Are you afraid now Have I just Pulled your illusory Comfort zone carpets From under your feet
Have I suddenly become Your worst nightmare Come to life Blacker than The abyss into hell Spewing flames of Raging fires Splashing volcanic lava All over your terrified face Rolling down your Blood drawn Protective hands Your body frozen stiff As if Sodom and Gomorrah’s Pillar of salt
No, it’s not the end of the world yet You are still alive I burn you with my words Salivary showers follow my speech Not to give you comfort But to moderate the heat somewhat You mustn’t pulverize yet I need you alive You gotta hear what I gotta say to you Even if yours are lead-soldered ears Read my lips, nincompoop
Fuck ’n ’ell You bet I am angry I am fuck ’n furious I’ve had more than enough Of your dehumanization of me Year in and year out Over five fuckin’ hundred years Not only do you continue stealing Wealth of my land You have made it your mission to Eradicate me from planet earth Only because You decided to make me Black and abominable
Whilst you took My forefathers by surprise And overwhelmed them with Your uncanny brutality I am a different ball game In my time I know you More than you really ever cared to know me
How could you ever Know me When you’ve numbed your senses To the suffering you cause me To this day
Talking to you Is like talking to faces Of a desolate mountain In the middle of nowhere
Crying in front of you Is like Crying in the middle of a desert My tears evaporate before hitting the ground The only thing your eyes see Is the sub-human Your sick mind has made me into
You don’t respect me You don’t respect my humanity You’ve emasculated my forefathers You’ve raped my foremothers So much humiliation Have you subjected my people to But now you have reached The end of the road
Read my lips Yes, I am one Angry Black Man My rage is wild My rage is raw
I’ve harnessed all The blood and thunder of my people I shriek with every breathing cell in my body To thrash your senses back to life To awaken you to reality Of my time I want what is mine back I want my humanity back
Things will never be the same for you Your time is up Shut the fuck up You’ve said enough You’ve caused enough damage already My bitterness is five hundred years old You can’t stop me now GRRRRHHHRRR…MHRRR…!!! You wanna hide now I’ll search for you I’ll find you This world is mine
My intuition Tells me that The world today Is as beautiful As wonderful As it was yesterday As it ever was Actually
The world today Is as marvellous As tomorrow can be
My intuition Tells me that The world today Is a fulfilment of visions Of the world tomorrow In the eyes of our ancestors
Our ancestors Are looking at us From above in utter amazement Their bones rattle underground
For The world today Is a world that does not Need to wait for tomorrow To guarantee us all Longevity In abundance To beyond extravagance Thanks to science
Our ancestors Are enthralled By technology of The world today The world of all possibilities for all humanity
The world today Defies time Defies limitations of space Through Science and Technology I should not be apprehensive of Not seeing through the day In The world today Because of hunger and strife
The world today Ought to be Heaven on earth Here and now For us all
My intuition Tells me that Heaven is perfect Heaven begins and ends in itself Heaven is perpetual upward movement Of self-regeneration, self-fulfilment
In heaven There is no want There is no death
So The world today Ought to be A space of peace and immortality For all of humanity
Dedicated to the people of Chileand others struggling for freedom the world over. Read in Oslo at Solidarity Concert for Chile, Saturday, November 23, 2019. Any struggle for freedom is my struggle.
OSLO NORWAY Telephone: +4792525032 November 30, 2019
If some idiots start a nuclear war, then we are doomed. Good-bye planet earth. The same is bound to happen if climate change is not given the serious attention it calls for. That will be sad because I want to be here in the 23rd Century AD.
Beyond two hundred years from now monoracials, monoethnics will be relics of the past. The future belongs to a new composite race spearheaded by multiracials, multiculturals already treading the world today. In tracing their individual origins these people of the future will have their lineage points dotted all over the globe. These will be the true citizens of the world.
I want to be there then in order to see the true brotherhood, sisterhood of humanity living as one big pluricultural race. Perhaps I’ll have made a direct contribution, or my progeny will have done so. In this new pluricultural race, only the unlikely more intellectually retarded than today’s pure races ideologues, racists, white supremacists, regionalists, and tribalists will still be looking to define skin colours and other physical features to classify and to separate people. A futile exercise. As a collective, people of the future will be a complex set of an infinite extrapolation of possible cross generational genetic permutations. Whether or not they’ll be a coherent mass living harmoniously on the planet only time will tell. I want to be there in order to see this for myself.
