(for Black History Month)

handpicked from the colour wheel of humanity, a hued placard was paraded on the streets of light as a misfit. the race sheltered in this shadow of light was not proud enough and paraded like a martyr before being leashed. we could have been kind enough to our history before history abandoned us in the whispers of ancestors. there seems a millennial woe on this skin of mankind— black is now the self-pity of nights, the pedigree of crime & profanity, the void of esteem in the n-word lifted by hip-hop. you’re a broken egg from the manhandles of a delinquent black cop in your homeland. the black eyes of the law see what is white that ascends the pyramids only. the earth is an eyeball of monochromes. cataracts of inhumanity blind the black man from his kindred, and when the white cotton is separated from the darker ones in the laundry, the blacks turn a blind eye to what belongs to their source and agitate for a place in a whitewash. home has never been kind to them either. the keys to their doors were swallowed by rotund key holders. we hawk the hoes of our names to foreign lawns. our plantations are left uncultivated, unlike our virgin hairs. our forests are overdue for harvest, while we witness the innocence of our cousins in vain.

Heritage

We cradle humanity with nature’s foot grounded in our communal spirit.

Like Eden, stripped of the hides of paradise, we bask in the purgatory

Bestowed on us by those who preached heaven to us with bottles of gin.

Across the Nile and the Sahara, our voices, drums, and plantations

Are bound by the heritage of liberation in the face of civilisation.

Skin deep, we are crafted from the brown soil with the science of melanin.

Like cattle, we’re milked by thirsty nomads on pastures we now long to graze.

On our heritage’s never-ageing forehead, our fathers and mothers’ toil

Wrinkles with time, and our sweats mirror the sun and quench earth’s thirst.

We now struggle to harvest from the blessed soils and trees.

On the desert of drought is our oasis, but for our strength drawn

From our ancestors’ blood and spirits.

With our right hands, we guide our children home, where lies the food,

Fabrics and tongues of our kinsmen, uniformed by anthems of proverbs,

Poetry and songs laid on the drums and strings, swinging our sisters’ hips

And throwing our brothers’ bodies in acrobatics.

May the sacred rivers and soils of our heritage not be adulterated

By foreign narratives in time’s library.