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!