The Pain Experience

The Pain Experience

The dead

of a cold night’s sorrow is marked

by stuttering sniffles and barbed hooks made of straw and string

leather and lies

Fractured glass litters an empty floor

as the cold night lies dead next to her whimpering child drenched in shimmering

Moonlight.   

The echoes of

6 May 1658

21 March 1960

16 June 1976

16 August 2012  

were still visible on that strangled night        

and the blood of its victims                                      

were still heard

on the bright rolling Amathole hills’ juxtaposing

dark grey castles as the white infants frolic and giggle

skip and chuckle

to the beat of broken hearts, cold skin

dry blood

wet tears.

Pain cries out its incessant

continuous

demanding

Cry                         

the rest of the world deaf to its

whimpers

Shell-shocked, in oblivion

the pale white infants rest and relax, soothed

by the melodious moans of black mothers and

Praise singers who call out to their

Nkosi

Ndlovukazi

and call out against their demons and dreams

Lulled by the incessant

continuous

demanding

lapping of the seas against the rocks

and the rocks against their bones

and their feet against the ground

as they run from the polisiemanne against their skin.

The dead

of a cold night’s sorrow is marked

by stuttering sniffles and barbed hooks made of straw and string

leather and lies

fractured glass litters an empty floor

as the cold night lies dead next to her whimpering child drenched in shimmering

Moonlight.

I frolic and giggle, rest and relax

on my land bought with fractured glass

and leather and lies

warmed by the melodious moans of black mothers

as the cold night envelops

the pain experience.  

Special thanks to Lex Loizedes and Tristan Pringle for their invaluable contributions to my thought processes regarding race and privilege as well as helping me frame those ideas using words in this poem.

Check Lex's blog out here.

Check Tristan's stuff out here.