The world
had better start preparing for the future today. Writings of the future that I
predict are already on the wall. The writings are filling up aeroplanes of the
world, are on the highways of the world, are guiding footsteps across deserts
of the world every day. They are traversing jungles of the world. Seas and
oceans of the world are also witness to the pervasiveness of these writings on
the wall about the inevitable pluricultural people of the future. No one can
stop the tide.
The writings are in refugee camps; in detention centres and prison walls of the world. They are on apartheid walls that are erected on the face of mother earth. Treacherous barbed wire fences cannot dissuade enlivenment of the writings either: calligraphed in blood, torn-off clothing fabrics, pieces of human flesh, if not dead bodies hanging here and there.
Every act of tyranny committed today everywhere on the face of the earth emboldens every letter on the writings about the people of the future. Every international trade deal signed at any level simply shines more light on the writings. International trade in all its forms and components across the board grows exponentially every day. It constantly shrinks the globe, whilst signals of the potential and actual birth and growth of the people of the future are as clearly readable as the brightest night stars. The modern world calls this globalization, baby.
Globalization spreads goods and services across the globe. If globalization is about econo-political might, for good or bad regardless, it is because it is essentially about people with their needs and wants. Globalization draws people to domains of opulence attributable to gains from international trade and geo-political power.
As a tool for continued inequalities obtained from colonialism and earlier epochs, globalization facilitates exploitation of natural resources at the expense of economic development of poorer countries. This tendency continues to cause social unrests often culminating in protracted brutal civil wars. These wars can border on, if not actually lead to genocide of certain categories of people in the affected countries. The latter typically breed some of the worst despots in the world at any one time in human history.
The most
resourceful of survivors in these troubled lands shall escape in search for
safety havens and greener pastures across the globe. They shall follow routes
leading to globalization powerhouses in the western world, or any other place
on earth that has the promise of a better life. Any place that helps to keep hope
aglow.
Whether in torment or existing on the bright side of life, people will always fall in love and procreate wherever they may find themselves in the world. Indeed, it is not always that procreation shall be an outcome of love. There sadly is a dark side to being human too. I intentionally choose to dwell on love here. Love is the power I aspire for in my looking into the future state and endeavours of humanity. May love forever reign supreme on planet earth.
As the
world gets smaller and smaller, people of the world get to interact with one
another ever more rapidly in all sorts of spaces and circumstances. All this
creates fertile opportunities for cross-racial, cross-ethnic, cross-cultural
love and reproduction to thrive over generations. This occurring as rapidly and
as infinitely as humanity manifests its diversity as a species on planet earth.
In our time, it can only get better and better. With or without globalization,
no barriers of any kind can stop this trend.
Driven by magnetism of love and curiosity, and that of need for peace and abundance, human beings will achieve anything; they will go anywhere, including planets many light years away from home. The walls of Jerichofell, as did that of Berlin. The Great Wall of China is but what it is today: a fascinating feat of engineering. China wants to rule the world. Fools keep building walls and fences, they keep digging trenches and canals, they shoot people down, they keep coming up with all sorts of outlandish ideas to curtail people migration across the world. Outrageous. It’ll never work.
What a wonderful world the future has in store for humanity. White supremacists and other racial purists are fighting a losing battle. Wake up and smell the coffee, people!
Of course, where there is love there is the presence or absence of God. I am convinced that it’s God’s plan that monotheism shall allow love to disentangle it in parallel with the imminent major existential transformation and paradigm shift of the state of being human in the future. If religion chooses to remain static, then God is going to be even wearier than she is today. Which could just as well be as annihilatory as a nuclear war, or climate change let loose. Heaven forbid! If we survive, I’m curious to see the face of God too in the year 2201. Amen.
Simon Chilembo Oslo Norway Tel.: +47 925 25 032 November 14, 2019
“Winter is coming now, Simon. If you have any doubts about coming back to Norway you still have a chance of returning to South Africa, you know,” said Sofia.
