For Homecoming
For Homecoming
How they return (Heirs)
Here
the gods show their teeth
Delighted at the honor
of tending to such destinies
they gather their favor
rows upon rows
of mercy and grace
for their subjects.
lest they forget.
divide and conquer
rule of the land.
not all will wade their waters at home,
some have divine errands
across the ponds.
divide and conquer,
a call for war.
in exodus
they risk getting lost
to willing shepherds
indoctrinated into a cult
of perpetual servitude,
redeemable in the life after death
promised by
parasitic leech infested with capitalism.
they watch
as the sheep deny their gods
defile their souls for produce.
divide and conquer,
a call for war.
as sickness befalls them
a plague to write home about
they watch as the sheep answer
to colors and colloquials
as they learn extraction
planting tricks in treaties
risking their humanity.
they cease to see themselves
in the trees, in the waters, in the winds,
becoming another stop
for the devastation and the looting.
slaves of the capital
overseers impressed by whips
currency over everything
veins so full of impurities
lacking the lustre of home.
divide and conquer,
the gods know
all waters find their way back to their source.
the heirs are circling back
they remember
the chants and the drum beats,
the rhythm and the gyrating hips,
the ululations and the jiving feet,
the salt of the ocean stirs
in their marrow,
the dust of the harmattan tickles
their lungs,
they remember their rusty colostrum,
maafa, transatlantic voyages,
segregation, bantu education,
the degradation of mass
extinction, which they survived
by the kink of their hair.
they remember conservation colonialism
settler violence and its predicates
displacements
and the nihilism it affords its sovereign.
they remember mass extortion
of natural resources
the myriad of their artifacts safe
in the conquerors’ vitrines,
the reason for shared last names
and baptisms.
“kikulacho ki nguoni mwako.”
this land reeks of home.
the heirs return in droves
circulating like vultures
they awaited this rupture
to claim the lands
fertilized by their forefathers flesh
an end to robbery of graves
they discovered fire
they return for their earth, their air,
their waters,
they return
for their spirits
to tend to their forefathers’ graves.
This poem was published in Fifty four Magazine.
