This is a piece that I wrote specifically for Emancipation Day on 1st August. I performed it at an event here in the UK, a celebration and appreciation of the slave ancestors who were part of the human trade from Africa to the Caribbean and United States in the 18th century, transporting around 6 million or so human lives to suffrage and slavery.
Clubbed, chained and hauled from the sand of their equatorial bliss
Warriors, kings and armies by the thousand, pinned in ships holds swilling with piss
Woken by the whip, still chained to the dead and the dying
This is how My ancestors stole Your ancestors, to the fields of blood and forced complying
Inhuman disgrace flogged into the backs of any with even a thought of resentment
Leaving broad, tallow healed scars, baring silent witness to the pain of forced containment
Loved ones compelled to watch the jewelled flail flying high and long
A graphic, bloodied reminder of what happens, should they fail to sing the right song
Black meat bred like horses for the satisfaction of the rich and the ridiculous
Sanctioned black on black matting to mould muscular stallions, oiled for their vividness
While young, barely ripe womanhood was stolen for their unready availability
Resulting in innocent black white halflings, sadly belonging to no one, especially their often, parental nobility
Eventually, on paper at least it all ended but how many dropped the whip-hand, who could really know?
Decades of lip-service kept politicians in the clear, but in the fields, brutality flogged on, full flow
Verbose apologies ringing as hollow as the broken transatlantic triangle of their trade
Even the giving of land and a living, couldn’t heal the skin stripped horrors, which the masters had made
Those who escaped and survived, still had to bear and hide the scars, but couldn’t disguise….
The stigma of a colour that even now, struggles to safely harmonise….
As centuries on, that stigma, more like stigmata, won’t wash the slate clean simply by changing the rules
Those who unseeingly think it so, they’re really, the colour-blinded fools
So, let us celebrate the ancestors, here, in the bright light of truth and reconciliation
But continue the daily fight for a better form of justice, and a balance in our general, more humane consideration.
Celebrate……Celebrate…….Celebrate
© David Rollason
July 2018
A gangly limbed Gelada juvenile snatched a handful of fur from his older sibling and scampered off up the steep hill away from retribution. Unfortunately, he went head first into the towering, heavily maned figure of his father calmly looking out over his dry domain. A well-timed scratch to the inside of his leg stopped the youngster doing him any real injury at the collision, but a sideways swipe soon put the bemused infant back into the pecking order.
The levels of chatter had begun to rise and tiny fluorescent jackets scampered hand-in-hand in pairs, only roughly in crocodile lines, hopeful of seeing at least one living thing move behind the wire and glass. Unfortunately, the biggest movement they were treated to, was the twitching of a wild dog’s ear, but even this was hard to spot deep in the camouflaged shade.
With heat building, there was no need for a clock to know that the wanderers would soon be sitting down with their bags and bottles which, for those lucky enough to have free reign of the place, was time to get on stage. A silent sweep of eye spotted feathers gave the best show of the day, which he knew of course, although his rather dowdier mate had seen it all before and she bobbed away to look for bits to peck at. The show was overly appreciated; but then he knew it always would be. A commotion nearby was drawing away the audience and even this iridescent shimmer of splendour was not enough to keep them interested.
the alpha predator humans. Contrived to be the most interesting part of a now crumbled stone history, an unrealistic terror at the sight of glass bound mice and rats was guaranteed amongst the large if faded remains of the historical summit.
Poetry and prose from a creative mind 