“Are you sure you have no regrets about coming back to Norway, Simon? You still have a home in South Africa, not so?” several others remark this way many a time.
I live with no doubts. If I have any doubts, I don’t do it. If I do it anyway and get burned as a result, too bad. What’s done is done. If I die, I die. Closed chapter. If I don’t die, no regrets. I pay the price I have to pay, and move on; assuming that I can still breathe, stand, walk, and think.
If I can think, I can contextualize my feelings. If it feels right to do so because it’s turned out that I’ve really screwed up, I’ll beg for mercy if given a chance to do so. When I’ve been unfairly screwed and the perpetrator is cool about it, exercising their own capacity not to regret unjust screwing up of other souls, I leave them where they are. I never look back. I never go back. I’ll always find new playing spaces.
I’ll always find new playmates. We might play on until our dying days. We might wear each other out in the midst of the golden years of our lives when some shit suddenly happens: somebody gets screwed up somehow, another one bites the dust, whilst the other glosses in new-found glory at the expense of the screwed. It is what it is. That’s how we roll. Falling out of glory is like milk spilling out of a glass. I never cry over either.
If any creature of the oceans came to eat me, I prayed it would be a shark: agile, precise, in perpetual motion straight on ahead. In my naked least-to-no-resistance state of mind in the middle of the waters, I decided to play dead, though. I survived. I marvelled at watching the last vestiges of my extended empire go with the wind to places beyond my fantasy.
I know that in her old age, my mother’s fear of living in abject poverty ate her soul like cancer did body cells. So, I am convinced that her death released her spirit to a place of lasting peace and abundance. I know that that’s what she aspired to achieve during her life time, anyway. My fourth novel and sixth book, Machona Mother – Shebeen Queen, is inspired by my observation of hers and other mothers’ and wives’ lives in South Africa. Through this I reflect on the challenges of wifehood and parenthood in oppressive societies the world over.
On the eve of my mother’s burial, I was threatened with a bullet in the head. My torment in South Africa had come to a head. I had to leave. Three months earlier, she had in fact finally acknowledged that my future in South Africa was bleak. The only thing she could do was to give me her blessings, and I’d have to find my way back. I should leave whenever I could. She was laid to rest on October 13, 2018.
Eleven days later I landed in Oslo. In grief. Tired. Bankrupt. Homeless. Businessless. Jobless. At total mercy of other people and the state for the first time in my adult life. I received unprecedented overwhelming support and love. This gave me a refreshing new taste of humility in my heart.
Alas, I’m still shocked by the discovery that love has inexplicably diminished, if not vanished altogether in certain quarters. But then again, love is like milk: when it’s spilt it’s gone. No salvage. No cry. Like milk, fresh love abounds. Always. Spilt milk tends to be messy. Post-spillage clean-up is ever so necessary, therefore.
Left unattended to, spilt milk can go stale and stink. Poison. There is a poisonous dark cloud of love lost hanging over my head. Apparently, this cloud is at alarming speed spreading itself throughout the extent of domains that are crucial for my continued existence as a free and happy man of the world.
I now feel that the time has come for me to dissipate the treacherous cloud. Had I lived a hermitic life somewhere oblivious to the real world of real people, I really wouldn’t bother. My imperfections notwithstanding, as an ethically conscious man living in a morally charged world, I have no doubt as to my personal integrity in every step I make every day of my life. It isn’t just about my ego. I respond from a need to protect the honour and legacy of my late parents. Through the latter I reach out to my ancestral spirits throughout the entire Sub-Saharan Africa.
My own legacy matters too. It’s not just about me. It’s all in the name of the living of my people in the afore-mentioned part of the world, particularly my clans in Zambia and South Africa. I have in mind my bosom friends, my godchildren, my teachers, and colleagues all over the world throughout my life’s journey thus far as well. I intend to stay the course until my last breath on earth, which won’t be tomorrow. I’m here for the long haul.
My thoughts also go to all the people the lives of whom I have impacted before, I impact today, and I shall be allowed to impact in the future anywhere in the world: my raison d’être. It is my wish and hope that all the people falling into this broad category shall never feel shame, embarrassment, guilt, or fear at the mention or thoughts of my name, my deeds. My legacy.
