Discrimination: Racism, Most Poisonous Bias

                       I

Take gender and the glass ceiling prejudice:

Regardless of the colour or tone

Not getting the CEO job I was most qualified?

Stinks

Why?

Because I, a woman was not as suited

Words dropped like shit

Stung

Robbing into my skin like a splinter and, 

no matter the finesse, cannot be removed. 

Makes me want to puke

They infect 

Tuning my mind bitter

Reasons running in my head like a mantra 

The feeling is of worthlessness

The nights after, maddened with tears

I stayed up bugged

Burden upon my chest like tons of bricks

My stomach, filled with venom, churning

Here I  am faced to face with catch-22:

Each steps I took growing,

Work hard to be all you can be as told, I did

But here now, I am grown, frozen

In reality weather never forecasted.

Morning of my rudely rebirth

To an earth quaking world

I’m  learning to crawl, walk and run at once

Learning to know who I am

Re-examine my name, my place, my role

Know who are my neighbours, 

To a new consciousness of my kin

To know you, system, the invisible monster

Who had dogged me,

Shadowing with trap

so that if somehow I stumble

Takes me, prisoner

I didn’t, hadn’t, until now and I ought, cast the die:

Still your travails troubles me through

Even as I’m beaten, near broken, you stayed

My shadow, ill winds bringing me chills

Gnoring at me, every corners I turned. 

My mind noted you like movie reel,

Punning all the times as still I ignored you, 

Shoved you in my bottom pit, working on My Resolve:

And, not seeing me whining brings

Me whispers of your increasing frustrations

For, the stronger I got the impotent your lot 

 And, for you to regain your manhood

        I have to be approximated,

    Degraded,

Dehumanised and agree to your panel

So, with all logic bricks thrown at your ceiling

And as yet the glass won’t crack

I here resign

For I choose not to be part of the congregation

I won’t be your virility stool

I here unchain me

To start my company, as I have found me

Spirited; human that I am and of equal Being.

Come morning

I know you would raise fresh challenges

But I’m aware now; seasoned by your defeat

Alert to your shenanigans

Awake,

Waiting.

                    II

So is religiosity where we live in a World

Filled with hate and war

Of strifes and violence

And, what do we fight for?

We know not.

They instruct us to bomb, so we do

They say we must shoot, that we do aimlessly

They point to sanity of Terrorism, we terrorise

They say to sacrifice self in suicides, so we do

We do as they say we ought but know not why

And, death becomes us

Murder our committal

Bloodshed and bludgeoning in tow

It is story, natural part of our history

To which we are taught are duties to be fulfilled.

Did your religion pass through these routes?

How were the justifications wrapped?

Cast your stone if your religion is blameless

Place your holy book on podium for scrutiny

Power play and sway I dare say is the essence

We all are of same caste without choice

As you can not judge me, I too

Owe it a duty to let you be

To let you practice of your free will

Your faith based on your fixed fate

Let see together beyond the doctrine

Let’s together examine to determine roots

Of the how and why of our hates;

To what purpose were they planted?

And to whom are the gains of our waring?

Do not use the how of my worship to judge me

The regional domain my religion is rooted

Condemn me by my associates

See beyond my religion to my humanity

See my constitution, flesh and blood as I yours

Re-see the tenet your religion is built on? 

Vet what ultimate yardstick is of it’s goodness

To what extent is what you see in the books

Of same agenda as preached at your worship

Are we in conflict over our beef or being used?

To what religiosity was your birth?

Who determined it?

To what and when the directional journey?

Who is the director?

And, the confrontations, who bears the brunt

You are what I am; pun

Not the master of your fate.

Nothing to do with your choosing

Your interest, fate or faith 

Think:

Be reoriented to love not hate

Pursue salvation, not war

Take to your holy books, not guns

Take the scale off; that dehumanises your sort

Off the mask to be conscious to needless bias

                          III

What then this other irony of shared space,

Coined class

Where you run and rule my life as lords

But never have experienced or have capacity

To know how or what it feels to face strife

Your dinning is of gold, food finery ladened

Your bread, caked, honey laced

Your precious water silver served

All on bent back of toils

Sweated in laborious fields and mines

By labourers who return past 

Your homes, gingerly;

Noiseless

Not to wake your cats and dogs as children who from

Hoops and wild dance, drained

Or wives worn, net surfing

Then are those who stay in the field

In reclining chairs and under umbrellas

Participating with what efforts they put as

Supervisors; the middle class lots:

Dreamers

Wild with wishes

The beggarly; hoping someday to ride horses.

At level of low before the lowest

Sit these others

Eagle someday,

Vultures another,

Then labourers or just hovering

Then by chance or opportunistic;

By crook or fortune, turn fat cats

And, as soon fall back to the middle or low:

These are objects of no element, no class

Faceless ones of dare consequence 

Often seen in relic of lordships

Like myriad

If believed, deceives.

And, for the low of the lows

It is given.

It is what it is.

Has been.

And, the class signature;

The fuel churning the copious’ machines

Meals to different levels of parasites masters

Apparent apparatus of the oppressors

Always in the line mills of abandonment

Repression

Exploitation

Chasing dangled carrots

To stay living.

For being of the least in the chain of classes

Unless able to claw, wrestle to crawl out of the chaotic

Life and living, the years and yards of

Toils, goes on.

