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Spectrums, Tints and Shades

Like the painter’s palette awash with hues and tones – white to tint and black to shade, greys scattered in between: 

What risks we run:
Shaving a little too close that we get the hair as well as the scalp; 
Shoving the pot over because we stirred a little too fast;
Losing one leg of the tripod stand from neglect so we fall flat on my face;
Fanning the flames too hot and toasting the succulent corn to unsavoury cinders;
With boundaries between cultures once amorphous now defined into divisive walls bricked up to heaven and; 
With the make-up we wear that cake-up so thickly our fleshy hearts are forever masked.  

What risks we face:
When limbs once attuned to celebratory dances are now hypnotised by drums of war and; 
Spontaneity, gaiety and creativity have given way to seriousness, deliberateness and belatedness;
If we suffer the fool as well as the praise singer whose heartbeat is subject to the puppeteer’s wiles; 
If running faster than ones shadow becomes a banquet at which the aged sup and ceases to be a repast of youth and;
If we lose our child-like nature and fail to see the painting in the random patches on a wall nor the master pieces brushed on by African clouds in our skies. 

What dangers await us?
Running too fast into a blind dip in the road;
With the dive into a pool of unplumbed depth;
Cuts and bruises we suffer in a manic bid to scratch an itch away; 
If we attempt to swat the fly off the monarch’s face;
Losing cultural norms to new-fangled western concepts; already trashed by the wise amongst those who brought them forth;
Bleaching our heritage dead-white on concepts alien to my 'Africanness'.

But what joys will ours be to share...
If our names once again become full verses of tributes to lineages proud and bold;
If cherished ancestors departed stay the backdrops to our scheming and;
Walking tall means more than the physical attributes of the super athlete;
If we remember that clothes maketh not the man but the quality of those who have his back and whose voices he hearkens to;
If we ultimately acknowledge that history predates our birth dates and shall endure my last breadth on earth;
And the legacy we must leave generations unborn is engraved not in mortal marble but in living flesh. 

Our choices: Like the painter faced with a palette awash with hues and tones, white to tint, black to shade, greys scattered in between.
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