Called Brown

We have our use

Not just victims of rank abuse

Not just profiles to adhere to

And foddered failure to wade through

We were great once, at community

A common enemy forging a unity

Better at creating a fighting chance

Flirting with fate, taking death for a dance

Perfect at looking out for each other

Till the powers-that-be found it a bother

And set out to coldly annihilate

Obliterate, devastate,eradicate

Destroy, throw down, bulldoze

All that from the soil grew and rose

Removed the heart of a people, and still do

The only be we know how to

SP

Struggling now for traction

Nursing disabling distraction

Dangerously delay a reaction

To systemic disregard and inaction

Trapped in a demand for validity

A justification for inability

For feeding the privileged proclivity

Self-preservation the priority

Seeded with doubt and dissemination

Dancing unwelcome at the occasion

Reft of any claim or proprietary

Bordering and fringing society

Victim to theft and appropriation

Left discarded amid protestation

Talked about, spoken to, conceptualised

But listened to a right unrealised

SP

Intended as borders between races

The warning implicitly marking smiling faces

Smiling not because they have cause to

But work with what you have, the make do

Laughter as communication

As protest, as therapy, as identification

Mock the trials and tribulations

Scorn the sad, sick manifestations

Of scarred sons and violated daughters

Leeched veins and slaughtered quarters

Dulls the burn of stunted growth

Names the one that asks an oath

Loading up a rickety shelf

Unmarked, with no acknowledgement of self

That so much of their struggle and strife

Is for someone else’s better life

The legacy of what was done to them

Planted without root or stem

SP

The dance now something orchestrated

From origin and reason separated

The satin bloom a marketing device

Sunglasses and umbrellas a dear price

The hat placed firmly in the hand

Collecting to make grander the grand

The ones who speaks, demands and claims

Still playing those greedy games

Selling souls for shiny beads

Gorge on ego’s wants and needs

The bigger picture torn to shreds

War for peace on burning beds

Inflated sense of self-importance

Blurs the eye to cruel contortions

Finds the calling away from ruin

Strains of a familiar tune

SP

How do you make an ox from clay

Where was your father at the end of the day

What made you think you had a due

When you are here to be prescribed to

Why would you reach for what’s denied

With evidence of how the broken-hearted cried

Could it be that there is fair

In how you deserve your measly share

Do you bring a game of character

Win against the moral barometer

Do you prostrate yourself before the Earth

And let the order of the day say your worth

Or do you fight, believing you’re right

Not a worse enemy, the approaching light

Struggling with sense, and the confusion

Of never being part of resolve or solution

SP

How though call this a diaspora

When unacknowledged even amongst the Claura

Still practicing that old ‘survive Apartheid Cape Town’

By making sure on the ladder there’s always someone further down

Someone more likely to fall victim

Less options, the chances of victory more slim

Ambition a thing of ‘getting out’ or escape

What permeates all as it does with rape

Stark judgement of attitude and behaviour

Blunt assessment demanding villain or saviour

Donned in a demeaning cloak of disdain

Oblivious to cause or context or pain

Schooled to protect here, there to blame

On repeat, even though things stay the same

And every day lost just a little bit more

Straying further away from where once was a door

SP

What is it that you do with what you know

Whom do you tell to, where do you show

Rake up the hurt, expose the pain

Yet again, the hope to explain

Why all this beauty, all this free

Means different things to you and me

That pictured in your postcard city

Is never the shadows highlighting the pretty

Never the distorted, dark lining

Against the celebratory canvas shining

That happy dance, that beaming smile

The willingness to go the extra mile

The pretence of those serving the upper

That civilised veneer when singing for your supper

And knowing that this insight gains you nought

Unless it was further dismay you sought

SP

Mark, the situation is not for your discourse

No need for showings of regret and remorse

The absolution and diminishing complete

With string and bow bound, replete

The whole, broken puzzle reduced to a piece

No jig, no saw, no map to a peace

No home, no hearth, and so no direction

Nothing to treasure that isn’t projection

No story, no tale, that speaks the obvious clue

We are here in a created milieu

Which now is scampered from, and felt sorry for

Abhorrence at what especially women and children endure

But carefully position the lack and loss

As self-inflicted and not the governor’s cross

So that when talking about heaven coming down

It really means excluding those in Afrikaans called brown

SP