Ranny Williams
"Man 'pon spoht"
No more, the ridiculous of convention
To throw in the swine pen of laughter,
Where we turning from red, white and blue
And Ceres transformation, had no clue
Who we were
Or what else we were tto become
Unless what we were already made to be.
You were a sort of mirror to us
So we would not become
What we were laughing at,
And that we saw
Clearly using lens of humour
You made specifically for the vision here.
I even laughed at me sometimes
What I had borrowed
Or stolen from the old master of our fate.
I laughed at what was villified with hate.
I wanted to be cleanse
Of what I was not supposed to be
But had no cure or remedy
Though gathered around the radio
The only one my father afforded for the village
That kept my company every night
And taught me folklores
And self in that which I did not understand.
You brought its love to me
When I did not know.
It was this love when I owned it
This love when I knew it was me
Made me worthy of loving me
Of loving my peculiar difference
Set aside by class, and color of my skin
And status that dwindled me within;
This love
Set upon from without,
I had no weapons to defend ...
But you
You and radio liberated with me.
They sold us it not to make us equal
But to take away our wage
In payments week after week.
They did not know
Even when you did without mask before their face;
It was not money that we need to heal
It was faith in us
To laugh, and separate the vain from the real.
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