African Idea by Wayne Visser

Just back from Lagos - my fifth trip to Nigeria in the past 12 months. Got me thinking about how Africa is as much a product of perception and imagination as fact and reality.

AFRICAN IDEA

By Wayne Visser

Africa wakes –

It boils and bubbles

It stews and steams

Swathed and swaddled

In wisps of melting mists

And the feathered blue skies

Of my inner eyes

This Africa –

Drenched in sun and sorrow

Stretched in time and place

Bridging north and south

Cleaving tribe from tribe

Birthing a prodigal progeny –

Alive in my mind

Africa moves –

It spawns and spews

It morphs and multiplies

Enhanced and entangled

In human chains of need greed

And white lightning webs

Of synapses firing

This Africa –

Shadowed in war and want

Bursting with light and longing

Dancing dust clouds around fires

Beating drum songs of desires

Endlessly en-route –

On my famished road

Africa sleeps –

It drifts and disperses

It seeds and suckles

Soothed and silent

In fields of ripening toil

And the wandering blotch-herds

Of scattered thoughts

This Africa –

Whispered in myths and mysteries

Cradling its loves and losses

Chanting with hope and defiance

Hawking praise and prophecy

Woven in patchwork tales –

Echoed in my prose

But is Africa real?

This Africa of mind and magic

This Africa of dreams and dust

This luminous continent

Glowing in the dark interior

Of my gold-threaded caves –

This Africa of my psyche

Is Africa fact?

This Africa of books and bards

This Africa of fables and fiction

This luscious land mass

Teeming with the wild life

Of my untamed frontiers –

This Africa of my stories

Is Africa true?

This Africa of tongue and touch

This Africa of nose and noise

This muddled melting pot

Spicing the pallid palette

Of my doldrum days –

This Africa of my senses

Yes! Africa lives –

Africa breathes and beats and blooms

Africa strives and thrives and jives

Africa shakes and aches and breaks

Africa weeps and rises and leaps

Africa sings and soars on the wings

Of my imagination

This is Africa

This is my Africa

This is my Africa imagined

This is my imaginary Africa

This is my image of Africa

This is my idea of Africa

This is my African idea

Copyright 2012 Wayne Visser

Letters to Myself... "Politically Concious"

My black nails,
Sing of wails that fail,
Because of an attachment,
So unattractive,
That fills me with pain,
In my blood vessels that pump with strain,
That burgundy liquid through scarlet flesh,
Through to my limp heart,
That fills with that pain,
From black nails,
That sing wails that fail.

Innocent fetus I have been,
But saved I have been,
For some it is not the same,
For some,
It is innocent fetus that has not been,
Aborted clear of the world,
I have breathed life,
An air of filth,
But I have breathed life,
I have been blessed to see love of a mother so destroyed,
But I have seen love,
With their slings they sting,
My spine whose strength I walk,
Through hills and valleys,
On land,
In the sea,
In space,
In my dreams,
My spine that enables me to bring,
The pennies of my sweaty brow,
The pennies of my swollen feet,
The pennies of my broken heart.

For longer than you and I know,
They have held the arrow and bow,
From their black nails like mine, they crow,
Like white masters that left so long ago,
We grieve over unfruitful seeds we sew,
That have been stolen right in front of our door,
And the thief has hands that are sore,
Possessed by greed and absent of compassion,
They threw it away and it landed on the floor,
Right in front of our door.

Do you love me now?
I am neither rich nor poor,
I am nothing in need of a cure,
Do you love me now?

Kavosa Assava