The originality manufactured naturally,
strength gained without any body building,
hard work born with no need to learn it.
Rising and falling known from first sight.
Being a refugee has now become a norhm.
Watching the sun set on empty  stomaches like some soup opera.
Poverty unplanned has been
jotted in the caleneders.

Always ready to take to the heels like some marathon race fleeing from wars.
Carrying a spiritaul shield to protect their lives because not even  any asurance can cover their deaths.
So many cries nobody knows if they are of joy or sorrow,
but i know that most of them project a message of pain.

Learning to be a doctor with no degree only because their societies need to be saved.
Little boys carry heavy battle machinery and are forced into war without any military trianing.

Poor Africa you are projected as helpless,
but nothing is so rich as your soils and every other thing that crawls on you,
the preys and its preditors so firece and cunning clever than those  pets that trained at some fancy school.
Your landscapes so unique they all are amazing to glare at.
Nothing makes you Africa so beautiful
than the golden rays from the sun departing to its sleep.
Giving everyone that chance to grasp a smile.

Africa is rich not because of money, but beacause of the natural resources extracted from it.

You tip-toe out of the day
out of the Atlantic Ocean

with Africa's sun on your brown skin
with Africa's wind grazing your dark hair

and all of South America behind you.
Had North America and Europe

had enough sense
they would have followed, too.

Had they known of everything good
tucked away in your womb

then surely surely
they would have followed, too.

And for a moment I'm a gazelle
who hasn't yet fallen
to a lion's teeth
For the night I give in
to the stampede
and--this time for good--keep going

Going, going,
wind beaten as a sailor,
though I may be
flying the way a peacock does
(It's only a feeling, like peace is to a dove)

Let me say something
about the animals--
they keep going, too
They keep going for us
(I am no vegetarian, but sometimes,
instead of meat, I only need
to eat dust.)

For the same reason, I go on
until fed to something larger
than this small person inside
And, like an animal, I don't ever
feel the need to cry

Home is where the heart is but the heart is a broken place.
          I hate
how loud I must barely scream so that people can see my face:
          I am dark
and this is a time of shadows.

Sometimes what worries me most about us
is not that we are forced to carry guns and **** our own mothers
is not that we are pulled from our classrooms back into our homesteads
is not that some of our leaders feast while we become skinny UNICEF models
is not that if only one molecule of my DNA was different I could have lived without ever knowing how to read even a single word
is not even that the smallest of things can wipe out entire villages in an instant-
mosquitoes, viruses, locusts; slave ships.

Sometimes what worries me most is that
my headphones carry more sounds of strange places
than my heart will ever know-  that not even my brothers and sisters
sold off to those strange places ever knew, as their children are hung off
the trees of Jim Crow and we call them strange fruit, and that
maybe our first president didn't marry a white lady; the white lady might have married him.

Sometimes what worries me most is that for just over eighteen years
of seeing thinking feeling breathing being I couldn't
have ever told you what Africa meant to me past the occasional 'dumela'
to my mother's mother but never, never did I know or now know or will know my mother's mother's mother's mother's mother
because
she can't fit inside the cellular America that I hold in my palm.

And this is why they call us lost.
Because home is where the heart is but the heart is a broken place.

One time, my five year old cousin said matter-of-factly
that black is ugly. In my Primary School days
everyone said I should stay out of the sun lest I get darker.

But
I'm here to tell you that I don't even bother wearing a sun-hat anymore.
I'm here to tell you that I don't cut my hair because to do so would feel like oppression.
I'm here to tell you how vivid and lovely and blessed I do feel to have been born in broken-heart home because at least it has soul.
I'm here to tell you that, yes, I do remember
that time when the whole world knew what to do about ****** and Bin Laden but never could get round to talking about Cecil John Rhodes.
I'm here to tell you that
Today, that conversation starts with a toppled statue.
Today, that conversation starts with my voice.
Today, this conversation starts with a poem which proclaims-

child I am, child I am, child I am, child I am, child I am-
that this is my day. This is my day.

The Day of the African Child.

Guess you gotta be wealthy to be healthy this world ain't healthy blue eyes tell lies genetic defect reptiles in disguises Chem trails in the sky explotin diamond African minds watch out for them suit and ties

Maybe they feared a revolution
Or maybe it was just chauvinism
But for whatever reason
They would not let his voice be heard
By the suffering masses
Of the decaying metropolis

But his voice was heard somehow
In a land far far away
Where everything was seen in black and white
But the people longed for the rainbow's delight

His haunting voice filled their void
His piercing lyrics became their spear
His aura became their guiding light

Like a miracle unexpected
A revolution occurred
And the rainbow emerged

Meanwhile,
The Sugar Man still drifted unheard
In his grey urban wilderness

It's Africa.
The sun and sweats
The sweats pours out the skin
The skin giving me a soft cool
The cool that lasts a second

The sun and the sweats......

Narrow minds plague our streets
Ignorant views and empty arguments
Hearts filled with hatred for no reason

Are we not a country that fought for equality
Has the long walk of freedom not been walked for us
Did I misunderstand the meaning of Ubuntu

What happened to love, peace and empathy
The simplicity of an act of kindness
Has fear swept all your morals away?

They bleed when they are cut
They cry when they are sad
We breath the same air
Laugh at the same jokes
and even dream the same dreams

We are the same
It's not even about colour
How is their black different to yours?
brother hating brother
They too are Africa

Soften your blows
Try on their shoes
Its hurting them
and it will hurt you too

Fluff and puff,
water plugs,
power plants,
paper over eyesores,
paint it matte,
pink as salmon,
pack the homeless
into the Bird's Nest,
ghettoise Moses,
bleed the Amazon
down to size,
moor the battleships
to Yamuna Bank,
let white elephants
run riot on warm Black ice
over those who won't
play ball in our
electric garden
free your head
from the rails
for what?
roti kapda makaan
or BSP ki maya?
be buried or a sport
let laal battis through
ab bus, stop
blaming it on Rio
don't you know
how India shone
in October 2010,
or that Russians love
their children too?
So what if they don't
believe in modern love?
Potemkin villages are
built brick by brick
by BRICS,
Red, Yellow, Orange
kilned to Black.