seen black bodies and white bodies
Brown bodies and every -mixture-in- between bodies
All ravaged by the ruthless reaper without rating reason or recourse

I have seen rivers so rogue
Rising in the east,they’ve swept
Sympathy and science down the
Shaky and shifting sands;
Of politics and parties
Race and class
Privilege and pariah
I have seen rivers raze down Kings
And made humus of their servants

I see rivers of rot
Death dampens the dawn
Cries fill the ocean
Panic pricks pricked presidents
Doubt lingers in the residents

I see the rivers raze down difference
Write anew human substance
Dealing a blow against diffidence and dissidence in love for humanity
I have seen rivers real and rapacious.