Seduction

...Tana drum seduction...

SEDUCTION

You beat your ‘tana’ drum

with ancient, calloused hands

making it speak relentlessly,

as if you were rain soaked wind

announcing moonless death.

As its beats echo down brown, 

barren rivers,

its crescendo can be heard

crashing through tangled undergrowth

until it reaches the

timeless and continuous sea.

~~~

The ocean has swallowed

millennium of hardships,

where,  on this very spot,

blood flowed freely, soaking

these sands with slavery’s misery.

It was here 

the Great Rock at Toubab Dialaw

was  born.

Born and grew.

                            Grew from endless

emptiness, borne with the 

beating of human flesh. 

It was hacked, torn from limb

and shackled, then

dispersed to distant shores.

Blood, red with agony’s screams,

soaked the sands,

colored the tides,

and choked the air with its

beat, beat, beat, 

beatings and death. 

Blood ran thick with sated flies

and when you looked into their eyes,

all you saw was  bottomless ocean.

Empty

           Yet pulling,

like seduction.

~~~

You beat your ‘tana’ drum

with hardened, calloused hands,

and your rage.

You make it speak seduction,

enticing us to dance on

Toubab Dialaw’s bloody shores,

staring into the bottomless eyes of death.

It is pulling

            pulling,

                      pulling us

into its seduction.

Filling us with your anger,

with your rage;

filling us with your drumming tongue

and the unquenchable thirst for revolution;

for all these wrongs to be undone.

~~redzone 3.21.07

Author's Note

thanks for reading...
"Truth Don Die"... Femi Kuti...

Reviews

[kublakhan27]

The tana drum rumbles incessantly and unflinchingly through this odyssey of blood and injustice...the bottomless ocean feels like an infinite cry of people mistreated in the most horrifying ways...I did attempt a search on Toubab Dialaw but couldn't find much beyond tourist information...perhaps that only proves the point of your words and evocations...but in the end, I required no background history for you seem to have laid it out in a way incapable of being expressed in any history book...such is the role of a poet, especially one like yourself, with amazing depth of vision and understanding...I felt many emotions as I worked my way through this piece...sorrow, rage, shame, horror...and I emerged from it having learned many things I did not know of beforehand...I can't overstate the power of this work and the indelible imprint it will surely leave on many other readers besides myself...well done my friend.

[redzone]

There's a really great film called "Sankofa" that starts in today times. A young Black woman, a model on a film shoot in Ghana at one of the "slave ports", and she is exploring the depths of this castle/fort where the slaves were shackled until the next ship came, when she is fantastically transported back and finds herself shackled to the wall, a slave girl.... It's a powerful movie, vivid in its capturing the slave trade and then the resistance of the slaves. Steve, if you get the chance, look it up, rent it I think you might like it. Then if you haven't already seen these 2 movies - "D'Jango Unchained" and "Twelve Years A Slave", watch these as well. I don't know Canada's role in slavery, but I do know that many slaves fled to Canada via the Underground Railroad".

I wrote this poem after seeing (actually was living in Philadelphia at the time and was part of the people who were promoting and finding spaces for this film to be shown as it was not being distributed by film companies) the film. 10 to 15 million Africans lost their lives just in the 'middle passage' (the trip from Africa to the America's) It's a holocost that noone talks about!!!

Thanks Steve for your reading this odyssey and for being moved by it, so far you are the only one who has found your tongue after reading... And it is much appreciated, not for my sake, but in acknowledgement of a true crime against humanity that America committed, knowingly!!

Thanks again Steve

[kublakhan27]

Where do I begin my friend...I actually don't watch a lot of movies but I will certainly keep this one in mind...I'll also continue to keep an eye open in history books (I have several) for anything that will shed more light on these events.

I read a book on the Underground Railroad many years ago, but sadly it was at a time when my head was not so clear and so I remember very little of the specifics, but it is another topic I hope to pursue in the future and become re-acquainted with.

And well, you know how I feel about my place in this site, and I do not accept it graciously, though I feel guilty and selfish for feeling that way...I know just how it feels to spend a great deal of time and effort on a poem and a topic that is near and dear to your heart, only to wait for days just to get a few reviews. A piece of this magnitude deserves much more respect that what it has received so far...perhaps we're too deep for our own good, but then again, I have friends who write deeply and do not hurt for attention...but you are one of the few readers who has displayed a genuine interest in what I write, and I hope you know that the feeling is mutual...I may be a bit slow in getting to your newest pieces but that's mainly because I tend to review in bunches, so you'll always have a reader with me...always a pleasure my friend.