Genocide: Who Am I?

The wooden milk jug splintered, and I sprinted

Spilling the creamy milk, my timber hollow spoon bilks me Death flagged me three options; Nose-dive into the icy Atlantic, Confront the sweat-thirsty Kalahari, Face the blood-thirsty soldiers, Guess which option I took? Who am I?

Shoulder draped canes

Puffing deadly clips

- of no match to catapults

An army of bloodsucking flies Paddling in a puddle of bloodied ponds Amassed the benumbed bodies, I flapped the vampire flies Licking their needle-pointed mouths and milking my fresh wounds

So, who am I?

I goggle at the sun-bleached hills, Saturated with guava-juice kills, The blowing guns swapped Feet stomping songs

Who am I?

The table-like Waterberg

Gushing tears of a widower,

Cow skulls sagged on stone-pillow mourners A son of guns, a daughter of tree pods Who am I?

I couldn’t tell them apart

The white diamonds popping up at Shark Island, Where’s the proof?

Twitchy souls sardined in museums

Time exhumed our fleshless stones

Who am I?

Ashamed to walk half-naked,

I’ve swopped my charm for colourful cotton Who am I?

Reparations will fix potholes, Build red corrugated boreholes, but Reparations will be short of Patching up bottomless craters of my mystified paters Who am I?

An unedited textbook of yesterday A missing soiled page of today, A revised handbook of tomorrow The Twin Mountains are a no-go area That’s my ancestral land! Where’s the proof? Drummed in the songs and dances, Gummed in the sapped cow poop huts, Mystified in the barefooted ranting -over the burning-bush

Who am I?

Dad whispered,

Sipping foamed drinks in green red steel-coated cups mommy hissing,

Like a loose knob on termitesinfested door

I’m a nebulous boor,

As faint as a dinosaur’s spoors

Who am I?

Nor of tossed hair, nor of curled locks The victors have erased my history Where’s the victims’ pencilled story? Who am I?