konye ori

We are the Africans
We rose with the sun and fell with the rain,
Stood with the hills
And danced with the forest-
...

Once the color of the night,
graced in starry skies

The full moon left little to wonder
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Raised by the bare bones of nature’s grace,
my home held hands with the feral forest,
where nature hid her gold.
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Was hope here only when the Amazon queen Nzhinga
and Nehanda, the Mbuya, of Zimbabwe fought to shield us from slave ships?

Was pride gone after Yaa Asantewa addressed the chiefs
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In the sky, the clouds gathered,
and earth exhaled.
And like a tree in the autumn winds my heart swayed.
I trembled at the darkness that fell
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He had shared a bed with success,
Heaven-kissing hills bowed at his feet.
He had grown taller than height,
his head scraped the sky when he strode.
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A smile; rooted in the soul,
Curving around the heart like a vine
Sprouted in the face of a baby drunk with joy
And in those eyes in high spirits
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Every night- was another winter night
And the artic glacier was my bed
It took for ever -for those nights to break into day.
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I lay there on that rat-shredded raffia mat;
my thoughts running through the bush paths
to meet my dreams at the bottom of the Iroko tree.
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Life is beating the Ayara-Ekomo drum-
And I am dancing like the priestess of the river
possessed by the mermaid spirit of Anansa-
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With our roots firmly in the soil-
we shall grow like the Iroko tree, to the pride of the forest
In the plague of our night-
we shall cry like crickets and ribbit like frogs
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Will South Africans let 27 years of Madiba Mandela’s
life wash down the Orange River like an orange peel?

Will the naked witty words that land on the Afro-beats of
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I am from a land;
a land where blood is shed over air and water.
From a land where rain and shine enter our shelters uninvited
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As night falls, the cool breeze comes; humming a grey tune
and the craven evening sun stealthily seeks refuge behind the clouds.

As night falls, twilight betrays light.
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I want to be like the Cassia tree-
The Cassia tree by the river side
I want to be like the Cassia tree
firmly rooted in the soil inside
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Our hearts pumped folly,
but folly to us was glory
The sign read “unto the pharynx of death, ”
but to our shaded eyes it was “life at its brim.”
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I am vice, conceived by the
presumed power of the mandrake
I am the fruit that avarice and manners had produced
Yet desperation calls me son
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With his hands tied behind his back
with Legislative-ropes of twine
and his lips sealed with black Judiciary-paper tape
the Fatherland is at the mercy of his Executive-captors.
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It is as though,
that black shield that once protected us
from the spears of dearth
is rusted and shattered-
...