By Charles Quist-Adade, Vancouver, Canada
Justice: I know Your Real Name
You proclaimed you’re the law of karma
The author of the Golden Rule
The good and evil supreme arbiter
You whispered into my tender ears when I was but a suckling
“Lil’ Kwabena, sow the seeds of goodness and reap the sweet fruits of blessing”
You sang me to sleep with your lullaby “Lil’ Kwabena never forget:
“What goes around comes around”
And I accepted without drama and no discordant sound
You preached to me: “Little Kwabena, bad deeds return wrath and pestilence.”
I welcomed your solemn sermon in silence
Yet many have I witnessed labour to shower kindness and charity
But alas! they reap the bitter fruits of recrimination and hostility
Many have I seen chasten fellow humans with brim-stones of pain and anguish
Yet they flourish as though without blemish
And the kind-hearted you left to perish
Don’t tell me your wheels grind slow
Because I will be six feet below
Don’t tell me the rewards for good deeds I will reap someday
Because I will be six feet under before that day
Don’t tell me hell fire awaits the wicked one day
Because the wicked cares less about your prophetic day
Don’t tell me my misfortune is a blessing in disguise
Because a blessing in disguise is a curse in demise
Don’t tell me you are blind
Because your blindness is selectively colour-sensitive
And colour-coded in your mind
Because in your blindness, you witnessed in complicit reticence,
The Trilogy of the M’aafa: Slavery, Colonialism, and Post-Colonial Neocolonialism
Because in your colour blindness, you witnessed in supine silence,
White supremacist atrocities: Apartheid, Jim Crow Juneteenth, Sharpeville,
Soweto
Because in your colour-sensitve blindness, you witnessed in frigid carelessness
The cold-blooded murder of Lumumba, Biko, Floyd
And legions you watched in abandon callousness
To perish in anguish in your heartless limbo
Yes, Justice, I know your real name
I know your actual name
Your name is Unjustice
Charles Quist-Adade
May 20, 2020
Vancouver, Canada
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