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πππππππ ππ ππππππππ πππππππ: ππ€π«ππ’π§π πππ« ππππ
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High Priestess
Seer
Mother of my mother
Had people perplexed
Sceptical
Disclosing to them
Upon request
Likely future outcomes
In their lives
According to
Godβs revelations
In her spiritual outlooks
The 1980β saw
Television bring
Bioscope and sporting events
In South African homes
A marvel in the townships
Changing peopleβs lives forever
High Priestess liberated
Television
Gave grandmotherβs visions
Explanatory form
God spoke
No longer invisible in the wind
But from a box
The people could relate to
The box in which
God
Performed and revealed his
Future plans for the people
To the High Priestess
Who told that
Television never
Switched off in her head
Empowering the people
For if grandmother saw it on television
It had to be true
The people were convinced
There were no
Fake news
Foxes on television
In those days gone by
Television association helped
Grandmother heal many a hopeless soul
Saved many a despairing life
I wish
She were here
If only for a prayer
On the other side of the world
My 21st Century
Television is in a computer
That under normal circumstances
Doesnβt switch off
Similar to the one
In grandmotherβs head
The computer television is
In the palm of my hand
I bring it to my face
So close
I wish it could
Get into my head
Make me speak
With High Priestess grandmother
Who has since
Retired to the
Ancestral spritsβ domain
Call it heaven
That I canβt even
Dream myself to
But Iβm here
Television in hand
Watching as it happens live
In real time
In modern television lingo
As a man bombs a hospital
In there died infants
Children waiting to be born
Died in their mothersβ bellies
Bombed in the maternity wing
Of the hospital
Devastating a people
In the worst possible manner
Kill fathers on the frontline
Kill mothers in hospitals
Terminate a peopleβs
Self-propagation potential at the source
Ultimate cruelty
I heard talk of
Crimes against humanity
On television somewhere
The other day
Other mothers-to-be
On the run
Birth in open spaces
Undignified on rumbled grounds
Trembling from artillaried earth
Dead bodies
In body bags
Name tags amiss
Thrown in a mass grave nearby
As if infectious-disease carrying animal carcasses
Burial rituals wonβt do
Missiles thundering overhead
Angels from hell gone wild
Others birth in crowded
Bomb-proof tunnels
Whilst numerous others birth
In lands away from
Their homes
A current people
Losing their present and future
All-in-one to a single war
Holding the world to
Ransom in one country
Fighting for survival
Against the onslaught of
One megalomaniacβs
Murderous land grab antics
Dreaming of recreating
Greatness-of-the-past illusions
Of a once upon a time
Empire built-on-sand
Collapsed under its own rot mass
I fail to make sense of all this
I wish I were
Seeing the future
As the High Priestessβ
Television in the head
Sheβd tell it showed her
In the moment
If humanity is one
Those dead children
Are mine too
Their mothers
Could have been my wives
The troubles of life
Women have to endure
In war and peace
As I see it
Make me want
To go to war
Stop
Mad men
Who donβt see it
That way
I inhale
Close my eyes
I exhale
Open my eyes
I see
High Priestessβ
Television in my head
It shows books
Flapping their pages
In the form of
A thousand birds
In a heart formation
In the sky
I see my pigeons
From when I was a child
Grandmotherβs face
Appears
It morphs into a white pigeon
Pigeon flies out of
The Popeβs hands on television
Lands on my laps
Becomes a book
My new weapon of war
In the season of death
In atrocious earth tremors
Owing to war machinesβ
Pyroclastic forces
In the envisaged silence of
Pre-suicide moments
When self-constraint
Channels of no return
Have been traversed
I feel happiness intoxicated
I canβt explain
The sense of freedom
I feel
Chilling my spine
So
I write books with love
I write for liberty
Watch me
Defy death
Stop the war
Save the children
Bring mothers home
Save the people
I ainβt no Messiah
Iβm only human
Of flesh on bones
I weep blood
For the dead
Who never saw
Their blood flow
Into rivers of pain
πππ
Β©Simon Chilembo 11/03-2022
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
March 18, 2022
AFRO IS BEAUTIFUL. DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND?
Β©Simon Chilembo 2012
To many a naturally straight-haired people often of European descent, seeing Black women in unnaturally straight, long hair is the most stupid thing about them. βWhey canβt these women just keep their hair natural and curly? The Afro is so beautiful, donβt you people understand?β, Iβm often confronted with this yet another example of patronizing attitude, portraying extreme ignorance with respect to knowledge and understanding of imperialism, as well as colonialism history.
In order to totally subjugate subjects of new territories, imperialist powers through colonialist forces and mechanisms will at best seek to incapacitate the subjectsβ ability to reproduce themselves. European/ Western imperialism with its attendant effective colonial brutality had free game in Africa from about the 16th century AD onwards.
Other than creating genocide conditions as a tool for total elimination of the unwanted dominated people, mass sterilization can be used. Through cultural imperialism though, various social and cultural institutions are used to promote cultural hegemony. The latter strives to change the worldview of the subjugated to be in synch with that of the imperialist powersβ. That way the oppressed shall cease to reproduce their condemned faiths, values, beliefs, and other cultural practices; giving rise to a new personality, assimilating into the imperialistβs own cultural, political, and economic mainstream.
Β©Simon Chilembo 2012
For at least 400 years, African people have through various instruments been made to believe that they are inferior to Europeans. Being Black, and everything about being Black was a curse from God, I was taught at school in the then apartheid South Africa. Though in a not so direct manner, the same message would often be repeated in my church. The only way to be saved, and therefore have a chance of ending up in heaven after death was to think, act, and look like Europeans. If you are pitch black like me, with my kinky hair, not forgetting my flat nose, you were in deep trouble indeed (I wonder which side of God Michael Jackson is sitting). Power and success in life came with getting as much as possible of Eurocentric stuff into our thick black heads, we were told. So, you (will) rule if you are light-skinned, have a not so flat nose, and you have straight hair.
Β©Simon Chilembo 2012
Therefore, before criticizing and ridiculing my sistersβ and mothersβ apparent cosmetic idiosyncrasies, it is important to take into account the dehumanizing effects of imperialism and colonialism on the peopleβs sense of identity. That the ladies have just blindly fallen victim to false definitions of modern beauty ideals by homosexuals is not entirely true. The colossal magnitude of the Black Beauty Products industry has grown out of a need that has been built, developed and sustained over a period of at least four centuries.
Simon Chilembo
Oslo
Norway
Tel.: +47 97000488/ +27 717454115
August 03, 2012Β
Simon Chilembo 