Next time Use A Rope By Mzi Mahola
He lived Fatherless
For thirty-five Years,
Before he was ten
His mother abandoned
For Better life of vagrancy and
hallucinations of meth
Turning her heart into a stone.
The path he later chose
For escape or success.
In his struggle to survive
He lost well eye as well.
The lamb was further dimmed.
One evening, we found him groaning
under hedge like a bull frog
Belly-taut with rattex
I met him coming from hospital
We Laughed
At his lost rodent appetite.
He said life was biased.
Next time use a rope.
You wont fail
I advised him
Two nights later
A school watchman
found him dangling
Like a maize cop in a hut roof.
Friends and relatives
Put him a deep in a deep hole.
SUMMARY OF THE POEM
The speaker through the story telling or narrative style recounts the plight of a friend who was abandoned by his mother following the death of his father. His mother also deeply affected by the harsh realities , begins to take “methamphetamine” (meths) a sleepless drug so she could work harder without sleeping to cope with the hardships. This abuse causes her to hallucinate and turns her heart into a stone. The friend is now left no hope as he struggles to survive , in his attempt to persist , he gets partially blind . As things get worse, he resorts to rat poison (rattex) but he is saved by friends and families who take him to the hospital for treatment . On his return, he still finds as life biased and commits suicide following a sarcastic advice given to him by the speaker that “Next Time Use A Rope”
THEMES IN THE POEM
Abandonment and Suffering. The speaker recalls how the apartheid caused anguish for the individual who is the friend and the family as well . The mother abandoned his own child for “vagrancy” . in his struggle to survive he lost an eye too . He employs hyperbole to depict the degree of the pain suffering “groaning like a bullfrog under hedge”. This abandonment and suffering is similar to that of Mark Mathabene` “Kaffir Boy” mark also suffers from malnutrition and poverty as his father abandons him and the family at large due to police arrest.
Drug Abuse
The mother of the friend took to drugs as a way of working harder without sleep but led to hallucinations and a hardening of her heart to even neglect her own son.
Suicide as an Answer to Suffering.
Currently, in Mexico, suicide is medically approved to end the the suffering of terminally ill patients who have six months or less to live . Such patients can request for the lethal prescription to kill themselves. Similarly, the speaker advised his friend to “use a rope” next time which is more efficient than the Rattex poison. The lines “ use a rope” connotes commit a suicide with a rope if life is biased.
Heeding to the advice, he was seen “dangling like maize cop in a hut roof” which ends his suffering . The hyperbole and simile intertwined connotes the lifeless and light body of his friend.
By Mensah Junior Raphael( Mphil, Literature In English)