on my own - a poem for Bantu Biko

how can Love be dead?
and how do we go on
keeping alive
this half life
in which we thrive
on borrowed time
still haunted by these pale ghosts
in this dry anonymous season
defying Nature's reason
why seasons come to pass

But
Biko is dead
and the amnesiac nation is still bleeding
Love has bled
and a people is still pleading
for a piece of the devils pie
mystified by the lie of the land, these pay-cheques
our proof that we are democracies rejects
these salted tears
and wasted years
Mandela's benevolent smile
our Taj Mahal
yet Love is not for mahala
where gold stalks platinum
down freedoms avenues
where patriarchs sell their daughters
for blood-sugar-sex-magik

i want to scream
to the plaintive melody of A Love Supreme
but the echo chambers of Biko's dying bellow
his deathly twitch
chokes my throat
and my song comes in sobs and blobs of blood
and instead i scream MARIKANA GOD DAMN!!!
knowing i am not a man on his own
but i am
a discarded god crossing the universe on a solitary boat
hoping to bestow a sun-shunning smile to the West