Thursday 26 August 2010

Adoption

1st draft of a piece that came to me this morning, following a TV programme last night on chidren from Haiti (many with parents) being adopted by French people

Adoption

Let me deny your parents
The resources to care for you,
Even though I could support them
If I really wanted too.

Let me imagine your voodoo evil
Was not your West African heritage,
And baptise you into the religion that
Enslaved your people.

Let me change your name
And indoctrinate your young mind
That white is the colour of your saving grace,
Yet your ancestors had to fight us in the first place.

Let me talk to your mother
To understand your loves and wants,
And watch her cry as I prise you
From her loving hugs.

Let me justify my need for offspring
Of a fashionable colour.
I’ll look so good in my community
As other white people stop to talk to me.

Let me touch your beautiful hair that I’m seeing.
We’ll laugh together as I try to pass
An afro comb through mine that’s fair,
Or maybe I’ll just make yours resemble European.

I can teach you of your culture,
While you live in mine.
I’ll teach you to treat all as equal
But you’ll be special, not like other black people.

Let me be that band aid for your happiness
And let wounds fester
As I put my needs first
And ignore solutions that could be better.

Come here my child.
Dry your tears and be loved.
Welcome to your new western nation.
Let’s pretend you’re not black and Haitian.

Tuesday 24 August 2010

Mother land


Mother land
by
Sloetry



Many years ago
My African ancestors strolled
From the mother land.
A band
Of men, women and children
Whose looks over time and descendents
Paled to cope with cold.
And as we weathered,
My people became coloured.
We settled many places
And became many shades of white races.
Our character carried this pioneer spirit that didn’t recognise
The rights of others. We named this trait “civilised”.
Our link to nature lost,
We invented religion at the cost
Of forgetting the earth
Is bound in spiritual worth
With She, our ancestral Queen, the Great Mystery.
Instead, we worshipped ourselves and called our faith His-story.
We proclaimed a God in our own image
And invented in Him our desire for rage.
Ignoring His son’s life of Peace. Without shame
We bestowed gifts upon ourselves in His name.
Gifts of green, but not of nature.
Instead the colour of ink on white-like-us-paper.
Our beliefs in God, ourselves and greed
Were able to justify that others should bleed.
Journeys began across land and sea.
Found old places and called it “discovery”.
Indigenous peoples viewed as a different class,
Yet we hadn’t recognised ourselves from our past.
What should have been a family reunion
Instead became butchery after Sunday communion.
Ships that should have united all in ancestry
Stole kin from lands and transported them to slavery.
Spread Christian beliefs across African nations,
A Caucasian Jesus inventing racial discrimination.
Beauty took form in what was white and European.
De-beautified Queens raped among sugar cane in the Caribbean.
Isolated a people that rose and beat us
So that now we even bus
White tourists onto Haitian segregated sands
Denying distant relatives the riches of their lands,
As the wealthy bathe away from poor,
More Africans hit with an apartheid law.
We created empires that butchered a family,
Then called it a Commonwealth in the name of equality,
But to member states I’m humbly suggesting,
It’s like a child staying with the father who molested him.
Wind back our evolution to the start of the tree.
Truth of the matter would f*ck up the BNP.
From Africa our ancestors were born,
And now, as white, we pass scorn
Over brothers and sisters we don’t view as equal.
When we left our Mother, we were infested with evil.


Of the worlds nearly 7 billion population only some 1 billion people are white (Wikianwers). The same article described the majority of the world's population (nearly 6 billlion people) as "people of colour". Now let me revisit this. Let’s take it back.. Humanity began in Africa and spread around the globe. Europeans turned white because they couldn’t absorb sufficient vitamin D from the lack of sun. So this 15% or so of the earths population changed colour…. So do we need to revisit who is termed "people of colour". If something is different to a norm, is that the basis for when we use adjectives?… something is small if its smaller than normal etc., so if we are applying adjectives to complexion, surely those that are different to the norm should get the adjective….europeans are coloured?

Peace and respect
Sloetry

Thursday 19 August 2010

Aid rage n' see (agency)

If music is the food of love
Then sing to my soul, the dove
Of peace is the only tune we need
To hear. But the world bleeds
Tears instead. Nations
Want donations
Yet they pay for nuclear weapons.
As Haiti waits to be wetted on
In the rainy season and God forbid
Tent cities are got rid
Of by hurricanes. Yes I still call
On every one and all
To give to families still suffering.
But this year has seen me questioning
How my money gets spent.
Is it lining pockets or making a dent
Where it’s most in need.
Parents plead
To help children survive
And we have to act, that can’t be denied.
One to one we’re the people on earth,
Politics and nations have no worth,
They’re just designed to destroy unity
Of our species. The difficulty
Is unravelling our differences. It’s a shame
We can’t seem to embrace each other as the same.
I’ve got to be honest when I saw aid still boxed
On a Port Au Prince runway, the Red made me Cross.
Sending money to the D.E.C.
Now makes me uneasy.
Our responsibility shouldn’t now stop at making that donation.
We have to hound the politicians and aid organisations
To prove accountability for what they’ve got.
We must ignite hope for those they forgot.
Light a fire under government inaction and fan it.
Fight for our one family, on this, our one planet.

Wednesday 11 August 2010

Anonymous Artists


Artists harking on how the system is so wrong.
Blue eyes seeing with vision that’s so strong.
(Yes like mine, but this is the point,
I’m trying to view what should be right from an historical standpoint).

Yet the system you say is so corrupt,
Is what gives you props that’s hyped up.
It’s red lips spitting brown lipped words
And my white ears can’t stand how much it’s heard.

For all the love I see Europeans getting,
The same system is vetting
Success to talent in white packages.
The system treating “black arts” like it’s average.

Like me, you’re a product of European heritage,
And the first thing I suggest is to undo the ravages
Of time that still steals respect from where it’s due.
It’s your inheritance that’s supporting you.

I dedicate this to the artists I’ve seen,
From wordsmiths, beatboxers, singers & MC’s
Whose talent isn’t as respected, promoted and as seen,
As much as the copiers who are European.

Union Jack'd

 
For every one who loves their Queen and country.
Swears allegiance to their white realm.
Honours their army’s achievements and campaign medals.
A name for every battle won on regimental flags (and peoples lost.)

For all who see their soldiers as English pride and glory.
Right wing liberalised lovers who would still send those unlike them back home.
Take note that from one of your vanquished oppressed nations
Came the last living Victoria Cross awarded… to a Grenadian.