Did you torch him? You? You? You torched him?
Your brother, not from mother, nor father,
But even though farther, your brother from long ago
When our common fathers hunted and gathered to cope????

You? You just torched him??? ‘Cos he’s different???
‘Cos this instant the labels are different
But inconsistent with what is your actual content,
Which is similar in many intents, and variously intense!!!

You???You…;wait, REALLY you torched him???
For selling bread to your community?
For paying taxes so your commute’s sweet???
And you torched him?
Is your language so different? Did you stop to think
As you kinked his arm, and bloodied his chin
That all languages and peoples are from One evolved
As migration and separation took firm resolve,
Pushing the words and syntax to match the status quo
Which each would find, and adapt to grow!!!

But you just torched him? And stood as fumes reeked
Human flesh searing in screaming death
Weak…battered…broken…lost
Human flesh fearing its family’s death
Whipped…hammered…broken….cussed!

For what? Did he call your momma a b—-?
Did he walk into your house and defile your sheets?
Did he break your code? Wear the wrong number or colour
Or try to seed pain within your family’s hold?
Was it him? Wait….what’s his crime?

That he came from another clime?
That his country is so different, from what you call “Mine”
Like an infant clutching his latest choo-choo train
Watching a sibling wishing he had the same????

What’s a country, what’s a city, what’s a tribe?
Names on pieces of paper to aggravate and divide!
Yet, your premise to take this innocent life
Is that he has no place in this land in which you reside?

Hold on….who made you owner of Earth?
Are you Mars with the sword, or have Zeus’s girth?
Are you Hades with his scythe, or what…you just own this dirt?
This dirt on which you’re just a speck…a sneeze in the space-time continuum?
Who made you the golden drop of the seas?

Watch…watch your dirt!!!! WATCH IT!!!
Charred chaffed and choke-held by rigor mortis
Never to see his family again, his friends.
His wife will never kiss those lips again
His kids will never be hugged the same again.
Yet the little baby will have no memory of the pure love
He now misses in a step-dad who considers him as the other man’s child.

Yet yesterday you said “Umjani”, and smiled back
And took the beer he offered, and took his hand in the mall.
You walked the same roads, traveled together, took the bus
Shoulder to shoulder: you and the dead “criminal”.

You torched him….ooooooh…you just torched him.
Now they all have to run. Now all blacks have to run
If they don’t speak one of the Chosen tongues.
You torched him, you torched them, you’ll torch them.
Their crime: you just hate them for being different.

You hate those who fought with you when you were hated for being different.
You kill those who fought by you when you were killed because your skin is different.
Now you’re free, and you’re killing others because their name’s different.
God help you…but f— the xeno-negro-ethno-phobia you’ve learnt.

(c) Nyonglema