1492 to Now
for Tumelo Mosaka

i.
this is the place
where Columbus landed

this is the place
where he was first received

this is the place
where the argument started

between the old world
and the new

ii.
our being de-emphasized since
is it because we’re flat
no mountains like Jamaica,
Trinidad, St. Lucia,
no Kaieteur Falls, Guyana

or we ourselves
shooting our foot, our selves
putting a picture out there
to attract tourist to sandy beaches

suggest this was what we were
place for taking pictures
scrubbed free of reality

suggest our natives were waiters
our women sitting, platting straw

what does the world out there think of
when they think of us
when they think us up

are we ourselves the reason why
we’ve been excluded
left out of the argument

advertised to the world
by agencies abroad,
sanitized for consumption

that we are real, has that been left out
fact that we are people
dying, struggling, surviving

but feet away from hotels
as if a million miles away

as if we lived underground
or in another world

emerging only to wait tables
make beds, keep pools free
of falling leaves

iii.
this is the place
where Columbus landed

this is the place
where he was first received

this is the place
where the argument started

between the old world
and the new

iv.
does the world know
that we live here
what we do here
that we’re real here
that we’re still here

is the word which goes out
that the natives were annihilated
in the early 1600s

is the thought that even now
there are no natives
rooted, tied, to soil and sea

are we just a beach
is that what is imagined,
when we are thought of
when they look us up or think us up

is this what we perpetuate
to sell ourselves, our sea-sand-sun
should I reach for my gun

kill this image, kill a lie, killing me
is this lie what I am living daily
for tourist dollars

allowing native self, native me
to be rubbed out of the picture
to keep it pretty

let me like that child announce,
the emperor’s wearing not a stitch
he’s as naked as a fish

I see his ass, I see his dick
as naked as the natives were
when Columbus landed

the natives are still here
we’ve not gone anywhere

even though we’re wearing
suits and ties, skirts and dresses

address us, we can hear,
can talk and think, I swear

how tired I am of being asked
to disappear because
the tourists are coming

v.
this is the place
where Columbus landed

this is the place
where he was first received

this is the place
where the argument started

between the old world
and the new


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2008
5:10 a.m. 11.01.08