I’m proud of my roots. I’m protective of my heritage. I value highly the love and faith of my confidants. I am in awe of the big religious and philosophical thoughts of the world that daily inspire and guide me in my search of liberatory enlightenment in the labyrinth of life. Truth must never shy away from me.
With the poisonous dark cloud of love lost hanging over my head cleared, the following shall be revealed:
I have been unilaterally charged and convicted without a trial.
I love power. But I am not power-hungry. I am not a powermonger. The essence of my being is not defined by the power that I wield as attendant to the things that I do. For example, when I’m revered for being a 6th Dan Black Belt Karate Master, I don’t take it personal. I am nothing more than a conduit between higher knowledge and the people that my position empowers me to serve. With or without Karate and its inherent existential and functional attributes, I remain the same original Simon Chilembo ever aspiring to be a decent human being each and every day of my life, my fallibilities considered. Karate does not define the essence of my being. It is but one mirror of many that reflect the infinite potential of the essence of me as a human being, a social change force. I shall never fight for power acquisition and sustenance at any cost. But I shall fight with all of my life against deliberate malicious application of unfairness and injustice as tools and manifestations of power against me, my own, including the values that I stand for.
It is preposterous to seek to delete my existence in the historical developments of certain phenomena in my worlds. History never forgets. The wise will always query. Answers will have to be given, no matter how murky.
Having stated the above, I encourage anybody with any compelling evidence to contradict me to come forth and present their cases. This evidence shall be tangible, derived from real-life circumstances. It shall not be derived from ill-founded conclusions obtained from subjective misinterpretations of my literary works. It shall not be derived from malicious rumours about me either. Otherwise, people can just lay their weapons down and move on with their lives. We all deserve happily-ever-after living once love has found new hearts to entice. That’s the way of the world.
Character assassination claims and rumours about my person have been doing the rounds in Oslo and environs especially since the publication of my debut novel, When The Mighty Fall, in November, 2015. I feel strongly about these. Such that, in the unlikely event that it can be objectively proved that I am a molester, I will kill myself. That not as a manifestation of any suicidal vice about my character. Moreover, I will consciously choose to kill myself for my sins to save society resources and troubles of arrests, tedious court cases and all that goes with dealing with issues of crimes against humanity. It ought to be as simple as that, really.
I will publicly nail myself on the cross. I will invite the world to come and practice archery on my body until there’ll be no more flesh and bone left for an arrow to pierce. Then my corpse must be set on fire whilst on the cross. No funeral services. No urns. Let the wind blow the devil’s ashes away to places far away into outer space. No memorial services. Denialism of my place in history will be just fine, then: I was never here. I was an accident of nature. I was a figment of my imagination. I was just an illusion.
South Africa Has Afro-Xenophobia lynching squads Eliminating their kindred Off the streets of the land Even the soil of the land Won’t absorb the blood of the slain With the rains far, far away The blood cakes on the ground Corpses not welcome in mortuaries Rot Under the sun of The land of the broken rainbow Bleeding dark Venomous blood The stench combines With smoke of those bodies Caught in flames of devilish fire In Mzansi fo sho Satanic voices chant: HABASHWE!!!
Photo by: HALDEN KROG
And then I recall Last time: I heard that Boko Haram were Nigerian Al-Shabaab were Somalian The Lord’s Resistance Army were Ugandan In eastern Democratic Republic of Congo Kivu province is a land of bloodbaths In the days of Zaire There was Mobutu Sese Seko Patrice Lumumba’s ghost Must have haunted this man for life
In neighbouring Uganda There was Idi Amin They say he ate human flesh Rwanda gave genocide application A new Afro-touch meaning In Charles Taylor’s Liberian war Survivors had their hands hacked off We’ve had Emperors Jean-Bédel Bokassas Of the Central African Republics A seven-university-degreed Mugabe of Zimbabwe Has just died Believe me: Matebeleland people aren’t mourning
Closer to home I understood as a child that Qomatsi was Lesotho rulers’ licence to kill their own In the Gambia Yahya Jammeh’s atrocities Make Qomatsi a child’s play in comparison
And so, asking for a friend I wonder: Who is better? Who is worse?
