Long Apartheid Poems
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My heart skips a beat I lose my breath
When I think of his life of sacrifice
And his crusade for human rights
Leading the revolution against apartheid
With rare tenacity and might
A lawyer by trade a pacifist by nature
Standing for truth and reconciliation
Just him and his ideals for god-given rights
Standing and never wavering
Giving voice to the speechless and the persecuted
Refusing to be silent in the face of injustice
Determined to annihilate tyranny and racist oppression
An icon of democracy and social justice
Never to be forgotten
A statue erected where Mandela
Was released from 27 years in prison
A simple man bigger than life itself
With dreams of emancipation
One philanthropist who would change
The world no matter what the cost
Read on air by invitation ~ April 28, 2021 'WORDS & MUSIC'
AP: 1st place 2021, Honorable Mention 2026, Honorable Mention 2022
Submitted on January 25, 2020 for contest ODE TO A PRESIDENT OR POLITICIAN OR LEADER PAST OR PRESENT sponsored by SHERI FRESONKE HARPER - RANKED 5TH
Army versus Navy
Navy versus Army
Army versus Army
Navy versus Navy
Stop, stop the division
Stop the separation
Stop the genocide
The bombs, the pesticide
And the bullets are killing
Women, children, our offspring
Elderly and unarmed civilians
Americans versus Americans
Haitians versus Haitians
Ranchers versus immigrants
Peasants versus inhabitants
Aliens versus migrants
Citizens versus Martians
Vice versa, all the sagas
And crying out loud, alas
Stop, stop the divisions
Stop all toxic and evil actions
Stop the apartheid
This is no way to be united
The cancerous lies and the sulfurous oozes are
Spread all over. This is war
War never makes sense
This is not the right time to dance
And to sing happy songs
There are too many deadly weapons
In the streets. Countless wrongs
Make nothing right
Don’t censure my crayons, pencils and pens
God said: ‘Let there be light
And there were lots of lights’
Respect for human rights
Is important and paramount
Continuous killings are abhorrent
Constant lies are detrimental
To our immediate health
And to our eventual wealth
Stop being criminal and genocidal
Stop the bombardments
Start the disarmaments
Stop all negative sounds
And let sleep the greyhounds
And everyone at peace
We want no blood and no injustice
Stop, stop the demolitions
Stop, stop all destructions.
Copyright © January 2024, Hébert Logerie, All rights reserved.
Hébert Logerie is the author of several collections of poems.
Surely
I am not
The only one
I remember
Thousands
I walked with
For a non nuclear stance
Now
Silence
Even before
Those brave humans
That took on apartheid
An battled
The Queensland government
Silence
And where's
The freedom voice bus?
Students r u
Drones
Or
Thinkers and tinkerer's
Slowly
By surely
Walling our self's in
To a fake
Normal
A false
Reality
For a few
Control nefariously
That new brick
Surveillance neo capital fascism
And the masses
Rejoice
Behold
Our new brick
And don't the people wonder
After the river floods
And Chunder's
Or
The fire
All scotched
All burnt
Their left
Standing alone
Pondering
What's a government for?
Cause
Harvey an Woodside
Ain't gonna come
An help me
But, no
They accept it
To not
Is not
To be normal
So
F@#k you all
I am
Not normal
And I don't accept it
If I write
Just one word
That provokes
An act of kindness
Or
Spark of curiosity
Just a small
Twinge of the lips
Heading for a smile
I will have succeeded
And I have
Just as others
Of my kind
Have
I feel like I lost you yesterday.
Perhaps I overstepped
Some as-yet unestablished boundary
between Trust
and MisTrust
Between winning cooperation
and losing fear and anger
competing trepidations,
Like we tripped
over a fuzzy
dis-establishing line,
Unarticulated landmine
I am still not explicitly aware of
where, exactly,
it lies
We lie together
and yet apart
InBetween winning Trust
cooperatively co-invested
in not not losing active DisTrust
competitively co-divesting
re-individuating private
apartheid EgoSystems
Both encultured,
but separately developed,
by human natured
pathologically privileged
standing apart
from healthy
gospel winning wealthy
ecosystemically restoring
our bilateral peace
within polypathic EarthJustice,
CoPassionate winners of cooperative Peace
with intent to remain regenerately co-invested,
healthy days and safe nighttime dreamers,
happy.
