Sharpeville, 21 March 1960
"The native mentality does not allow them
to gather for a peaceful demonstration.
For them to gather means violence."
- Lieutenant Colonel Pienaar

1.
We went with wrists ready
For metal shackles
To clench
Their cold grip
Onto fire hot skin
Boiling with white rage;
The appropriate rage.

This situation has justification
In the predications they hold true
Where to some
Human is synonymous with
******* nature,
Dangerous and hungry for
Light white blood we
Must be caged
To prevent the massacre
We could create.


2.
A child’s body is not a hurdle.
But when fleeing,
Feet pounding on dirt paths,
Black with dark blood, leaking
From shafts of taunting revolvers
And throats of the permanently
Silenced,
What do you do but run?

5,000 bodies bound together,
Melding flesh with flesh,
Fusing unhinged bones to bones
Still cradled in their skin,
Line the street where
Puddles are forming next to
Concaved skulls emptied
By misinformed bullets.

Last thoughts and worries
Are forever splattered on faces,
Tracing red lines
On skin
Sooty black,
As dark as nights will be.

3.
Sixty-nine lay dead.

A rock they said.
When interrogations
Took place
A rock they said.
Empty hands laid
Palm in palm
But a rock they said,

This, they said, sparked
The worry
That made it right for them
To make bullets fall
Onto us like metal raindrops
From an angry heaven
Hungry for black skin
And black blood.

Hands digging into earth
For retaliation,
For blood they said,
But everyone else said,
The rock that flew
Was in hands white as light
As bright as the day was
They say.

If the rocks they said that,
Spurned uniformed egos,
Flew from ground,
To air,
To gunned men like they said,
Does it justify the dead?

"To all the fallen Kids, Heroes and Sheroes that fell victim to the massacre of June 16 1960, Sharpeville, Soweto…
Callings for new Seeds and Haloes, we pray for new Victors and Messiahs…coz still we ask “So where to?”*


Worthy knowledge deserves the one who will acknowledge, it found another, he was in shortage, threatened, he found joy in carnage.
Retaliation turned sour, as we shed tears for fallen heroes. Rest in peace to all the Petersens, the Malcolms and the Bikos.
Great minds edify and think beyond limits and sky.
This systematic routine of life laced with politics and economy infiltrates us numb, living in a liberated space and yet at times feeling so dumb.
To equip oneself with the truth, the past, broadens the mind with a quality that will seize to last.
A continent, must be God’s definition of art, beautifully authentic ancient dark civilization…envy must’ve burned the heart.
Propaganda made victims, a disease intended to chronic; now all that’s seen is reversed conscious, invincible and sonic.
Pride is you, continent, head up, chest up, we becoming confident. Mother of the soil shining naturally yet shining somewhat redundancy.
Reconciliation over retribution, an astounding virtue, still forging a social democracy.
Peace will be hard to find in this pandemonium world.
True healing comes from divine providence, I was told.
Male and female, human beings, we need to perceive each other like nature, true identity knows no stranger.

