Scream: A Brief History Of Oppression Poem by Martin Lochner

Scream: A Brief History Of Oppression



*7*

apartheid codified, promulgated and entrenched
diseased act of our leaders to neutralize
and destroy any neurotic threat
fearing to become slaves they enslave a nation

boers exchanging khaki
for cotton lounge shirts and polyester suits
enjoying the image of the master in their gilt-edged mirrors.
black framed frowning officials zealously planning group areas
and keeping the best prime property for the new found afrikaner elite

one morning coming into district six
with earth moving machines
the army and the police smilingly
do their enforcement work
relocating complete communities
and planting them in shacks in the
dust and grime of the cape flats.

fair-skinned coloureds applying for id cards
officials testing their ethnicity by asking them to say thirteen
failing the tests they relegate them to garden ‘boys’
and kitchen girls for the rest of their natural lives
smiling subserviently for a sjambok hiding
and weekly pay that consists of half a litre harvest wine
living on ‘the book’ they never will repay the debt
to fill their stomachs and to raise their children.

neither black nor white they centre
on the humiliation that they exist
creations of prohibited enjoyment
after inter racial copulation of boer and bantu.

never really supporting the boer mandate
never integrated with the fate of the blacks

floating about and fitting the puzzle
never finding the piece that will connect their identity
in the bigger scope of things

feeling the desolation of indifference and subservience
teenagers become despondent, forming gangs
drugging, fornicating and killing themselves
into a stupor and hormonal hysteria
crying in bloody t-shirts that they also want
to be doctors, pilots and engineers

hopeless coloured boys robbing their elders on the railway bridge
sweet sixteen mommies
with clinging snot-nose babies found stealing in shoprite
dixie boys and american gangs fighting
the system against each other and afrikaner cops
coming to despatch them from this earth

wastelands of people staying in subsidized pigeon holes
overcrowded cubicle flats of cockroach misery
blocking the sewage
tripping the electricity

breaking fathers’ spirits
ogling the depths of a beer bottle
emptying a week’s livelihood
gurgling it down at the station
going home and handing small change to feed the kids

breaking mothers’ desperate hearts
working victoria street fishnet style
or getting it behind from dry dock china sailors
feeding her whelps after a night’s paid passion

rubbish collectors singing operettas
maids reciting homers iliad
boys replicating god’s finger
holding a nokia on council walls
all going to a bloody sorry waste
of humane opportunity
genius is skin deep
and the bronze on you does not fit buddy

power never shares
the english taught us well

psycho barbwire dividing:

the master and the slave
the victor and the defeated
the rich and the poor

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
READ THIS POEM IN OTHER LANGUAGES
Close
Error Success