I Won’t Forget

I won’t forget,

I can’t!

But I can only piece together,

What I’ve seen,

Felt,

And heard,

With the fragments,
That persist.

I remember,

Lost youth,

And hard childhoods,

All the rejected,

And abandoned,

Of my kind,

My generation.

Even if it’s just me,

I’ll keep the weight up,

And the hate up,

Till you hear me,

I’ll scream!

This is not a battle to lose,

Not now,

Not when we’ve come so far.

How can I forget?

Even with all this regret,

Blurring the vision of my heroes;

My mother, my father, my family, my friends,

My tree,

With Malcom and Steve,

Long rotting in their graves,

Only Tupac,

Could feel our pain,

And the drain,

Of lost youth.

I will remember,

My kind,

The boys on the corner,

Caged into slavery.

My sister’s struggles,

So much more,

In the jungle,

Where we find our trees.

I see them still,

Making monkeys of us,

Ignoring us,

High up in the trees,

Far away from the safe earth,

The land of true liberation,

The land of education and literacy,

The glass ceiling,

With the Rands mounting on every gilded,

Step of the social ladder.

I know this lie,

I know this slavery,

It isn’t much different from before,

Only now,

We’ll learn to ignore both black and white poor,

Cause we’re so blurred with regret,

Our vision can’t hold their gaze,

As we drive by in our metal monstrosities …

Do we fail to see it?

I can’t relinquish my pain,

Because I see it etched on the faces,

Of so many races of babies,

Sick, neglected,

Poor, disaffected,

They all know rejection,

And the lie of unconditional love,

The lie of childhood,

And the lie we’re now expected to act out,

In this cruel human system of men and rules,

Of greed and abuse,

Of treachery and history,

So much slave hate in it!

So I’m keeping my pain,

And I’ll have to accept my anger,

So I can continue to find the way forward,

And keep reminding us,

Like a Sangoma,

Who has to know great pain and will engage with it,

And commit to suffering,

So that he can continue to heal others,

By knowing it!

Don’t ask me why,

All our saints die,

You know,

How Martin Luther King and Brother Malcolm,

Steve and Tupac,

Took the pedestal to voice this pain,

Knowing that the blows and the bullets that would come,

Wouldn’t compare to the pain,

They were already holding inside.

That the bullets would bring relief,

From the misery of their struggle,

Taken from their people,

Into their hearts,

Using pain as fuel,

Using love as energy,

Using hate as defence,

Making the true sacrifice,

To speak the Truth!

That our children still suffer,

And our women still struggle,

Our babies still die,

Of neglect and ignorance,

Living in cages that teach very early that,

Home is a place to escape from,

Home is a place to flee!

And they ask us why?

They say we have weak minds,

They say we don’t know how to live,

That we choose to be this way,

And with every breath,

They breathe life into the fears they put into us,

Through a myriad of brainwashing experiences,

Our minds are lost to the wizard,

A wizardry they are unable to see themselves make!

Or so they claim

But where were they to teach us,

Where were they when our parents,

Had to cower,

In the presence of theirs?

Where were they on June 16^th,

And where were they in ’64,

Where were they in ’49,

Where were they when Steve died?

Do they even know what I’m speaking about?

This is my religion,

And these are my ancestors!

This is my duty,

This is my Way,

This is my path,

To bear testament,

To my experience,

With every honest ounce I can muster!

If I am to preach,

This is my prayer!

To take the pain within

And make healing of it,

Is to know true strength,

How to suffer for the love of others,

Like our mothers and fathers,

Who took the pain,

Who took the humiliation,

Who suffered more so we could suffer less,

These are my ancestors!

My whole membership to this world,

The world of principles and rules,

Seems false,

At every turn,

I see my ghetto boy responses,

Betray my lack of synergy with,

Inclusion in,

This machine!

I feel like a pretender,

In this world,

The world of so-called higher thought,

New theory and old history.

I know my history,

I know all your lies,

Past, present and future,

Sown into the very fabric

That I am forced,

To engage,

To get paid,

To get laid,

Slave!

How can you reject me?

If you never owned me,

And why,

Does your rejection hurt so deep?

Somehow at the core,

Of who I am,

Slave!

Push out those tears!

Push out those fears!

Be Free!

From:

Resurrection:

Reflections, Collections in Anger (2001-2004)