My technology nightmare
Leaves me euphoric this morning.
Addicted, like drug trials,
I knew the risks going in,
Got hooked in The Cloud &
Now it always seems easier,
With diminished psychic chafing
Whenever I go with the flow, as the
Hipsters are saying again.
Yes, the hipsters:
Finally, some kids I can relate to.
At least on some level, their music e.g.
The first thing I did this morning,
Waiting for my laptop to boot,
Was put a CD on the stereo:
Matrix Reloaded: The Album.
I set the shuffle function,
Looping back between
Linkin Park’s Session &
Team Sleep’s Passportal.
You can tell a lot about
What kind of day it will be
By the soundtrack you choose,
Your infinite play list,
Don’t ever say these kids have no culture,
Or nothing to share with us old farts.
Old Farts: an apt, Baby Boomer term in 2015.
Kids’ music, some of it quite good,
Quite 60s-worthy if you catch my drift,
As we used to say while grazing in the grass with
Hugh Masekela & his Naai Mongoe-Swazi red,
Surfrikan homeboys & band mates, & that
ANC Kwa-Guqa Township posse,
Shadowing him since Sharpeville.
That’s right, Babaloo,
Go with the flow.
Don’t fight it. You’ve been spared the unintended
Consequences of government shenanigans &
Free market meltdowns.
Consider this a CEASE & DESIST NOTICE:
Cease swimming upstream Mr. Phelps.
Desist fighting tide & current, Michael.
A mariner’s distinction, yet serviceable &
Purposed for this narrative.
“And away we go,” croons a Gleason levitation;
Aloft we go into the wild blue yonder.
The Cloud: an exalted playground.
You are atop the slide,
Kindergarten lord of all you survey,
Sultan, Chinese Emperor & Venetian Doge,
A 90-caliber Duke of Earl,
You are euphoric, Mike.

The descent into the humanoid condition
(See Paddy Chayefsky’s Howard Beale),
Is slick and precipitous.
It begins when you first finger ****
A pocket calculator or touchtone phone,
Or use a Xerox machine.
From there it’s a quick slide down
The technology ****-shoot: video games,
Spreadsheets & word processors,
Emails, texts & tweets,
Laser projection keyboards,
Wi-Fi amplifiers,
GPS navigators, &
Apps for No-Strings *** . . .
By “****-shoot” I editorialize, of course,
In a state of future shock,
Resenting planned obsolescence,
Contemptuous of shrewd **** kids,
Wharton School sharpies,
Scoping out price curves & flowcharts,
Colluding at industry trade shows,
Powwows & confabs,
Releasing newer, more versatile
Models & spinoffs, according to a
Scheme planned three years in advance.

I salt the inevitable wounds of technology,
Taking my fight to the streets, realizing too late
My sole means of alerting the flash mob
Is by so-called smart phone,
*******!
Even the revolution has gone digital.
Poor Gil Scott Heron, dead last year at 62,
Poor Scott Heron, channeled into the
Harlem Renaissance by that loyal Chicago Defender,
Subscriber & reader, to wit: his Grandma,
A “Rainbow Conspiracy” co-conspirator,
Cooking ham hocks & collard greens for that
Mythical coalition of Young Lords,
Black Panthers & SDS.
Heron’s prognostication was wrong:
“The Revolution Will (In Fact) Be Televised!”
We’ve witnessed quite a bit of it,
Lately, prime time lately,
Live by satellite from once exotic places,
Places like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria & Ferguson, MO.
I say “once exotic” because it’s hard to be
Visually intoxicated by images of screaming brown men
Sporting New York Yankee ball caps,
“Vote for Pedro” T-shirts and
$200.00 Air Jordan footwear.
Admittedly, the production values of
Revolutionary journalism have improved,
Action reported Hollywood-style,
Narrative arcs, scripted episodes,
Drive-by Potemkin villages & battle scenes,
30 or 60 or 90 day shooting schedules.
Spontaneous proletarian uprisings as Reality TV,
Riveting dramas,
High Nielsen ratings & $500K
Per minute corporate sponsors.
Let’s view the new fall line-up:
(1) “Mustafa Behaving Badly!”
(2) “Tunisian Tear Gas Talent!”
(3) “Gaddafi Gets Sodomized!”

648 police deployed,
4000 rounds of ammunition,
4 mortuary vehicles,
It was neither an accident,
Nor the act of an angry God,
It was neither a miscarriage of duty,
Nor the act of marauding ancestors,
They planned to **** us,
And indeed they killed us,
Like in the Sharpeville massacre,
On the Marikana soil of our livelihood,
Despite that our hands were up in the air,
Begging and running for our cheap lives,
Mission accomplished,
Typical of the filthy barbaric apartheid engine,
In a modern democratic South Africa,
Mission accomplished.