The Big Man Never Loses

Who ever said democracy has taken root in Africa?

Trying to import it here is like shipping ice to Antarctica!

And who said power corrupts? It is just sweet

Ask Gbagbo in the west or Kibaki in East

And of course there is that little matter of the Big Man never losing

Mathematics is a misnomer in this part of the world

You may have the most votes but the big man still has the final word

Those are just meaningless numbers to raise hue and cry over

Though to be fair it might be a cue from the Bush-Gore affair being done over

And of course the big man never loses

Was it Octavio Paz who said this thing called democracy is not like instant coffee where you just add water?

Here we have added even blood but our democracy is still in the gutter

And with friendly envoys telling us how progressive we are getting and then telling their superiors that we are as good as doomed

We do not need enemies to remind us of our gloom

And yea, the big man never loses….of course

(c)

My Poetry is Boring

 How can you still be doing Afro-centric poetry in the 21^st century?

Aime Cesaire lived in another century

And so was Leopold Senghor

Frantz Fannon too

And revolutionaries like Che Guevarra are from another era

Marcus Garvey and Nkrumah Kwame as well

Your poetry is stuck in time

Slavery is a long forgotten crime

Write about technology, Facebook and MySpace

Don’t you think romance is even more chic?

Your poetry is boring

Time and time again I have been told

Yes, my poetry is boring

Because it bores into the depth of your consciousness that you’d rather keep tucked away

My poetry is boring

Because it reminds you of where you came from

And the sacrifices made so that you can be where you are

My poetry is boring

Because it has gritty political undertones instead of soft language like in Mexican soaps and telenovellas

Yea, it is boring

Because it talks of corruption in the aid industry funded by western governments

Instead of talking about the kid I read in the papers adopted by some celebrity

And other good news like scholarships and green cards offered by benevolent western governments

Yes it is boring, really really boring

For Cesaire, Senghor, Garvey, Kwame, Mandela and even Bob Marley were daft to think that the African could be redeemed

Yes, they were stupid to think the black broad nose was beautiful, instead of the hooked nose of our Caucasian celebrity idols

But why shouldn’t I talk about all these?

The Holocaust, driven by some mad Nazi lasted only a few years

But today talk of how Israelis are oppressing the Palestinians

And all you get is a cold look asking, doesn’t this buffoon remember the Holocaust?

Slavery took hundreds years, and so was colonialism with double brutality

Yet you want me to forget this African heritage?

And why shouldn’t I talk about corruption in the aid business

While the largest chunk of aid money finds its way back to the source countries

And the rest in the pockets of our corrupt leaders

Who in return provide space for a foreign army base

Or a conducive economic environment for multinationals to come milk local industries dry

Yes, my poetry is boring

But am going to drill it into your head

Until you realize that development goals, bureaucratic visions and strategic plans,

Can and will never be realized by sitting back hoping for the best

But should be driven by a collective consciousness on where we are from and dreams for which others died for, unrealized…….

A Cry For Africa

Once upon a time when Africa was pure

When we didn’t have to rush to Dr. Frankenstein’s cures

Our mines were not pillaged nor our soils defiled

Our culture was intact and our morals refined

We lived peacefully in genuine brotherhood

Before some of our brothers were ferried into alien hoods

We didn’t pay no taxes and a strange term was inflation

We didn’t have checkpoints for there was no immigration

Nor were there walls like between Israel and Gaza or the US and Mexico

Everyone was welcome even from the ‘civilised’ nations

What we didn’t know is that they were bent on invasion

And indeed came the Europeans to better things for us

To teach us the bible and remove the pagan in us

Never mind in the process we also got robbed of our land

But now look at Africa we’re just a confused and divided mass

And we can only reminisce of our glorious past

Africa, the cradle of civilsation lags behind in everything

The great Zimbabwe caves, the pyramids, the great kingdoms ruled over by noble kings

Yet we have sold our souls and pearls have been cast to the swine without a pork chop in return

What our forefathers fought tooth and nail and resisted to the bitter end

Top be shipped into servitude in Europe and America

Today we are willingly doing by getting into rickety boats and in the process dying by the thousands in the Mediterranean

Whatever happened to the proud African race?

