BLACKNESS

I have seen madness, the hysterical insanity, anger and the naked terror of the smartest minds of my generations past and mine ,shattered from gunshots that blinded the cold and fires that broke about in the black of night,

That left their blood cold red, sinking into the rotten timber of their ghetto homes, screams and yells of their young filling the air as though it were wind

As their brains drained, smart and white like cloud, into angry yellow flames that burst out painting colored streets white, of men and women that started revolutions in their beds

So, their sons that survived the kill, prayed and drained their brilliance in their holes, where they sat getting high on trees and then pills, jazzing with god, while they forged lines to make music that you call Hip Hop.

And they did, and they sang and they wrote and sang and wrote and filled streets of their knowledge, dirtying ears with their poetry  ,their  idioms. their words were read, their voices were heard as they learned and wrote and learned and spoke and learned and read and they learned and they became like them, spoke like them, ate like them, but they remained the same, their slave selves ,colored and tattered and dark, they remained black, they were Americans and Africans and both ,they were both these things, but one

But still, they had to crawl in shadows of their for fathers, walking scared in grandmother night to not get shot in the legs by angry white folks who had fought the war,

Who loitered on street corners lit with blinking neon lights ,then draping themselves in caps and hood gears ,trying to shut the blinding light of moon  out ,but still angry flashlights blinded them ,making them crash into monsters of men bodied with armor ,disgorging  their own odium for blackness,

Who then shot them in the legs as they had feared ,and also pissed in their mouths laughing then so high that angels could listen ,who then vanished in no where ,but were there. while incomparable streets and neighborhoods  and dogs and men stood there ,blind ,there, as though waiting to see a shooting star in the winter midnights

And still stood as their sons and daughters and and wives and brothers sang Kumbaya in negro English, as they dropped their brothers’ corpses into muddy graves, in negro cemeteries or were they, causing them to slip, then grabbing onto brotherly arms, who they wished were, and they got guns, then their patience and their peace dissolved there ,remaining in the air ,stoning their hearts to ice, burning cigarette marks on their arms ,staying up nights illuminated ,then hallucinating of death, and death and blood and guns and then blood again ,and nothing then.

Then looking for a hazard, to kill, to be able to breath out the anger and sorrow for their dead brothers, that sang songs that were never heard, or were heard that were never bought, or were bought but were never cashed, so they were broke

Who entered bars with knives stabbing white folks in the limbs, and slitting their throats making them bleed on expensive marble counters, staining also leather stools where they sat giggling with their girlfriends?

Who they pardoned just to have sex with them behind counters and on toilet sits with no condoms making them pregnant, birthing then leaving babies on subways.

Who also lounged hungry, starving in restaurants holding onto left over foods for themselves and their idiot brothers who had graduated but were still stupid,

Who they shot in the legs trying to rob liquor stores with toy guns

Who also spent nights watching  porn, while jacking onto tissue paper that they shoved underneath their seats, where they sat playing video games with their mates,

Who hiccupped overly, regurgitating on themselves because they drank defunct beer nights afore ,trembling and then fainting on naked floor, having cigarette peaces and ash, and  syringes that they used to shoot stuff in their veins, eluding the last gysm of consciousness

Who also had naked girls pacing around searching for their knickers that were anywhere, who in the black of night went out whoring through the half lit streets of Harlem and Brooklyn and Trenton and Boston, went down on ministers and beggars and then kids,

Who got herpes and   aids and kept silent, sitting then on their bruised asses ,snorting on white and growing thin and slim, and sick. Then coughing and sneezing and spiting and smelling and dying, they were supposed to die, and they died.

Whose husbands never ever slept on them but did on their daughters, who ran away then to Africa, to home, what you used to be, with their bastard babies, hating men and loving women, birthing riots in Uganda, which led to murders that were never investigated because the police was busy making babies and the speakers in their parliaments ,sleeping, and snoring and fattening on high salaries and malwa and fried chicken from Nandos,and pork in makindye,and the rest that wont be said now

Whose daughters lost their virginities at 13 and gladly, to house helps and uncles that loved to visit at night, who thought that there legs were great, who thought their dresses were too short to be dresses, and they thought so too, so they removed the dresses

Whose sons screwed maids from kitchen counters after they ate brownies at their parties that they held in the wake of dawn, also drinking absolutes making them to see Muslim angels crying, and sobbing, and reading the bible, in Chinese and then Spanish, who then disappeared there, again

Whose fathers screwed their friends, who were their classmates in tinted monster cars, which had tinted glass and weird plates, these were daughters of their secretaries, who also screwed them in sauna rooms, for favors and more pay. They still do this

Whose mothers, whose wives pay for sex from bartenders, and chafers and gym coaches, because their husbands never touch them, or they forgot to, because they were too busy working, I meant ”Wanking” on Chinese pornography in expensive hotel suits, after knowing that their daughters’ friends, who were also their girlfriend were dripping, and sometimes, they were lying, most times they lie……………TO BE CONTINUED

Black poet,aka Murray shiraz.

This poem is authored by Murray Shiraz ,the manager operations of Open Mic Uganda. CLICK HERE TO READ HIS FULL INTERVIEW