For Xenophobia Victims Poem by Victor Adex

Let me not wear father's name
On this muddy capes of injustice
Now that I know why the rainbow
Never speaks black

On the great promise of greener pastures
We left the silks of familiarity to grapple
On the waters of a starved kaleidoscopic desert
Little did we know that green grass breed greedy snakes

No mask can hide the fangs of this genocide against self
Anarchy should not seduce us by wearing darker skins
Though the lands aren't ours, and maybe never will be
but the blood from the sweats of our toils cannot be yours

History barks of the dark desolate nights
When the least of us held your hand in audacious solidarity
Let us not recall how the rivers of motherland
Flowed in blood to heed your call within apathetic neighbors

Let us not seek friendship on the generosity of fleshless bones
Maybe that love went with the wailing souls
That bear your brunt on our backs
Maybe that kindness is requited only in the afterlife of posterity

How dare a stranger suckle on your mother's breast
And fatten himself at your expense; your indolence
Gather your brains as sacrifices to your king
As he does the thinking for you

The Zulu's are coming
Like salvage beasts on rampaging attack
To make my tongue a truth for vultures
And my carcass a nuisance to have demanded equity

The rainbow has no white for peace today
Has no black for brotherhood tonight
Only red for tapping wine to the gouge of death
And blue; a forlorn sacrilege to royalty of africaness