USA

smoovecog@aol.com 

Holocaust Noir

you and i were once queen and king of the nile,
hypnotized by your eyes
drawn in by your style
and smile

our child,
a dark seed of a nubian breed
raised away from the trife life and greed
until the night the serpentine team
crashed our paradise without an invite,
actions shattering our african way of life,
hands clamped tight, shackled and chained,
everybody on my block locked wrists, ankles, and brain
families split, told to stand with no legs,
we were taught to hate our queens by means unsaid,
most nights i wake up screaming from dreams of middle passages
hundreds of brothers and sisters
rotting in a ship’s bottom like savages,
urine soaked, laying in feces, our own excretions,
complete deletion of recollections of our histories
and native nations

i believe it was the 16th century
when the portuguese first deceived
and stole my queen in the night like thieves,
now my fam stands in six degrees
of separation, forced to build a stolen nation,
passing years were no friend to me,
memory disintegration has claimed my past,
robbed me of the chance to guide my son down the path
towards manhood,
freedom plotting is the only option in the fields where i’ve stood
a victim cotton picking under the scorching mississippi sun,
my world spun hectic the day i saw my best friend hung
for defending his wife
rapist massah took his life so young
on this foreign scene i found a new queen
but still dream of my love lost
steady gripping but feel my sanity slipping off
in this black holocaust

Black Holocaust

one day i met this sister harriet
engineer of an underground railroad,
told my lady i had to go, but hold
‘til november
then i’d send for
her to join me in the lands up north,
but for now i’ve got to follow harriet and keep a steady course
towards escape
possibly take the opportunity to build a black community,
can’t let babylon influence me
because through knowledge comes unity,
but i was soon to see
that things were the same on the northern terrain,
same game, just a little more tame,
more and more i’d miss my aim to maintain
amongst these hateful people
in a place where it’s illegal
for me to achieve an education

so i laid low

and slipped into hibernation
only to awaken a few centuries later,
the nature of slavery had become different
but it was far from nonexistent,
cycles of negativity, crack, and weapons
stayed consistent with the shackles
that once held us in bondage,
they feed us messages of materialism
and worshiping garments

true, we have schools but economics holds them lower
too much knowledge is criminal 
for the children of the solar
my queen used to keep me warm
through the colder
years, but now i 
shed a tear when i hear she never made the trip up north
slain trying to hop the freedom train
that’s my second love to join the list of the lost

still i beat the odds somehow
and make it to an institution of higher learning
in upstate new york, but i can still hear mississippi burning,
never turning my back on the past but still reaching
for future achievement for
daughters
and sons
no longer breathing

then one day in this new place
i come face to face
with you
the queen i first lost
in the 16th century the day we were stolen
and forced to divorce

now we stand hand in hand and walk
together through this black holocaust

black holocaust

© Copyright,  Marcus Kwame Anderson.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.