As Black Boys Slay Eachother

There was once a time and place in which we did not gauge masculinity by the acquisition of land and the construction of buildings, the claiming of earth with guns and territory and lines drawn with blood; these were learned from the colonialist blueprint. We once built foundations on the inheritance of a given name, a sacred ancestry; an identity exhumed by illustrious history, purpose manifested by nurturing historic soil, sowing and reaping; the responsibility handed from father to son, from mother to daughter. The whyfor and whatfor held in the honour of hoisting tradition onto our shoulders. Our boys now claim corners on streets that have and never will be their own; they boast postcodes that were written up long before our diasporic arrival, defend corners that were never the bosom. Corners they are scoffed at for treading only footprints into by true blues and bluecoats whom need no warrant to stop search and remove them from the street sign they lay claim to. As though reading from scrolls penned by colonials themselves; they bulwark lanes with odonyms for Romans not Africans, champion territories that belonged to Mobs before Mandem. They lay claim to the machete heirloom that skinhead Brick Lane Massive's wielded to look-see black men. Retired now, they recline and relax as our sons lynch on their behalf, plunging blades into mirror images of themselves but never seeing the suicidal irony. Belowing 'this is MY endz', as black boy blood saturates cold concrete lands. They obey the colonialist command and never question the abject absurdity of it all, for they no longer see themselves in the selfsame whose soul lies lifeless within chalk lines and yellow tape. Taking selfies by corpses reminiscent of happy Deep South lynchers who captured black souls hung from ropes in their luminous glare. Their victims preserved as visual souvenirs; modern L.D Nelson's strung up before deerstalkers who are no longer white hicks. Conscripted soldiers in a cold war, Manchurian candidates launched into unrighteous battle. There is no bequest or birthright in a land that was never ours; no endowments in estates; merely a divide and conquer master plan rendered effective and achieved. As black boys erase themselves before our eyes.