Analysis of HOW MANY?
GIDRAF MWANGI 1992 (Murang'a)
As my flesh pops and sizzles
And my bones dissolve
I agonizingly ponder how many
Like me boil in a witch’s cauldron
I am being boiled alive in a vat
Soaked in vitriolic hate and malice
The hag cackling and blowing the inferno
A broad I once called a mother!
The scientists buried their heads in the sand
When they couldn’t physically measure it
The modern society has turned deaf and blind
Recoiling from the base dread it engenders
And yet the evidence is all too vivid
In the artistry of all societies worldwide
And the practice all too common
In all communities on earth
Witchcraft is a malevolent force
Concentrated evil incarnate
The west realized this long ago
And conducted a long witch-hunt
But Africa and other parts of the world
Have yet to eradicate this menace
Whose debilitating and despairing effects
Plague people all around indiscriminately
Imagine an unseen being choking you
An unseen power sabotaging you
How do you explain the intangible?
How do you show the unseen?
For some lucky family members
Their relatives take them for exorcisms
But what about the unlucky souls like me?
Who the witch was supposed to be the relative
© GIDRAF MWANGI
Scheme | AXBC XADX XXXA XXCX AXDX XAAB EEXX AABX X |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111101 01101 11000010110 11100110 1110101001 100101010 011000100010 01111010 01001011001 1111000101 010010011101 110111100 01010011110 0010011010011 00101110 01010011 11001001 10010010 01101101 00100111 11000101101 111010110 10100001001 11010101000 01010110101 101101001 1110100100 1111001 111010010 11001111 11010010111 101101110100 11 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,133 |
Words | 202 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 1 |
Lines Amount | 33 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 106 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 22 |
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"HOW MANY?" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/102135/how-many%3F>.
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