LESEGO RAMPOLOKENG
Gwala Reloaded
1
We are being Other than
Nothing abstract in the Mthuli ka Shezi death-train tracks
Thus I pledge allegiance to the Gwala Fanonian concept :
‘literature should not be the refrigerated food of the bourgeois’
But) to service of the world’s wretched
Content fit form survive liberal critic storm
dictates WORD crawl in slime-line
humming through slaughter (Ondaatje apologies in a clown mask
Chapman-esque ‘ Soweto Poetry’ stickered arse fake formulation
standing at dead intellect ceremony
demanding-&-supplying (commanding, if we talk essentials
factory-line conveyer-belt run disposable syntheticised township aesthetic
race hatchet created sick & sickle cells heavy-mental pickled brain
(mediocre clone farmhands uniform imagination bovine
Down the maggot food-chain
Black historic wounds fester brain-blasted gangrened past the green
Beneath the master-stand-in jackboot
Forget manicure wave amputated fists impotence manifest
as hammers death-pound chain-blocks
split open unlock Malombo spirit-sounds
bound free beyond where first strange fruits swung odd Southern trees
from thina to Nina race-shuttle time&space travel
2
Hisses hiding behind kisses hugs given to hide bugs
Consumptive government first the rejection then post-demise
hypocrite celebration elite debauched abandonment
cos ‘ maverick a strike’ inna Finley Quaye chant down deception
the power-block’s spiritual putrefaction
beyond Hail Marys & Our Fathers absolution
be still (peace to Regina Mundi & Hail the Black Theological
blessed liberatory sermon AMEN
now Blackness is….endangered species
3
Devil Thesis
First dehumanize next extinguish the guilt-light
flip the mind-switch perverse render the universe white
conjure-create slave original & duplicate
lymphatic on the world’s margins
black man hunt literal
the animals are rabid in the capital hole
force of the habitat the asset-people
tear-sludge cry Black so much it leaves ink-trails down the face
to write Black….pen-dig to the land’s entrails & beyond
deeper than blood-minerals
4
Some hair turn soap
Others flowers on sycamore trees
Land pillage mind-rape
On tan castration dreamscapes
They melanin phallus obsess
Sharpen blades on sterile testicular whet-stones
5
Evil scales guilt measurement
Inhumanity feed
Murderous innocence
Hell hath a story to tell
But) we are lived reality
Of) how Silence breed cruelty
slashes conscience’s arteries
6
They WORD demarcate taste arbitrate
Standardise their limitations judgement sit—-
Sentinels for their west (& worst
The Gwala question stands :
‘what is poetic about that?’
Human flesh fertilise the boerewors jungle
Sharpeville’s blood flowed in flood down the bulleted street
& dripped thick into the water reservoir
racist heart-tongues lapped it darker red than vampire fangs
worm-victuals
(fire-dam…
they dangled Mickey Mouse trinket- freedoms off the edge)
split butt-cheek prophetic
Mind shrink breath constrict cardiac strangle rusty braincell-rattle
freak abattoir scene
system necrophiliac rick relish
‘unpoetic to write that’ -said the civil academic
… language is a race hiding place
7
Of incest bloodlines & lineages in-bred
Tear-songs at execution gone mortar-fears
How murder-farms harvest freedom
& souls rich at rest
Human immolation
Massacre force-fires in Babi Yar
Truth rings where conscience sings Victor Cassaus
‘Cuba si Yanqui non!’ Sierra Madre man-mountain
UP against Caucasus vermin
Vo Nguyen Giap Old Man Ho
Vietnam come alive in poem-form
The Black Word Bantu Ghost
Nicolas Guillen the poet is a revolution
For some the war-zones others….healing-fields
Narcotics for lullabies
Liberation WORD-music make Hendrixian children
Parkered heroes
Clock tick time call villain slime-slink crawl towards a Humpty fall
The rhyme is on the toilet-wall.
8
Concentration-camp manufacture gas-chamber creation
From Namibia to Belsen a supremacist sickness
Who make play & game of slay & slaughter
Then reap negotiated yields
Human stock market shares through the rafters
As on the slave-auction block
Civilization is a barbaric shock
Life not linear experience non-chronologic
Why attempt freeze the Black Consciousness moment in time cryogenic?
Black is a Forever Burn Eternal Flame
Its poetry a distillation of existence
We engrave that in our genetics.
