Just let me be

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I don't wanna be anyone's ngger
a clouded face
a square brown bracket into which you can pour your hate
a doormat to wipe your pain
a whipping boy, girl you can endlessly emotionally rape
over and over, every few hours, weeks or years,
when you feel in the mood for it
suffering selective amnesia or to laugh at the tears
for feeling blood in my veins
colour red
like you
born in a human womb
shitting and farting on the toilet too
what did you think being human was like?
some constant exhausting competition
never ending strife
sometimes
mostly
people want to choose life
a good life
just and fair
a life that honours human breath
not merely the colour spectrum of our hair
I don't want to be your ngger
smiling, cautious, anxious all the time
not sure where to step
when normal breathing is a crime
not on the books
oh no, might get your PC colleagues all shook
but in suspicious, dirty looks
you hold your cruella red rose close
y'all think an 8-year-old and his mom
in pink slides bare toed
are going to gang bang y'all on their school run
school bag in tow
walking to school
to drop off her most precious jewel
but yes, according to you two
her hair freshly washed, clipped back
tendrils flip flop
is a sign she's about to rob
Dude, I should be the one clutching my purse
are you Genocide Joe or Trudeau, Trump, or worse
'self-defence' meant go for more
'finish the job'
'Kill 'em all', be proud
shred 'em, 'Yeah boy'
it's only bad if you're Iz-lum
not the Eye-sis we put in charge
you're full of hate
you are dead inside
dead, dead, dead
not me or my kind
we see and feel the loss of human lives
I got sick
marks on my skin
tatted up from trauma
from watching my human kin
dying, maimed and raped
painfully
all over the place
and for what?
what was anyone dying for?
so companies could make millions
to steal land
those holy minerals
so botoxed celebrities
could lecture us on how we're the terrorism criminals
War, war, war, roar, roar, roar
no, don't force on me your ngger category
don't make your fiction my fate
all to soothe your badly broken, weak mental state
of normalised global entitlement
to other people's stuff
land, democratic choices, limbs, voices
religious noises
women's bodies
at home or abroad
why not
AI global surveillance isn't enough?
I never hurt you, bud
I'm not your mum or pa
I never role modelled human ranking
I never showcased icy indifference
handed you violence, disappointment or neglect so far
leaving you with porn, insecurity and scars
You think I don't want to be an a-hole
treat you like nothing but a rotting pus-filled knob
with a sell-by-date that I get to presume
sends you to a fiery Valhalla brimstone hob
yeah
your kind of self-destructive fun
you think it wouldn't be easier
to dismiss the feelings of you, of e-very-one
whenever I think being 'nice' asks for more
more effort
more thought
pulling the brake before running a robo
I too would find it easier to shit on you all-day for clout
for release, relief
to make myself feel stronger
no matter how brief
leave another bleeding rectum
in my yeah-but-not-my-problem week
but I don't want to seal my soul's fate
I don't want to resent any-one
I've never been dead inside, this year or on any date
no colour, religion or nationality
I don't cheer indifference that births hate, hate, hate,
so I can feel pure
the farce of holier violence than us all
I don't want to be indifferent to human life
to feelings not mine
I don't want to ever be like you
full of wicked spite and comfort with mass crimes
I shouldn't have to be anyone's ngger
for goodness sake, it is 2025
I shouldn't have to dazzle or soothe egos
this isn't a cooking contest or live battle rhymes
prove to people who don't see
don't want to be part of humanity
if I learn your language real good
or pretend to be less me, more you
then I will get your tick of approval
Is that even actually true?
Be honest
do you still get to undermine and abuse
then call me ungrateful while you presume
that you know better than me and god knows who
fuck you, doos
fuck you
I was born in apartheid South Africa, my friend
I don't owe you my self-worth
my dignity to survive your abuse-for-fun jerk off
I did my time in the few-lives-matter black hive
I got assaulted by desperately pure
threatened with death
shouted at work
by pure colleagues who were too damn lazy
to be colleagues of worth
dismissing clinically depressed students
telling them to take multivitamins to help
didn't know about their starvation
tick ticking away at retirement for years
but didn't bother to ask
disinterest, low effort or not
gets rewarded at the top
employment was secure
and it happens
abuse protected by placate
back home it was the power-less being sent away
and with all of that weight
there you are
a shiny turd amongst turds
ready to make the world
just that little bit worse
You think I don't know this game
I am from no-rainbow pain
bud, you didn't invent this shit
not when I lived it
I know what truly starts a genocide
what keeps colonial centering in place
always avalanching our way
I am so sick, sick, sick of this dehumanising, mate
I don't want to be your damn ngger
none of us are
look yourself in the face
paint yourself brown or black
if you are itching for a collective attack
I hear it's a thing
to celebrate slavery
to those unworthy much joy its meant to bring
so do it, but this time, do it to yourself
buddy, leave me out of it
my boy
our boys
are not yours to call names
and assume the worst
in the mirror, call yourself names
abuse yourself as you choose
I don't like it but if that's what you need
then undermine yourself at work
and call it woke when you figure it hurts to try and then lose
pay yourself less
motivate for yourself to be excluded
the ill-fitting cultural fit shoes
you just couldn't use
shame yourself for not doing better or more
shame yourself for being too entitled
or sounding and appearing too brown at the mall
shame yourself for your aging or weight
what happened, bud
why don't you look like a smooth shredded twenty-three yet
make yourself the bug under the microscope
'hasn't my religion given the world bad ideas
my lack of rumination all over the world
deserves needed flagellation in gear'
make memes about your own spiritual path
draw caricatures of your own cold heart
but leave me out of this obsession
a race of races I didn't choose
there was no election
you don't know me or my boy
you know nothing of the sort
what did Finkelstein say
Hitchens pulled parts and made nothing sound lyrical
leave me out of your pull to feel better
when you're learning too, far from a holy Biblical.
