Colonialists
They came to see conquered
plundered other nations' heritage
voices of dissent hung in the breeze
The elite thought of themselves
as educated
Wrote learned books about stolen
statues, marble, and so on
the significance of great art
The pilferers became ennobled
sometimes, for some, theft pays
Most of the stolen culture ended
up in museums
so people could feel in awe of how
foresighted the robbers had been
Now that we live in an enlightened time
The British Museum is no longer
proud of its possessions
return African art of wooden masks
those which come alive at night
~ An Eight-Line Treatise on 'Settler Colonialism' ~
The Apache beat up on the Cheyenne
and the Iroquois on the Sioux
Mohawks ‘mohawked’ the Mohicans
Aztecs turned the Cree into stew …
Now Europeans are called ‘settler colonialists’
but who does America really belong to
Probably Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man
~ dispossessed by Indians too
Name-calling
We who live in the west
do not see Israel as a colonial power
the last one in the Middle East
As many colonialists before Israel
this unlawful occupation will end
and when the dust settles, a new
the state will appear we can do business
with and hold song contests
Israel is the last gasp of this white
colonial mentality
So far, more than forty thousand
Palestinians killed in this miasma
of evil intent, but no one calls
Israel is a terrorist state that must
be eradicated
While Hamas, who fight for a free
Middle East, are dragged to the
the mud of vehemence and called
Terrorists!
without Hamas, the Gaza would
still, be the biggest concentration
since Buchenwald
I am a child of war, misery, anger and suffering.
I grew up with sadness, uncertainty and anxiety.
I took refuge in solitude to avoid human bestiality and its hypocrisy.
My distress illuminated the darkness of my weaknesses.
I am forged in the burning furnaces of struggle and survival.
In my veins flows the impure blood of slaves, riflemen and resistance fighters.
My gaze carries the weight of the pain of my color and the age-old injustices of my oppressed people throughout the Earth.
My persecuted skin is the cemetery of the scars of battles, trials and sacrifices of my ancestors dehumanized by supremacist slave traders and racialist colonialists.
I am the bitter fruit of a continent nourished by fratricidal conflicts, genocides, civil wars, coups d'état, dictatorial excesses, tribal hatred, treachery, corruption and neocolonial stratagems.
My memories are horrible nightmares, broken fragments of all the horrors my eyes have seen.
My mind is a battlefield where truth, justice, liberty, equality and fraternity are expressed without hindrance.
It's time to divide.
Please manage yours.
I'll do mine.
We'll fight together.
You're the lake,
the bay and the floodplain.
I am the current.
I don't need the Spanish-given.
My ancestors are sailors
And yours too.
Neither a bandit nor a pirate.
But the "resistants" to colonialists.
Please start yours.
I did mine.
Our rope is Islam.
And blessing is Nabi Muhammad.
For God's sake.
Please, do it.
Listen to the people.
To the voiceless!
Long before the colonialists came
With a club and a Bible to tame,
Came one Nicholas Abercombie,
Upon his chest a cross of fashioned tree
On which he said the Savior died,
And could Africans seek His love;
The mercies of one God above?
But when he reached the land of Kenya
With his red-bearded junior,
The primitive souls who knew this treachery before
Met him as one unfortunate foe;
They slayed his red and bubbling throat
For they deemed him a sign of drought.
And when his companion this misery saw,
He knew it was his turn for woe
And fled in a rickety boat
Before he could be by heathens fought.
The mutilated corpse was fed to the dogs
As prescribed by the wizard of Blongs,
Thus ending the troubles of Nicholas Abercombie;
For that was what my granny told me
When I was a little child,
Before I began to graze in the wild.
And so the story is told:
Could the fallen Abercombie live again whether young or old,
He could shun all vessels that float on water
Or those that pierce the air
That lead to the no-go land of Kenya;
Nor would he attempt to set his foot there!