Mr Chimiwenga
Written by Megan Leonie Hall on Saturday the 14th of April 2012
Mr.Chimiwenga has the solutions to all your problems.
Are you asking yourself any of these questions?
Do you work hard and never seem to get anywhere?
Are you in financial need and want abundant wealth in your life?
Do you love someone and want them to stay with you forever?
Or perhaps you feel your problem is not stated here,
And you would like to come and see Mr Chimiwenga ,
so he can help you find out what your problem is?
Mr.Chimiwenga,
If I visit you,
You will tell me I've been cursed,
Evil spirits are trying to harm me and/or my dear ones,
That is the problem,
Isn't it always.
Never the less, grateful that as far as I can tell,
I'm not a paranoid schizophrenic,
And aware my flow is swiftly ebbing,
I do consider your offer.
Well, why not?
You probably make an excellent living ,
Handing out flyers to suggestible magpies,
Outside the Matalan end-of-line store,
In'Shopping City' in Wood Green,
Where people are so very vulnerable,
Where all us clever monkeys go,
To buy things we don't need.
To feel a sense of community,
In frantic compulsive collective craving,
Till it's 6 o clock,
And it was no less than four pairs of jeans that you tried on ,
And they were all too small,
And you feel miserable,
So you buy a doughnut,
And then you feel sick,
You have to get out,
You have to leave,
You are poor, and sweating and afraid of clothes.
And mirrors and queues and smock tops and white jeans,
And hangers and teenagers and too bright lights,
deliberate corporate music and smells,
and the clinical stink of the changing room.
It is the unsavoury musk of the inside of bellybuttons,
The acrid yellow crust that grows unbidden in pierced ears.
My soul is appalled most of all by the sign that declares 'cultural quarter,'
it points to a average, terraced street,
Next to the gateway to this shopping hell.
The sign is ridiculous and has no meaning,
It's the town planners' equivalent to the 'i'm with stupid' t-shirt.
I perceive an intentional godlessness here.
I no longer feel a longing for anything new.
I will make do and mend.
Mend and make do.
Go to the park and swing on a swing.
Eat cake.Think myself thin.
Three fat brides and one thin dress.
This is their world.
How big is your chest?
This is their world.
How clean is your house?
This is their world.
How to look good naked
How to look good in clothes
How to look good,
as a demographic,
With shopping bags,
And another little bag for the nose.
Breathe and breathe and breathe it away.
Oh Mr.Chimiwenga, We need a place to play.
Where the budlea over grows and is clambering onto the railway track.
It is the only colour I can see here.
Those flowers have the hue of bruises.
Those commuters are bruised flowers.
Natalie finds her evidence of god,
In the existence of oranges.
Michael senses(the possibility of ) god,
In the plethora of women he wants to undress.
Claire doesn't need evidence,
And neither does Jo, or Bianca or Mo,
We like our mess,
Mess is divine.
So why did I come to shopping city?
Was it only to remember
All the places I'd rather be?
And if I subscribe to the law of duality,
Then in some dimension must be the polarity,
Of this false prophet uber-market, shelf medication,
This plasticized vault,
of anaesthetised faces,
Opiated by the myth of scarcity.
In my phenomenal, dream reality,
It would be an island
Mr Chimiwenga would be telling the truth.
I would be naked. So would we all.
Primark would be a meadow full of peacocks and swing boats.
And I'd gladly give my money for any strange placebo
And I'd I allow myself to rest easy with his diagnosis,
And bathe in that oil in an anonymous bottle,
And sacrifice a chicken,
Which I could get in Brixton,
Specifically for the purpose,
If I asked that saxophonist,
I haven't seen for years,
And sacrifice a night when the moon is swollen whole,
And swallow the blessing,
Of the robed man,
Hovering his hands over,
The dead chicken's body,
With incense burning,
Blood smelling musky,
In an upstairs back room,
In Forest Hill.
If I visit you Mr Chimiwenga,
But I doubt I ever will.