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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
