The Black Currant

By Joshua Omeke

EMBRACE your blackness
Be you African, Caribbean, Fijian or West Indies
Belts beyond the Pacifics
Celebrate your blackness
Your chained ancestors are no longer bounties of slavery
Long dead, but emancipated.

Black artefacts adorn foreign museum aisles
Transatlantic stripes a pain that lingers
Not their prisoner; I am behind these bars,
Oh I sniff the black chapters, the smell of shame, (why)
Taste the black chapters, the sourness of greed, (soured)
Walk the black chapters, a stagger of growth (then walk faster).

To the master of criminals, (money)
The arsenal of satan (money), multiplying faust,
Prowling victims in all forms, men of honour
Striping for desire of your nakedness
Lies of acquisition are poignant effulgence
Hatred for his ancestral bloodline
Duping peasants of their daily bread
Visible but hidden from the media
Enveloping cash to bribe the law.

Oh I sniff the black chapters, the smell of shame, (why)
Taste the black chapters, the sourness of greed, (soured)
Walk the black chapters, a stagger of growth (then walk faster)

Sinning with the pen, robbing brethren
To impress the neo-colonialists,
The resonance of our voice echoes of hard times,
Elegant sisters sold to a wrong notion of a beauty queen
With artificiality and rebellious thoughts
Sauntering in her wig, talons of a masquerade
Wearing a rude contenance, what is wafting to my nose?
Eau de feminist, I am not feeling you
Where is the training to love and let our brothers lead?
What a shame!
Black immigrants now aping the landlords
Where is our identity? Where is your sense of beauty?

Oh I sniff the black chapters, the smell of shame, (why)
Taste the black chapters, the sourness of greed, (soured)
Walked the black chapters, a stagger of growth (then walk faster)

Until you lean towards your community,
We cannot reach that height, colorful dreams,
Oh Alkebulans, roar for me?
Alkebulans, your mothers prayed for a seed to grow into fruit bearing tree
Stripe the labels on you
And walk in the sexiness of your growth.

In the streets of snowy climes, you walk naked like Eve in the Garden of Eden,
Be yourself, avoid the facades
Be free from the shackles of what they’d think
Embrace your natural voice
And be emancipated.