The Lesser People by Kay Akappella

Image - nairaland.com

They say Africa reinvented the civil war

Maybe we did

For we seem to constantly bend over pick our guns and rape our own selves

Our mourns to the rhythm of Gregorian chant the world continually hears

It is that third world orgasm that crescendos to a paralyzing seizure that makes sure we make it to the news everyday

With our drapes wide open the world watches as we shamefully parade our nakedness

A pageant of our political pubics in public

Bosoms and ballot boxes tempered with in broad daylight

We breathe deep, too deep maybe, as we French kiss each other in parliament

The rub of our tongues too course on the other

But seems we can’t listen to one another

Guess we got lost it in cadence –foreplay went too far

Now every man wants to feed his own filthy obsession

And surfeit his every perverted fantasy of greed

Today it puzzles me?

I could fathom hate, spite and these constant aches when it was that “European Mistress” who killed us for our fields and mines

I could understand that maybe our black pigment was not his fetish

But why then is black killing black? Has the other discolored in time?

Maybe the other did? Let me tell tale!

The Tibu people and the Zitu people shared a rib

Siamese twins incubated in the same colonial box

Suckled from the same breast

Some salty milk from the tears of a mother nursing a bullet wound

We fought together, we cried together

We died together, we sang sad songs together

We were called baboons together, damn it, we were ugly together

And that was the beauty of it- We were together

Then the bloody grave stricken honeymoon ended

In the other we started to notice the little things

The Tibu had a certain click thud in their native lingo we could never learn

So we were taught to resent it

The fatter cows the Tibu had so we had to have them

Grass greener we wanted it!

So we fought!

But I’d love to undress the cowardice in how we fought

Men in suits arm wrestled across burnished oak tables

And thumb wrestled in word play

While little boys in Spider-man briefs

Drunk with lactose and innocence

Held guns and shot while they caught ‘stray’ bullets with their skulls

They were child!

This poem is an extract from the short story Our heads could fit in a shoe. by Kay Akappella. You can read the short story here: http://poetrybulawayo.blogspot.com/p/blog.html