Two fists raised towards a multitude of poverty

 

Blood pours from a soldier and his son

Holding the horn of Africa in their hands

As guerrilla-warfare beats a rhythm on naked skin

 

Atmospheric seasons of child-trafficking, crooked democratic elections, and religious killings

We’re glocked up

Where the graves of our grandfathers are trampled upon in haste to shed the blood of the innocent

 

Shuffling our feet against another civil war

Combinations of orphanages like body shots

Round after round

Town after town

We fell like Heaven’s tear drops

 

But we are entrepreneurs of perseverance who owe you

 

You left us a continent,

Where the light is too little for our sons to read

Where our daughters grow up without hearing an “I love you”

Where our genetics were outsourced for sugar cane and cotton.

 

And we still owe you,

 

Not for aid packages that come wrapped in a bloody history of colonization

Not for the black market guns that robbed children of fathers and nations of resources

Not for the vaccinations that never seem to come.

 

No.

 

We owe you for the blank page of our future

Let us expand ourselves

Declare war on the violence

Place an expiration date on crooked economics

Recycle the lost hope of our fathers

Ring freedom like a cracked bell

 

Rock our enemies to the four corners of their forfeit as they stumble around the horn of Africa

Stunned by our strength

Shaking for their salvation

Naked and exposed in the river of our youth where our brothers used to wrestle

Crouched and corned

Eyes set aflame

Game on

 

From no clothes and dirt roads to private practices and lab coats,

From a 1960 Liberation from the British

Before Obama said we could

We did,

From families of lion-like animals who place their crowns down in a village sun

 

Born to be kings

Smitten and slain

Rising again,

 

From a fountain.

 

Of eastern knowledge the west will never know.

 

For the blessings of these sacred souls

 

Let us expand ourselves

 

Celebrate our punching bags

Honor our jump ropes

Parade around in our boxing gloves

For these are all we have and all we need

 

Fists like yours.

 

Holding the horn of Africa in your hands

 

Battered and beaten

 

Rising like an West African Sun

 

TO FIGHT TO FIGHT TO FIGHT TO FIGHT

 

Until we fall.

 

And land in the sky.

 

 

Two fists raised toward a multitude of prosperity