I'm so tired of the structural necessity of ngger
the need that you need to feel good
by always blustering and tiptoeing bigger
and not feeling good as in content or joyful
the spread of sunshine, working class camaraderie or love
no, a sense of belonging filled with fear, roidrage and a hurtful shove
why is equal or ordinary so bad
what is so scary about just being a friend or a lad
a lady
a person
to a person
what happened to y'all
that you can't just live in this fucking world
live. be kind
life is hard enough
without your knife stabbing from behind
just live
for fucks sake
you're an exhausting migraine
more than a headache
I have no vested interest
in these conservative religious pinchers
this twisted obsession
all over the world
seeing who is best at it
it is so gross
who cares
I spend zero time
thinking about gay people
when I am straight and fine
I don't care what bathroom you use
South Africa has unisex bathrooms too
I don't care what you do with your hair
if you pray, sure
if you read about prayer, meh some more
don't hurt anyone should apply to us all
don't abuse power in relationships goes beyond religion
have you noticed our democratic politicians pinching
This week
golden hair came up to us three
to us, a stranger
a nobody
would you like hot chocolate
I see your son and my boy likes the machine
I smile, shake my head
are you sure
yes, thank you, I smile wider instead
we noticed the hot chocolate raring
I want hot chocolate, my boy says. I might go red
isn't that what us humans should be
just decent and thoughtful
friendly with an open mind
yes, on both sides
on all sides,
not lust for colonial control and genocide
then shockingly demanding more from one side
lying by omission or falsehoods all the time
I have never understood why people choose to be so shit
not just once in a while
but because they could
like masked serial killers of hope
they choose their victims
the ones to skewer and poke
it's sick, man
their updating list of candidates for hate
the more vulnerable
the more brown
women more than gravelly sounds
the namby-pamby comes out in rounds
but only if the fight is rigged
and they're guaranteed a quick win
it feels even better to drive the nails in
our decency and sense of wrong being mocked
cast on a so-called Christian cross
then we are blamed as troublemakers for doing too much
you see it, everywhere now
no one is holding back
downgrading movie rankings
black films need to know their place
boasting about how it's a game
the blacks will never win the race
committing hate crimes to prove
you belong as an angel of contempt
aggression to immigrants
or calls for collective punishment to date
the brown kind most of all
men are all rapists
women are just the fat and lazy and raped
look around, noodle, y'all be winning awards
inhumanity
brutality and cruelty
megalomania galore
no one has murdered more lives in modern history then y'all
but still it's not enough
my god
all this blood
and you are still pouring your unhealed stuff
with the cockiness of a crown
made now of Palestinian baby bones and hungry mouths
scattered across crumbled walls you eagerly brought down
you invented ngger
you made it all up
like a horror fantasy
all so you could do what you're doing now
to no one more than us
What went wrong?
who hurt you so bad? 
what made you this way?
So sad, scared or mad
No Muay Thai award or CEO desserts
can change the poisoned veins
so numb you can't feel it hurts
you're kak
you are gone, man
you haven't even realised how far from baseline you are
so busy admiring your grand design plans
normalising abuse, undermining, cruelty all day long
it hurts me to see you like that
a human life
so twisted and bent out of shape
but if you enjoy pain in others
do you even recognise your own pain?
do you honour your own humanity?
not god status but childhood tears
memories of vulnerability
the search for validation and those human longing years
might as well be a wasted life wishing death on the world
enjoying mass destruction
touring rubble for family delight
sitting at coffee shops
talking about how you love the 'blowing rocks' at night
when you mean genocide
as children scream and their body parts take flight
then movie industries we trust
put you on TV shows
movie blockbuster rolls
and make you the relatable quirky norm
or the gorgeous hero we can all root for
who will save us from the villainous storm
astounding
absolutely astounding
the disconnect from reality we are living in
what we think
and what is true
are two planets
with a wormhole distancing them
Saving you is futile
I see
only you can want to open your eyes
to be healed, to be free
Friend, I am not your ngger
I won't play that role
for you or this earthly dive
beat yourself on the back
if you need pain to feel alive
life you have proved
is way too short
if we are sentenced to suffer and die
then I will say my piece
plain equal dignity is what we fight for
not erasure of any constructed bloody race
I hope you heal
but the hope is now faint
I don't think you want to change
and I can't shake the blood of innocence you sprayed onto my face