CROWS IN SNOW
Crows soaring over a snowfield.
Their wings black as night.
The fields blinding white, like the sun stood constant
And suppressed the night.
The trees grow from the earth
And grow like ivy’s vines;
Catching the crooks of the crow’s feet,
Heaving the weight above its head,
And stopping it from soaring any higher.
Baby crows caught in flightless flight.
Taken down before their feet leaves the ground.
Their aspirations are like ghosts of passing dreams,
Dead before their fruition.
The snow storms cause hurt.
Bleeds them.
Slaughters them.
Hang them like scarecrows.
The sky reflects the pain near the virgin Virgo,
And snow falls once again to bide the crows.
Black bird on water again.
It searches for a flock of the same feather,
But food is scarce,
So it succumbs to the turmoil of the weather.
It eats its own,
Swallows its own,
And drowns its own.
The snow is stained red,
But more falls and covers it like a shed.
Crows under the snowfield.
Silenced of their troubles.
———————
DARK FRUIT
I am the dark fruit, but I shall not be a strange fruit. Lynched upon a stake, crucified, demoralised.
I do not need the colours from your sight to be gone. Monochromacy, hypocrisy.
I do not wish you to go, “oh, I am green. I wish to help those who are blue. Raise them and elevate them to my hue”
Lighter, paler, skin of the degrader.
Mother’s skin lighter than mine. Yet the great providence eye states that when she looks in the mirror, she’ll sigh and have a great rot inside.
So no, I do want you to be colour blind.
I want you to see me as I am. See me as man.
I do not want your women to rape.
Even though you took ours and brainwash our children that you are the man in the cape. But the dark one is the evil one, the pitiful one.
I am the dark star. Polaris my name, the North Star. Ursula in her womb.
Yet my two sides, Gemini, frightens you, disgusts you.
But all that I am is what you want. Plump lips. Brown for melanin is my friend.
The origin of man is black.
Black roots, black core. Black on everything you adore.
Gunshots fired,
Dark riot.
Dark bodies slain, yet asked to be quiet.
Dark riot.
Keeping freedom and speech on a diet.
Equality is disquiet.
Stating the equality of all lives is the disquality of lives owned, you are a bigot.
My tree will sprout the right fruit. It will not be conformed and caged by its peel.
Keep the ignorance in a seal.
They tried to kill us by the roots, but no, the shackles no longer on my foot.
I am a dark fruit, the darkest fruit with nurtured roots. History runs through my stem.
I am the dark fruit; let my different shades follow me in suit.
———————
MONSTERS
Monsters are we that look through the looking Glass,
Painting the world a mixture of ghastly shadows.
Mighty are we for we see them as they are; witches,
Heretic’s followers.
Whether that’s true or untrue.
———————
Poems © E.J. Simeon
Image: Pixabay.com
Is it brown vulnerability, the vulnerability of a Coloured poet, of a Coloured person, or is it black vulnerability, is it a kind of denial that both exist? I am talking from post-apartheid, post-covid South Africa. I find an intimate understanding on the page of both my emotional and physical pain and sometimes I don’t see the world as it is, but how I see it, how I wish it to be, how I wish humanity to act. I want to write about personal freedom, the freedom of brown people and the freedom of black people but am I really, truly free? I have lived in a cage by the choices I have made. The choice that I have made to be a poet.
The poet lives with a moral understanding of the world around them. Some live with mental trauma. I think of how gifted Ken Saro Wiwa, Dambudzo Marechera and K. Sello Duiker and Ingrid Jonker were, and how that giftedness did not save them. Now their legacy lives on forever, bright in our minds. Now we have a fierce commitment that we have made to that legacy. It is beautiful to be an individual, but it is even more beautiful to acknowledge that we are part of the human race. Sometimes to hurt is a given under the day-to-day reality and the circumstances we find ourselves in. Sometimes it is selfish and sometimes it is a luxury. There is always someone more dejected, there is always someone less fortunate, more downtrodden that exists in this world. It is the black man, it is the enslaved black man, who is more downtrodden than any other race at this moment in time, in this world, in this reality.
We really, as poets, have everything to live for. It is our poets who will command the very best of us. It will be our poets who will save us. So, I write to savour life, as its tapestry enfolds me with its embrace. The bonds of intimacy and knots of love are somehow found there frozen on the page. A craving comes upon me. It is a craving to write, to silence the hunger pangs within me. So I write with quiet determination to reach you wherever you may find yourself. I write to give you broken heart joy, to restore a sense of wellbeing and sustenance. I write to you to nourish your soul. I write to you to mentor you. I write to you to motivate and inspire you. I write to you to encourage you. I write to you on this hot summer day from South Africa to tell you to write your very existence into being. I write to you to tell you that your entrance into humanity, yes, I am speaking of your birth and your writing talent, will make you go down in history, and that I am a witness to this.