Whatever happened to the soul and spirit of Africa espoused by Kwame Nkrumah and Marcus Moziah Garvey?

Whatever happened to the tribal dance around the fire where HIP HOP was born?

Mc Mic on the mike crying for Africa

Reminiscing the days when Africa was great……….before the self hate!

1619

They say it started way back in 1619/

When ebony colored men left their continent/

To go, see, feel, the land of the civilized/

Pale colored men who regarded themselves as fully Christianized/

The blacks were treated well and their black skins idolized/

But it took less than 20 years for their true colors to materialize/

They said, if these niggers worked for us, wouldn’t our profits increase in size/

After all even the Bible did realize and recognize/

That rich men had to have servants to add to their merchandise/

Thus began the rounding up of Africans from and wide/

Fellow blacks working for the white oppressors for a minimal prize/

And so the greatest atrocity in human history was in gear high/

Yet the African seed is one that can not be mollified/

The proud African race always held its head up high- dignified/

It spawned great men here in the motherland and in the Diaspora despite being victimized/

Waiyaki wa Hinga, Koitalel arap Samoei, Mekatilili wa Medza fought for the rights of the black man and for which they died/

Booker T Washington and his kind and like/

Educated black and colored children to enhance their pride/

Marcus Garvey envisaged an African paradise/

Kwame Nkrumah dreamt of a single African enterprise/

Martin Luther King Jr used peace to fight a system that did not want all races equally quantified/

Elijah Muhammad had his nation of blacks who were Islamized/

And Nelson Mandela spent years in prison to see his people free and their land unoccupied/

Yet again we have sold our souls and pearls have been cast to the swine/

I am watching CNN and from the south of Spain they are reporting live/

Scores of black bodies have been washed ashore by the sea tide/

And they are bloating right there under the sun by the seaside/

My heart misses a beat and for a moment my feelings die/

I gasp and look up to the skies/

And loudly ask myself, are we back to 1619?

My City

The feeling is great, with the finger around the trigger/

As the chamber empties you really think you’ve grown bigger/

The hapless figure writhes in pain as life from him slithers/

Forever to be missed by loved ones to whom only memories linger/

On you move looking for the next target terrorizing the hood/

When she appears from her late night job and stops at the site of the face in a hood/

Which without a second thought and with total disregard for bad and good/

Proceeds to violently abuse the very institution of motherhood/

Is this what civilization bequeathed to my city/

Cold blooded animals wielding guns and machetes/

Homeless urchins trying to make a buck/

The lost generation who never had the luck/

To know their parents and now abandoned and forgotten/

They have to survive, through means legal and illegal, to free themselves from the net that caught ‘em/

They are not our problem, we think as we pass around the ball/

Of the pitiful blame game and drop it as quickly as we get them like hot coal/

We frown at their lack of education, while it was our collective failure that they didn’t get one/

Others may have got it, but employment was just but a painful distant mirage/

The role models we could look up in the society are as corrupt as they come/

Their fuel guzzlers juxtaposed with the garbage heaps where the homeless set up camp/

They make laws that virtually criminalize every unemployed youth/

Regardless they never set up frameworks to cater for them after school/

The disillusioned plunge head on into crime/

The ill-advised quickest way to make a dime/

Their human feelings neutered as they get mired in grime/

Friends, neighbours, brothers turn into human savages/

And become uninvited shareholders in your hard earned monthly wages/

Then finally the police bullet with them catches up/

Felled with their positive energies completely untapped/

And we now celebrate the definite peaceful nights and sleep/

For the great gangster has been dispatched into eternal sleep/

We forget he was just but a stage in the vicious cycle/

For a more lethal dragon springs up and spreads its tentacles/

And the problem we thought we eliminated never seems to come to an end/

Foe how long are we going to kill our young people/

When we could have molded them when still young and supple/

And cared more about their future and not only when campaigning for political office/

But for posterity and responsibility to suffice/

Is investing in the youth so much to ask/

Is affordable education too difficult a task/

And so is with making employment opportunities not so scarce/

For sure crime doesn’t pay/

But someone has to lead the way/

The proverbial Moses to part the waters of the Red Sea/

And open the eyes of the youth and make then see/

I don’t have the faintest clue as to who that person is/

But a look into your mirror migt shed some light into this/

Ends…