Sugar canes and machetes. Coconut
juice. Here! have a bonbon. Here! Have some
cassava and natural peanut butter. Have you tasted
the rice? You’ll never forget it. Cargoes of goods.
Carpenter ware. Where is the cargo? Where
did it travel? When? By whom? Millions of cargo.
Precious cargo. Where is the stamp, the credit
by name, origin, flag, or bandana? Have you
heard? And the gold. What gold? The gold! You mean
our nappy heads carry gold? Mosquitoes know. Yes,
the gold–what gold? Where is the shovel? It was here
a moment ago. Saw it there some time ago. Oh,
there goes the cargo! The brown dusts, grey dusts,
red grounds underneath soles. Ancient blood rivers
underneath earth’s layers like vein circulations
from head to toe. Squeezed blood–brave blood–slave
blood– Revolution blood. You’ll pay. You’ll pay!
You’ll pay for your daring and hot boiling blood!
Ropes–ravage! Ropes–ravish! Duct tape. Shh. Don’t
you squill. You’ll pay, you’ll pay! Right hand, left hand–shh!,
right foot, left foot–shh! spread, stretch, spread stretch—east
and west, north, south. Ropes–ropes. Shut your mouth!
You’ll pay for your daring and hot boiling blood. You’ll pay
for your large minds and giant eyes. You’ll pay for your
sensitive nose–don’t make noise while the cargoes
come and go, stamped by a language you can’t speak
or barely understand. What’s the matter?
Your top home-breed physicians are elsewhere.
Stay on your back! Close your eyes. Don’t stir! Shh. Smile.
It is nature and natural. Why should rivers run down
from your red moist eye balls to the lids, the cheeks,
the lips, the neck, the breasts to become one
with your sweat on burnt coal skin invincible
under the mid-day sun, parched throat and alive?
No one to deliver. Shh. Devils kiss you
with hollowed promises as your reservoir dries.
Leave you desolate again and again and again and
again and again and again and again— each time
they leave, you fall to the ground and remove dust
from your eyes. And the pigs run away oinking
and oinking to ravines where you’ll never find them
even with passports. You will take to the streets
soon, dancing in bright colors again and again.
Ravished–naked. Ravished–drunk. Ravished–dry. Shh.
Is this why your songs are so magical?
And your voice and souls are so magical?
The air is filled with the drum, drum, drum
and vibrating guitar strings. The eyes raised up
to the skies, your hands fiddle as though tangled
in the strings, and for a moment the world
is mesmerized and raptured by your
stirring, bubbling soul singing a song you sing so well.