My active mistrust
in-between noticing growing
feeling fear of having lost you
and an even narrower way
toward winning nondualistic co-acclimation,
inviting cooperative
democratically healthy dialogue
devoid of degenerative fear of losing
what was never mine to autonomously own
and defend
with autocratically unhealthy debate
against tomorrow's even greater wounds.
This is war
Babies just got killed
No justice
For the innocents
Deadly bombs
Blood throughout the streets
Criminals
Are ubiquitous
Poor babies
Are executed
What a shame
The truth is handcuffed
Yet, we want
Everlasting peace
North and South
No justice
West and East
There’s no peace
And yes, no justice
Bloody streets
Civilians are killed
No cease fire
Stop the injustice
The devils
Are roaming the streets
Bombardments
Are ubiquitous
Where is God
In this brouhaha?
Stop fooling
The whole universe
Stop the lies
No democracy
It doesn’t rhyme
With evil
But hypocrisy
Does not rhyme
Either with Hell
Stolen land
Is not an award
A reward
Is complicated
We want
Everlasting peace
By no means.
Copyright© January, 2024, Hebert Logerie, All Rights Reserved
Hébert Logerie is the author of several poetry books.
I might feel grand
aspiring to omnipotent
omniscience
Whereupon omnipresence
might feel less necessary,
or even possible,
or desirable
In a secularized
reduced
dissociated apartheid,
sacred Us v sinful Them
An omnipotently inflammatory place
for every Other individual thing
and all Other routine
and orthodox Things,
Omnipresent capital events
in anonymously rational
linear
fundamentally dualistic frames
Either sacred Me
or secularized You
will win our antagonistic win/lose
evolving worldview news
Preferably reduced from
supremely anthro-privileged
down deep into
my ego's highest omnipotent potential
best win/win omniscience sacredly encircled
to ubiquitously favor
least global cost
and most localized efficient
ego/eco healthcare
resonant balance
In a way not omnipotently possible
nor omnipresently invited
nor yet omnisciently compassioned
If only we were more adept
at losing win/lose
and playing win/win
Gods and Goddesses,
OmniPresent Icons
OmniPotent Dancers
OmniScient Muses
Inviting sacred Gaian EcoFeminist spaces,
omnisciently omnipotent places,
unconditionally disregarding
LeftBrain Iconic Narks
Phallic Idols,
profit prophets
for Narcissists Unanimous.
Twenty-two
and our School Boards
are hoppin
Madly divided
'bout race
and white saving face
in-between fashion shoppin.
Dear Red and Blue
School Board Candidates,
Regarding Critical Race Theory
that ignores our own lack
of multiculturing experience,
Perhaps a primally significant reason
we have issues
discussing racial divisions
throughout historical seasons
of revision
Textbooking Straight White Patriarchal treasons
against EarthTribe's polycultural humanity,
Sacred celebrating multicultural divinity
once felt as synergetic
universal Beauty,
Continues to divide
and conquer
our best LeftBrain schooled dominions,
Is because rich violent red
patriotic bloodshed
is difficult to own
within our own fascist
unmatriarchal histories
Of capitalized ownership
and encultured Earth corrupting
supremely anthro-worshiping
lack of healthy eco/theological
green stewardship
through co-empathically felt
relationship.
Red candidates predict
Critical Race Theory
becomes a cynical prescription
for an inevitable future
of win/lose
zero-sum unfolding
Continuing Business As Usual
White versus Black
reverses White,
While Blue candidates refocus
on Critical Race personal experiences
of historical individuals
investing in divested
separated
divided communities,
privileged versus unprivileged
polarized nations,
degenerate climates
of active distrust
in our apartheid studied past,
Not to prescribe an inevitable future
of rightwing supported hate,
but to describe our win/lose racist past
To inform a therapeutic win/win potential future
humanely balanced,
multiculturally healthy
for our democratic
planetary future.
