Sham-shack

you
mr politician
you
with your gaping heart
your spiked wrists
call your driver
tell him to fetch
you
with his car-black-as-evil,
his full-combat sunglasses.
let him drive these pot-holed
snakes-you-call-roads
with their gangster traps
and child-swallowing corners
let him rescue you from
this folly and open the door
to your comfort. Get in,
mr politician, drive back
to your double-story ignorance
away from your puerile gesture
of a night in a shack. Go and
entertain your busy busy
business suits, ties, cracked-laughter
homeboys, ex-prisoner cronies
couldn’t-give-a-shit-about-tik,
those armoured takers and
baksheesh people-leavers. Go,
mr politician-fat-wank-
I’ll-sleep-in-a-shack-for-a-night
sanctimonious money magician.
Take your sound bite and fuck
Right off to your underfloor heating,
your rys-vleis-en-aartappels. Get out
of the way of the women,
the givers-without-end,
the feeders and shit-cleaners,
the find-a-blankets and soup-kitchen-on-R10-aunties,
whose hearts don’t bleed, but whose feet do, whose
fingernails are ragged with empathy. Let them
get on with what they do daily without your
help, or thanks, without rest, or caption or column inches,
without the cold-slapping, arsehole-cramping arrogance
of your one-man-show-‘em-I-care-bullshit.