Black Heaven

Once more, among the many once mores,

The sun has risen as it has been its norm

Since the conception of the world

But you only remember a quarter of century

If you can count days you just drooled and pooped

And giggled at the simplest of things

Before school took away your innocence

How it made you hate your own mother tongue

How it made you despise your culture

Because, somehow, you learned it was backward

Or primitive, as the white man would say

Teachers, agents of the white man’s bullshit

Made you despise your own African religion

Not that you grew with it, but you were told

That somewhere in the course of our history

We worshiped the Asiss, the sun

The god who created Kalenjin in his own image

(If you can borrow the white man’s lingo)

With differing complexions, but still rich with melanin

And we poured libations to the intermediaries

Old who men and women who went before us

The white man, beaming with written evidence

Talked about the Ten Commandments 

Do not steal, he said, and then went and stole our land

Do not kill, he said, and then killed our brothers and sisters

And we, sheepishly believed him and are now fervent supporters

Of the new religion that keeps us in bondage

In poverty, because our riches are in heaven

The white man inherits the earth, which he can  see

And promises us African riches in heaven, a place we cannot see

And even it exists, it was fashioned by a God from abroad

Whose witnessed our oppression without striking them

Who has witnessed racism and said nothing

If anything, I want to go to a black heaven

The heaven we know will be filled with people

Who have had no qualms hating the black man

Enslaving and killing the black man

And yet tells him to be meek and righteous

Legitimize black poverty by robbing us our treasures

Turning brother against brother that he can sell weapons

Yet, he goes to church every Sunday to atone for his sins

For god gave a provision allowing us to sin first

And repent later

A thing that was not African at all

Because we did not believe in heaven