If you have to say something, use your words.
Poems selected by Elizabeth Taderera (Poet & Writer)
Poetry has been helping people express their culture, beliefs, and dreams for eons. In biblical times, King David uses poetry to express his love for the Creator, and to lament the hardships his people endured. During the civil unrest in America, poets like Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, and Gil Scott-Heron energized social movements, and taught us so much about what it means to be “Black”. Even today, Africans are using their words to shed a new light on God, Africanness, and Spirituality — amidst the backdrop of #BlackLivesMatter, #OperationDudula, and #WakandaForever.
SOURCE
Motswana creative entrepreneur, Singer, award winning Curator, Writer & Poet. She is the founder of Bold Poetry Sessions – an online curated platform for Batswana poets. Her poems have been published in Strange Horizons(US), Brittle Paper(UK), Words Dance Publishing, The Machinery India, Praxis Magazine, Olongo Africa, and 20:35 Anthology by African poets.
God
Is found in the tired eyes of dreamers,
In soft bodies that have gathered their rhythms.
Within a cloud made of sage smoke,
In the sacredness of laughter and tears.
Words
Are Holy ground,
Worshiped by tongues that invoke them.
They coil our blood
Into living things.
Love
Is a prayer mat
For everything that needs healing.
For all things finding themselves.
We are ripples on a long river.
Yet we fear the ocean that births us.
GOD IS NOT AFRICAN
BY ALEX GWAZE
Zimbabwean Curator, Conceptual Artist & Educator. His the founder of MUD & Co and his writings have been published in academic journals. Some of his artworks have been exhibited in group exhibitions at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe and the Centre for African Studies Gallery. Lex has also directed TV shows and assisted the development of films that have appeared on DSTV and ZTV.
God is not African,
I’ve seen the pictures,
On many African walls.
God is not African,
Hear he passed over the Jews
And killed all the first born sons of Egypt.
God is not African.
Americans say they had God on their side when they merked the natives.
In God we trust was written on their money.
God is not African,
Missionaries brought his son to our soils (on a boat).
Claimed the fauna, animals, land — and left with our people in chains (builders of the new world)!
For King and Country.
God save the Queen.
God is not African,
I saw him on TV.
Just listen to these men.
I am a God, we are bigger than Jesus, I’m more gifted than God – but
First I would like to thank God.
If God is African
What are blessers?
What are tides, prophets?
Sing and prosper my troubled followers.
Blasphemy!
Let us open our Bibles.
I don’t know a lot, but I know
Dust is not God.
God left.
God bless our holes!
THEY CANNOT CURL
BY FOREST
Zambian Creative and Poet who is well versed in the art of Spoken Word. She writes about the negative side of the human condition — the depression and other ugly things in the world — and wraps them up in a way that doesn’t try to explain them, just acknowledge them.
Too many times,
Through too many histories,
People have stood before me and tried to tell me,
The way my hair reaches for the stars is not divine.
They can not curl their minds around the perfection that is its existence,
They call it too kinky to rest a crown on,
So they say it doesn’t deserve the throne.
They can’t run their fingers through it so they say it doesn’t deserve respect.
But do You really expect me to believe you?
Do you think you can convince me that
the angels do not double loop their halos around their kinky crowns to keep their buns secure?
Or that their mahogany skin does not echo glory and catch the effervescence of heaven.
Are you going to tell me that their sweat did not burn holes in the galaxy
As they dipped their feet in the milky way.
That angels do not rock their afros as they sing praise.
And You can not tell me that the last straw
The devil himself placed was not a bleached blond strand.
At the creation of Adam he suggested there was sin imbedded in the kinks.
Who is this boy forcing on a heel that doesn’t fit?
Didn’t he throw fists at angels when he crop dusted opinions
On how Jesus was too dark for history.
Wasn’t he the same person who left blond hair on the golden throne
And laughed when they bowed to worship it?
What is divinity if not a road map home?
What is glory if not a source of sustenance?
Tell me again, there is no glory here, no divinity.
Say it to my face.
I will reply, the curl of each straight,
Is praise and glory to the 6th day of creation
A whole day it took to construct.
Man dressed with an ebony galaxy – shaken of star dust and infinite cosmos.
The cover image is a mixed-media collage artwork by Brooklyn-based artist Patrick Dougher, also known as Godbody 10. Available at: https://www.ifemichelle.com/2019/11/25/understanding-the-complexities-of-ancestral-healing-and-veneration/
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