Properties with a Soul

Toiling, toiling in the sun; digging, digging in the rain,

Never shall we rest from our emboldened unceasing work,

Swinging the hummer in the air- hitting hard the rocks,

Carrying heavy metals- aligning them in tracks,

Still digging hard in the soil, fetching out the ‘glittering stones’

In this quarry we shall die; but why should we die?

Many moons come and pass, winds come and go,

Me and the other darker brothers still___

Work without resting, working for no pay,

Building up the most outstanding gleamy houses we don’t sleep in,

Planting some gardens and foods we don’t eat to lessen hunger pain,

Living life without a purpose, praying prayers with no ‘amen’

Transported like merchandise in the ships; given a name ‘property with a soul’

Buttered like cattle or any other goods in the market,

Our worthy cowry shell, beads, date cans and fire arm,

Our wives made ‘widows’ and our dearest children ‘orphans’

Home is far away, but for now we’ve got to let that go,

Maybe one day, maybe we shall go back there.

Forcibly stripping around bare arsed and bare feet,

Uncivilized and barbaric they call us___

They call us many names but I can only name few,

Tailless baboons, blithering imbeciles, monkey’s brothers,

Negros when they mean to sound polite,

And many other names I don’t have strength to mention.

What did we do to deserve this, whom did we wrong for all this interminable distress?

Discriminated of our skin color and their kids drawing fun of it,

Wondering if we ever feel any pain, their sigger going off on our skin,

Their ruthless canes landing on our tender ‘painless’ flesh,

Strong chains well fitted on our swollen feet,

It is so painful but what else are gonna do?

Every meal is treated like a gift and every day a miracle,

Here, the days are so long and the nights are so cold and short,

Bare chest and bare thighs and feet with only a piece of clothe­_

A piece of clothe to cover only the ‘hills and the forest’

Yet no one seems to care or no one will ever do

Mosquitoes are our friends, bugs and lice will forever be our neighbors.

Every day I hope and pray that this would be just but a night mare;

And that one day someone from ‘don’t know where’ would come to awaken us up,

And take us back to the days when our kids used to play between our feet,

Leaping on their mothers’ chest to fetch the white staff_____

Mothers to whom I’ll never know where they were taken,

‘IN GOD WE TRUST’ this dream shall come to an END!

A poem by Tito John Msembi__ [2015]