Jamaican Poetry: The Wretched of the Earth

We are the wretched of the earth,
The scourge of Babylon,
The lepers of Israel,
The untouchables of India;
We are despised and our
Brothers and sisters have been fed lies.

We are the bile of the universe,
The perpetually handicapped;
Teased, molested, taunted, and arrested.
We are the filthy, carbon-monoxide waste,
That slither through the ages,
We are told lies, we are despised.

This chant has saturated our humanity,
Hence, our comfort with inferiority,
Being called a minority, and stricken in poverty.
We sway our rhythmic hips, daily
To the blatant, hypocritical words,
Of our converted, cultured brothers;
Who have,
Turned their backs,
Turned up their noses,
Turned a blind eye;
And jostled daily for backra’s table scraps.

We are the wretched of the earth,
As we know not what we believe;
Our history, rewritten
We are deceived.
How can the people of the once
Great African nation regain,
How can our brainwashed intelligence defy stupidity?
How can we build an untarnished foundation, on lies?
How can we no longer be despised?

As a wretched of the earth,
I’ll dig and sieve
In search of some uncorrupted truth;
Even if it starts with Moses,
And travels beyond the future of our kids.