Spectrums, Tints and Shades

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.