The Animal in Man

They can kill our bodies but not our souls,

This splattered blood isn’t our dreams being

Drained from every essence of what makes us us.
They can sew our lips tight but our voices will always get louder.

The scars, blisters and burns on our necks

Are our pride, a victory to show how we overcame.

Through all this, you see us as all things bad,

Black or White skin; we are all the epitome of the gods.

Beautiful People (Haiku)

Beautiful people

Are life's broken symphonies,

Yet we hear them not.

Brothers and sisters

Forced to say goodbye again,

This time forever.

Beautiful people

lost in a wrath they know not

As we watch them soil.

The young, old and bold,

victims of man's endless greed,

Must strive for this life.

Beautiful people,

They are just that, beautiful

Just like you and me. 

Valley of Woes

Don't ask me why I have become this, this heartless man!?

For I have died a thousands times,

Cried tears that would fill the Nile

And embraced the pain inside like a charm of the darkness,

This life has seen me toll in the sorrows beneath my eternal...

soiled through the smog and forsaken by the sun's warmth

My cause has seen better days,

My heart has been filled with better emotions,

My smile now stretches with the hurt of pretence.

I've lived a million times

Through died in each day I have lived,

What's in a heart when it's pulse is faint without cause to be?

When the dark embrace grips it's bitter claws on you, you'll understand

Why each day is a laborious struggle.

The indignity, the defeat, the culmination of this spoil is overwhelming.  

My Face

My face is all they see, 

They stare and wonder not much,
They see me kind...
And hopeful and everything they want to see.

Sometimes the mirror lies,
My face is a divisive tool that fools,
It has a story, not a neat one but it tells who I am,
My face is not fine yet you look and judge
And fit me in your own little image!

My face is a coincidence,
A yinyang of both good and bad,
I look at it but I fail to see me,
Like the shores of an ocean it changes and loses shape.
But it doesn't change who I am inside...
My face is false and may have no grace,
It may not even hold pride for the person I am.

Sometimes it is as sunken as the stones beneath the waters,
Sometimes it is as high as the clouds and I like it then,
Sometimes it wonders between the line of what makes me me,
Yet through all this, I know that I am who I think I am.

Eternal Wellaway

Poised in its fate,
Thy heart bequeaths
With sheer gloom…
For thy spirit lives
In a fortress touched
With devotion and all
Hex of blessings.

Thy mortal soul tholes
In thorns of whilom tears,
Thine puissant gardyloo of ruth
Bends light shun by the fie suns.
Sith thine fall of grief,
Thy heart knows no love,
Thy soul burns in odium,
Thy mind sees no day.

Shattering sweven,
Broken hope:
Fear gnaws thy joy
And I slumber in its darkness,
With endless pain
Thou wast without a heart
Is what thou hast become.
Thou dost a heart for thee?
Thou be’st a slayer of thee!
Thou aye, thou…
Gaze into thy eyne?
Kiss thy wish with glee!

Are We Free?

The birth of a baby is its freedom

From the confinement of its mother’s womb

And perhaps the limitations of its solitude

And dependence of life on its mother

To speak their tongue

Talk to their god

and live their way…

Is this freedom?

Are we free

When we dream

And hope to be

The wishes of the spirits?

Now and forever we’ll be

Free only when we believe

In life’s own essence:

An illusion of make believe

Which deceives he who believes

That beauty is a façade of lies

And freedom is not a state of mind.

Like sheep we’ll be

Silent with only tears to

Show our lynch’s cry

For a freedom’s rupture

Beyond the world known to man

Where a reality is concealed

And death is a freedom

From the world’s agony.

Is this why sheep doesn’t cry

Before slaughter?

No More

A thousand times my pain has slayed me,
A million times I’ve lost me,
A hundred years I’ve lived trying to be you,
In you I saw a new me, a man of lost cause.
No more pain
No more hurting.
It all ends tonight,
On this cliff of where the gods rest,
I’ll end it all.

Last night I died in my dreams
It is a freedom granted by the angel
Of pain.
As I ask for God to send me an angel,
I also beg to breathe my last.
As I walk this walk of twinges,
I beseech to love on more soul.
No more me
No more tears
No more fear

As I look above for answers…
I lose this fight for to be free,
Free from all known iniquity
And other vices of Satan.
As I close my eyes,
I pray you too won’t sleep tonight.
Let not the gory glory take me away,
Let your will be done my lord.
No more…
No more…

I'm Not My Skin Part 1 (Teine Inkanda Yandi)

 "I don't mean to offend anyone with this poem."

I’m not my skin

I’m not your expectations,

I’m the soul that lives within,

I’m that which the blind can see

And all that you can’t see.

I’m the little boy confused

By the world’s segregation,

I’m the laugh of their talk,

I’m not trying to be you,

Look at my stiff black hair?

It stands tall like trees in the forest:

It feels so pure and sets me free.

Look at my thoughts, they are diverse

And full of colors.

I’m not my skin

I’m not who you think I am,

I’m the river that flows and blesses

Every oasis with a touch of water.

I’m the man who sees no color.

Touch my tan skin

And you’ll see that I’m human too.

I’m not trying to gain approval from you,

I just want you to know that I’m not my skin.

My culture is scarred by the human traitors,

I owe no forgiveness to any man alive…

Does the way I walk, smile or wear my afro

Make me any less human?

Should I be ashamed of my own skin?

I’m not my hair,

I’m the soul that lives within,

Poverty, disease, loss of human dignity

Are my arch enemies besides man.

Your broken kisses heal my human body,

Your spite for a person of my kind

Cannot break or shake to take me away into any

Sort of mortal shame for the skin that covers my

Bones and muscles.

My heart beats rhythmically like a Zambian drum,

My broad nose inhales the air my ancestors left,

My eyes see the moon, sun and the stars

That my Bantu forefathers

Worshiped and sacrificed lives for…

And this is who I’ll always be.

I’m not my skin,

I’m the simple person you’ll never know,

I’m the culture will never touch,

I’m the proud onyx soul you’ll never kiss.

I’m that little girl on mother’s back

Who she carried whenever

She went begging on the street,

I’m that lost lone needle in the hay.

But you can only see my russet skin..

In me you can only see a slave,

A second class human!

I’ll continue to walk tall like the beautiful

African queen my mother told me I’m.

I’m not my skin,

Like you, I’m not perfect, I react when I don’t mean to.

To kill me, take away my skin

And throw it beyond my children’s reach.

My black skin rages your emotions…

Your lust for another killing of my kind

Fuels every breath you take.

Here’s a knife tear my skin apart?

You’ll see that the blood I hold is scarlet…

Like a human’s or any other animal’s.

When my heart is broken I cry just like you do,

To you good skin means bright and not black.

The sun can’t hurt me I tamed her,

The night’s creatures can’t see me

Because my skin camouflages my soul.

Your bitter words can’t hurt me, I hate them not you.

I’m Not My Skin Part 2 (Nshili Inkanda Yandi)

Black or white it doesn’t matter anymore,

Because it never did.

Pitch black afros rise to kiss this unworthy

Feeling of not being part of this race,

What they say won’t scar us!

But who are they?

They are us and we are them

And together we are one but only

Separated by our selfish desires.

A day will come when we will toil

To save this home that we’ve destroyed…

We will embrace the humanity in us.

You can hate me but not because of the

Tone of my skin or the way I speak

My western tongue.

Hate me for a reason, because I will not

Hurt and hate you in return; its not in my nature.

One day I hope we will hold hands

And make a truce to live and love each

Other just the way God wants.