A Million Years of Slavery

Chelsea Nahai Awang
@chelseaawang911330
3 months ago

A Million Years of Slavery
By Chelsea Nahai Awang

There are a million hearts tied
to the pen of every African poet
Poets forge words, sewn into hearts
We have sewn the lips of our children shut
Shut their eyes to history
History repeats itself to the ignorant
Ignorance haunts our backs
the backs and the futures of millions

Now when we sit gathered
by white artificial fires,
We tell stories of concrete jungles
And taste grapes in our palm wine
We feed the mind to starve the body
And buy back our gold
from across the Atlantic, with lives
Selling ourselves for what is ours
Building the white man’s towers
a second time

They say Phyllis Wheately birthed literature
From our “pagan land”
I say, unshackle yourself
Put down your chains! You claim
Ignorance of your ancestors poetry
You hinder yourself with 26 letters
And forget your mothers tongue

Our lips tremble before the rape of Africa
Let me take off my chains
And open my mouth
Behind my words are a million faces
This was God’s story; shell, hen, palm nut
And tongue
Yes, words created this world
That which we were colonized to write,
I shall speak
I shall sing and dance and tell moonlight tales
To spite the pen

-Or shall I mold a new melee?
Carving diamond from coal
brandishing my pen
Beating the writers at their writing
Defeating the English with English
Rewriting history like;
“Once upon a time, the barbaric tribe
Who had to write tradition
To remember it”
Claiming omnipresence

Whether I use my hand or my tongue
I must untie these shackled hearts
Must claim gold is mine and beauty is black
I must rip these chains dragging us from Africa
And untangled this dreadlocked trauma
Born from a never ending slavery

#Poetry
#AfricaUnchained
#UntangleAfrica
#PlayMyPart

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