The bleeding has no bias
From the Congo to Dallas
The days of waiting, the Fever-soar
The African corpses were out

Of view, from the World’s eyes
If a sneeze can defile
Ebola can ride airplanes
Traverse Seas, all through

Your plastic gloves, your pores
Contagious still with death
Your fear may taste the curse
A thousand dead more, a common ache

The bleeding has no bias
Jesus will not bring you back from the Dead
We have to walk through Hell alone
They say, I have no more words

The bleeding has no bias
No funding, on protocol that works
The virus rages on, splitting old scars
Of what it means to be from the

Old continent, of what it means to be black
And the coughing up of more blood
Where paranoia and fear are conditions
As common as kindness and hospitality here

The panic of believing a silent enemy
Can catch you without you knowing
These are the days of waiting
These are when the numbers soar.

I wish you could see what I see here.
Smell the beautiful stench of sewage and un-showered people.
Feel the African wind fly through your hair,
bringing with it a mouthful of dirt.
Pick dry black boogers from your nose, and
bits of dirt and grime from your eyelashes.
Clean your teeth of the ram you watched them **** last night,
just before you ate it.
I wish you could feel the Ethiopian sun on your bare arms,
licking dry lips because you ran out of clean water to drink.
See millions of curious brown eyes as you fly down dirt roads
in a squeaky dust-covered van.
Watch the African sun rise upon a city of stories,
stories which walk the streets every day without fail.
I wish you could be here and experience this.
I wish I could bring you here.
One day.

Sometimes its a shame to be black
We claim we're in it together
But the unity we lack

We belittle each other
Even though we all came
From the same father

Our ancestors fought to bring us to where are now
But how we choose to separate each other is foul

Light skins and dark skins
Doesn't matter we still have black skin
We need to begin
To listen

Build our race
So that every black person is safe
Racism is still real
And I cannot begin to explain how I feel

The black race is still frowned upon
Because our values are lost and gone

Let us begin to better each other
Build each other
Help one another
To get farther

Teamwork is essential
We have to realise our potential

It is a shame
How we let each other suffer
It breaks my heart
To see hungry child lost by a mother
When we have rich people
Who are greedy
In their fast cars speeding
Having no conscience or feelings
Because they won't even give to the needy
Lord Jesus I'm screaming
Please change the world
Make everyone start believing
That africa can rise
If we stop ignoring the cries
Of the poor
Revitalise the land
Before it dies
I know we can
If we keep our eyes on the prize

We can build africa
Make africa a staple
If only we work together
Bring something bigger to the table

We were blessed to be born on this beautiful land
So let us join hands
And make africa
As big as we can

Somebody says everybody else is mad
Then somebody must be mad.
If somebody is the only one not mad.
In the land of the mad
A case of mad calling others mad.
But who is really mad?

It is so sad
To see that every one is sad
The truth of the lie is sad.
And if you are not sad
Then it is really sad
We are smiling but happily sad.

Now it is that bad
To say we are mad,
Is totally sad.
To say we are happily sad,
Is not that we are mad.
Remember, somebody must be mad
And the one that is mad
Is the one who says everybody is mad
Not that he's mad
Then who is sadly mad?

Well, he is mad
And I am mad
Cos you are now getting mad.
Still we say we are not mad
But he is mad
How can we all say he is mad?
How can we be sad he is bad?
Wait a minute, are we mad?

I thought about walking until my legs gave out;
The wind whistling in my ear,
The leaves silently chiming in the context.
My hands were cold and I was acutely aware of how frozen my face had become.
Each footprint was a part of myself I left behind.
I could have walked for evermore.
Making dents in the shallow ooze,
I took the earth with me.
I tried to use its power,
its goodness to fuel my vacant insides.

Why am I so self-absorbed?
Swollen bellied infants lie scorching in the heat.
Headache. Dried. Irritated.
Their faces leak of pain and nothing more.
They are scavenged birds that vultures seek,
Nesting on their parched skulls.
I wonder if they would cry if they had the equipment needed.
They still smiled, shaping their thin faces to a grin
I stand here full bellied, nourished, hydrated
and act like I have nothing
I have the earth in my shoes,
The capability to smile.
I should be thankful,
But instead I just walk.

In Africa the lissome eucalyptus leaves
Sharply ovoid, a washed celadon,
Turn their silvery backs, yield, bend with
The promise of on-coming rain.
You taught me this
Sign, this tree-voiced prediction, long ago, among
The tenderly sloping, densely viridian hills
And heavy, somnolent, rolling fogs of Iowa.
And so, I turn my back. I yield, oh, how I yield.
But, you didn’t foresee, didn’t know
How, much later, my heart would
Flake and flay
How great sheets of myself
Would peel, would fold
Would slough off just like
The bark, the back of those massive whitened eucalyptus trunks, you
Didn’t, couldn’t foretell how this long union
Scars, clings, sinks so deep, tattoos itself so that eucalyptus-like, despite
Repeated rain lashings, leaf bowings, droopings and sun decimated leavings
My heart, my soul sheds, molts, reforms, renews itself and just as those
Sharpened leaves arch and curve and arc and sway
So I bend, I turn, I give in, I give in
To the chafing wind, to the scouring hurt, to
The on-coming African
Rain.

Looking over my shoulder,
out the plane window;
I see the African plains,
20,000 feet below

Never again,
did I think I'd ever see Africa again
Never again,
did I think I'd feel the African sun again
on my African skin

A bittersweet return
and once I leave here,
I don't think I'll ever return
In fact, *I mean not to