Verse for Biko and Tosh

It is only 2013.

We are already dead.

You, have already lived.

How does one make peace with a dead god?

Is the respect we pay you

a substitute for a pulse?

Have we forced you to live on

because we are dying?

Why, then, do we talk to

the dead as if they are present?

Is not your absence heavier than

any presence could be?

I am a glass of carbon flesh

filled with questions.

There are words.

They stream in and out when

we chant your poems.

We, the black soil, are mined

and mined until we are gem-less.

All the sparkle exposed and polished above ground.

Tell me, reader and listener.

Both of you, tell me.

Have you ever watched a cow

being killed?

Its beating heart exposed in the cavity of its gargantuan chest.

The entrails gouged out by bloodied hands.

Hung up for exploitation.

Have you seen us?

I, a grain of Black sand, surf

the tide of toil and trouble.

These are the times that try our

everything

and find us guilty of being our selves.

These times, they shoot and jail us for words.

They blow us into a furnace.

Make glass out of us.

We, the Black soiled, have

to think about the curse of transparency.

Of being seen into.

Exposed for exploitation.

How can something so clear be so dirty?

Must we rewrite the past to understand it?

Who is the future about,

if not about us?

I would like to dip my hands into the soil of history.

Find your disembodied teeth where

they buried them.

Pull the bullet from out of your dry skull.

I would like to take the molar

I would like to take the slug.

Wipe the dirt off

And swallow them both.

Must we taste the past to comprehend it?

1976

What do we, the see-through

see in each other?

We who are not allowed to have secrets

or rooms to keep these secrets.

We who have 4 rooms for 16 family members.

The autocrat asks:

Have you written enough, Writer?

Have you sung enough, Singer?

This is a bullet.

It will answer the questions for

you.

Shut up.

Your mouth is a shameful orifice.

Your hand is a rude gesture

to the peace our country holds dear.

We have patriots who specialize

in silencing dissent.

Shut up!

You, write what we do not like.

Our Whites only parade needs no Black rain.

The reign of the Bantu is

A joke we tell at the braai.

Mouth laughs.

Hand slaps boep.

1987

it is

It is a good day to murder revolution.

We know where it

sleeps.

We know where its heart

beats.

We will forget that you spoke.

No, no! I cannot forget.

I know that a head

In a cold dank cell

Is averse to being beaten

repeat, repeat, repeatedly

on a cold dank floor.

How can I forget when I am the memory?

History belongs to those who remember.

But still, in the eyes of  we, the ruler,

It is a good day for murder.

We know where the revolution goes to pray.

We know where it goes to sing redemption songs.

Who dares to fight European might?

Who dares speak against The Vatican

or Buckingham Palace?

We, defenders of the faith, will write a new motto:

He who dares, dies.

Enforce, enforce, enforce

with unimaginable force

Upon those who dare soil the name of our royal dame.

But you and I, those seated and

standing for verse.

We know that the future can be worse

if we let it.

Let us chant until out vocal chords hate us.

Let us do this revolting ritual of

revolution.

Cycle back to the past and drag it back to our present.

We can survive this.

It is only 2013.

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1. braai: South African term for barbeque

2. boep: a colloquial South African term for a potbelly