Same bloody-black-curse-difference If you ask me
Simon Chilembo Oslo Norway Telephone: +4792525032 09/ 09- 2019
The little I know about my mother’s life inspires my forthcoming fourth novel, which will be my sixth book. As I progress with the work, I get to appreciate more and more that a wife and mother will do what they have to do for the good of their children and the honour of their husbands. At the same time, wives and mothers are also made of flesh and blood; they are human too, just like everyone else.
They shall slip and fall, gather dirt like everyone else. They shall rise, shake themselves from the dust, and fail to erase the stains; just like everyone else. If the good they did for their children, and the honour they bestowed their husbands is greater than the outcomes of their fallibilities, then, who is anybody to judge? ODE TO WINNIE MANDELA:
Courage personified
Defiance personified
Endurance personified
Grace personified
Humanity personified
Inspiration personified
Longevity personified
Loyalty personified
Mystique personified
Resurrection personified Motherhood dignified
Phum’la ka kuhle, Mamma
Should they seek
To blow out
The torch of your legacy
I will be there
They’ll have to first
Take me out A luta continua
For the love of Mothers Amandla ngawethu!!!
SIMON CHILEMBO RIBEECKSTAD WELKOM SOUTH AFRICA APRIL 13, 2018 TEL.: +4792525032
I do not condone murder of any kind. Murder is murder, regardless of how it is classified on various platforms. No murder is worse or better than another. In the free world, we are all humans with infinite variable attributes, but equal in the face of the law of the land.
In the purest manifestation of God, we are all supposed to be equal because she created us that way, in her own perfect image.
Whilst I do not condone murder, left with no alternatives against any real, particularly unjustifiable, threat upon my life, or that of my beloved ones, including my lands, I could kill without thinking twice about it. In my world, there is no “turn the other cheek” contra injustice and evil intentions, or practices. If evil plucks out one of my eyes, I’ll pluck both of theirs, and more. It is what it is.
If I am a racist, it is more a circumstantially reactive tendency on my part, rather than it being an inherent disposition of mine. I hate racism with such passion I cannot help but want to give racists a taste of their own medicine whenever I encounter them in South Africa, and anywhere else in the world I find myself at any time; two eyes for an eye.Reconciliation modern South Africa style has its limits for me.
In characteristic, yet another demonstration of arrogance of power and privilege, a section of the white South African populace sensationalizes the killings of South African white farmers. As if these killings are a calculated, lopsided affair sponsored by the South African state, or some other organized, black peoples special interest entities.
As a humanist, whenever death strikes anywhere in the world, my heart ever goes out to the deceased and their bereaved families. The killing of a white South African farmer is no different from any other killing in the country, or anywhere else in the world. Therefore, I cannot feel relatively any more, or less empathy for the white South African farmer victims and their own … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA BLOGS – As I See It”. Order Simon Chilembo books on Amazon)
Simon Chilembo Riebeeckstad Welkom South Africa November 08, 2017
Because I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth, the notion that I must be happy with what I have here and now, no matter how little, was ingrained in my head from a very early age. If I could get more by doing what is acknowledged as good and acceptable practices, well and good. However, if it doesn’t work, too bad. Try something, or go for something else, and/ or simply wait.
Waiting never meant for me to just rest on my laurels, hoping for some miracle to happen for the more of that which I want to materialize somehow, without any effort from me, though. If I have to pray, it will be more to introspect and find peace of mind so I can think more clearly, but not for God to deliver it all for free just because I believe in her … (Continued in the book: “MACHONA AWAKENING – home in grey matter”. Order book on Amazon).
Simon Chilembo Riebeeckstad Welkom South Africa Telephone: +4792525032 November 23, 2015 (more…)
Racism is a constant. Racism does not change colour with location, or time. Racism is not some figment of the imagination. Racism is as real as day and night. Racism cannot be explained away; it is neither an intellectual nor academic exercise. Racism is unidirectional like an arrow in flight. Its objective is to demean, use, abuse, exploit, hurt, dehumanize, destroy, and obliterate; nothing in between. The ultimate goal of racism is genocide.