A Man of Colour

it’s easy to feel colonial privilege / weighing down heavy on your sprouting dreams / through closed doors and lost opportunities, / till your voice is voiceless

Hyperpigmentation

My skin collects memories of pain in pigment / I am at my core, a nostalgic being / These markings are curated on my surface / Like masterpieces of a gallery / Viewed but never known

Grandpa Brown’s Land

what remains? / battered boards, / remnants of our homemade 5-room shanty. / grouted well / that nourished 16 children, livestock, cotton.

Homecoming

Kɛl, bula pɛ ngur nɛ nam

Sister, go back to the abandoned village with me

House of Tables

here is where we break bread / here is where we play cards / here is where we pound our fists / here is where we down our wine / here is where we lay out the cloth / to spread the bounty in / a house of tables

A Black Man’s Eulogy

A Black man is born / not expected to thrive / disposable in ‘Nam / not expected to survive

Jesus Said to Carry Our Cross

Our family heirloom of a life lived on another man’s terms. / Heavy chains of capitalism looped together by a history of compliance and resistance. / We carry our cross as Jesus said, / We carry our cross as the preacher said.

Fumigations

Our bodies accrue roadside in a tally / of insanities born of tenements Jozi East / like city deep, stories the same – / leaving me nostalgic for rondavels again.

Cathartic Realizations and Emotional Reparations

To be the redeemed of an earth that denigrated and sullied its ontological, epistemological, and / metaphysical conceptualization.

Nomenclature

To be mixed isn’t fixed / I’m constantly learning what my ancestors did for me / The roots deep and twisted / This family tree in the amazon / Amidst colonial industrialization / Tall, strong, and why I breathe.

Plucked and Trussed

Yet as another year passes, / and more of her structures falter, / we, her children, are being left without. / Ignoring her calls. / Blind to every flood and gust.

The Great Deceiver

The Great Deceiver has fractured the histories and culture / That weave our realities / But once we realize our neighbors are no kaleidoscope images / Disjointed from just poor choices and bad judgements / We can mirror our hopes and dreams

at last, the gods

how do we wear our sadness? / will we burn? and will the Earth? / will water rain down to save us? / is it too late? and is it too late? / is it now forever too late?

A Saint Elmo Fire

A sign says Condemned, / but memories are still dwelling there- / the stench from a white hood / and sheet robe, once a dingy white, now / burned black / in the bottom of the Tennessee family’s cedar chest. / A sign says Do Not Enter / yet it does not stop the ancient spirits,

Bygone Mama

“I was a dog licking sand / and eating maggots wherever I saw. / I bore in tens and tens / and rubbed my face with / the blood of my uterus / when my pups became merchandise.”