Twenty-two
and our School Boards
are hoppin
Mad
divided 'bout race
and white saving face
in-between fashion shoppin.
Well, your Mama Eartha's rich
and your Papa's Sun
shines bright enlightenin,
So, hush co-despisin,
don't you,
won't you try?
Johannesburg—
city of lights, city of hunger,
city where the pavements gleam with promise
yet the shadows whisper of broken men.
I have walked your streets,
robbed three times beneath your crumbling towers,
and I asked myself—
Why does crime sing so loudly here?
South Africa, my home,
you are a fatherless land.
Eighty-five out of every hundred children
grow up without their fathers—
a generation cut from its roots,
drifting like leaves in a storm.
When the family falls,
discipline dies.
When fathers vanish,
sons become soldiers of chaos
and daughters are bartered in the alleys of despair.
Crime is not just crime—
it is business to the system,
a design written in hidden ledgers,
a profit carved from our blood.
I have studied the pattern.
Memphis, Tennessee—
the same story,
the deliberate breaking of the Black home.
For when you shatter the family,
you shatter the future.
And a people without a future
are easy to rule.
But hear me now—
no nation can rise on broken discipline.
Japan knows it. China knows it.
Work without moral strength is dust.
An economy without virtue is a corpse,
dressed in gold, stinking beneath the sun.
Our past is a wound still bleeding.
The land remembers—
its soil soaked in the blood of miners,
its air still trembling from the whips of apartheid.
Violence has sunk into the very bones of this country,
and that energy has not yet been cleansed.
Until wealth flows like rain—
not dammed by White hands,
not trickled to Black hands—
the storm will not end.
Poverty is not just poverty—
it is the stripping of dignity,
the denial of human worth.
And if the rich refuse to listen,
if the government continues to drink
while the children starve,
South Africa will rise in fire.
This land will not remain governable.
For the heartbeat of Johannesburg is breaking,
and when the heart breaks—
the whole body will collapse.
Johannesburg,
you are still my city.
But your gold drips with sorrow,
and your beauty is dying before my eyes.
wild fires on Table Mountain
spread their ugly flames onto
the University centre of learning
old books in the ancient library
smouldering ashes of bygone wisdom
student quarters burnt just the same
nature does not discriminate or does it
when readers fall prey to the elements
of destruction in temporal knowledge
that some things will never be the same
scorched they gather what was not to be
reach out to quaint philosophers for truths
but the pages grant furious fodder
link tinder wood they light up for once
they have the limelight in times of ignorance
some say at least it was not the colonialists' fault
flint stones made radiant sparks long before
and the Chinese invented firecrackers
way before the British doped them in opium
a sterling idea of potent delirious subjugation
others weigh in and claim it was provenance
or politician’s corruption and underfunding
of the local emergency services or even
lack of water and evidence of climate change
but one way or other resides some Apartheid
it was Heinrich Heine who pointed out clearly
that once they burn books humans will follow
and it may have been more than a cigarette
that ignited the bush veldt as a reminder
while conspiracy theories keep infernos alive
21st April 2021
SOUL BIRTH : 71 HORSTLEY STREET, DISTRICT SIX
Swathed in golden fleece
White light dancing
Cigarette smoke twirls
Waters break and gush
Bright as the nearby ocean
To say hello to the midwife
Preparing the birthing table
A violet spirit comes
A birthing through channels and layers
The room becomes vast
Souls linger about
Radiant and receiving
Onto the Earth Dimension
Task complete
Melancholy sits here too
Cradling the unknown
Too delicate to hold
Waves dance in rain and white wind
Ice cold separated by time
Here I sit in a District in the South
Watching myself being born
And red blood
Flows…
©GhairoDanielsPoetry&Song +-1980s
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[ This is one of the poems I wrote on my experience of Forced Removals from District Six, South Africa under the Apartheid Government. Nine of the poems are published in the Testament : District Six Memories, Thoughts and Images /edited by Martin Greshoff/ Attic Press 2021. This is the first of the set. Watch this space for more poems on Forced Removals ]