Final words:

Class is not an individual or group flaw

But well oiled and deliberate social construct;

Carefully planted norms and values

By and for interest of few over the majority

Now germinated with strong root

Still

To see others as beneath, likened beastly

Is inhuman, debasing and vain

And, whether casted in iron

Ornamented, vanity remains vanity

Naked you came

To dust we all must leave.

                           IV

How then ageism:

What difference decades visited on lives make

To make ways for behaviours towards elderly

Patronising.

Not wet paint, dripping;

Not something seen, 

Heard or touched, 

But, felt

Always there 

Screaming at one;

At work places, and interviews

At gatherings, forms, pensions and family

Perpetuated by those brain blocked to know

Ageing is inevitably 

Consequence of living.

Growing old;

Mantle of wisdom;

The glory and element of God’s glory;

Crowned with years like moving flood plain;

Depositing abundant enrichment of treasures,

Is blessing;

Fountainhead of all generations.

Age is no one’s choice

Need be welcomed without fuss

Ageing is the divine’s laid rules

That all through such and such years

Shall age, preparatory to return

To Him from whom we originated.

As against futility of forever living

As no riches, with what weight is,

Aplenty to buy heaven

Be guided

Be respectful.

                        V

Descrimination against every challenges

Remains no matter what name or tag is

Assumed.

The stench of the carriers like excrement

Transmigrating the hearts of the debased

Like black plum

That can never be washed away.

Be it disability of leprosy, HIV, blindness, Polio

Whether the tone comes sweetly, sadly or faint

It comes from the same flute

Flame of its humiliation capable of dispiriting

The most delightful of hearts.

My good friend, is one of such cheerful soul

A radio on air journalist of repute

The sound of his deep pit voice booms

Echoing in all directions

Piercing, soaring in open sky like kite

To all who hear his morning programme

But know not who is behind the voice, infirm

He has a neighbour

Who rolls down to say hello most mornings

With voice and face laden with pity

For all she sees his disability, not capability.

He sees it all around him; at work place where

His studio, on first floor.

The architect obviously could not conceive a

Cripple journalist, so had no fixing lift foresight

And, so he had to be carried daily

His carriers, despite his best efforts, he see

In their eyes as his neighbour’s, pity.

I do not mind humanity and feeling of mercy

I have gotten pretty used to them, he says;

I do not mind if they choose to wallow in fog:

I do however mind when being dehumanised;

Mind being spat on even if such spit reeks chic.

The world ought to take hold of it’s instinct 

Take off the blindfold to see the humanity in all;

Not beset with ways of sympathy but empathy

Life test maybe induced by fate as faith but, 

See:

Beyond such test to treat them equal and fare.

                                VI

I see race as stocks, seeds, tribes as types;

Possibly progeny, blood, breed, clan or culture:

Then I take racism as bias, however cloaked, I

Lay parallel; side bigotry, racialism, partiality

Stew side by side other discriminations; the lot

Up; gender, religion, class, disability: On and On:

Compared, race remain most poisonous.

I thought fingers burnt is lesson learnt; 

Thought enough was just that, enough:

So when vile came off caves attired in Christianity and,

Burning women alive,

Maligned as witches,

A few good ones rose dared these devils

Typified, called out their grand design; their

Act what it was; devilish deeds from pit of hell.

Done, lesson learnt the world thought until

Their next design line, clothed in adventure;

Bible in one hand, gift in another, guns hidden

All indigenous races targeted; based on the 

Cornerstone to white-wash civilisation  in their

Shortsighted carnivorous plot; shooting, killing, 

Succeeded. And, further caging African seen fit as

Slaves

Yet again, few good hearts bribed these devils

In the flesh with lands and gold to let go the

Chains

But alas changing cloths again in sheeps’ wool

Was all there was, appetite for blood yearning 

Yet for the next target and on mark, fixated on

Jews

For years of wanton wild butchery fire razzed

And this time, there was no compromise the

Same few, now more in numbers fought the

Virus

But, there was neither vaccine nor cure for it 

So it dispersed, spread and sipped into the

Systems:

Reincarnating into systemic racism and biases

To conspire against sunshine and reeling in 

Darkness

Into evil and with all it’s element of oppression

Firmly rooted over the years and casted in

Cloaks of entitlements

Upheld as carry on evil that was trail of tears

Backed with guns as bomb by the oligarchies

But,

These guns and bombs like peeling paints

Will not last

Will be challenged;

Changed

As it cannot be corrected

A system not broken, need no fixing.

Racism is a social construct built based on

Poison,

On foundation of lies

Infested with hatred

To stereotype race, caste, gender etc for gains

To stop perpetuating such generational sowing of

Poisonous seeds of sorrow needs,

Change:

To stop candle lighting for needlessly lost lives,

Change:

Reorient from kindergarten of ignorant beliefs, 

Change:

 Build human moral compass and guidance,

Change:

To teach essence of humanity as Sameness, 

Change:

Drill in them acts conscious as unconscious,

Change:

Ride on hope one amazing moment calls for

Change;

Wake up, your time is up you all devils’ dagger

And embrace change:

Or same few good ones, still in majority who

Never neither rest nor slumber seeing cruelty

Will return 

In arm

And you, sent scurrying back, hiding in hades.