Apartheid & the laughter of evil - story of an African boy ~ For Nelson Mandela as he is laid to rest 15 December 2013

I, who have woken hungry
Beaten by poverty
Sent to a distant land
By parents who cannot feed
I am a slave
Working for survival
In my grey cloth
Tell me where is
Where is our God? 

Blood marks this entire body
From the beatings and whips
This back is no longer a canvas
But a trainline holding a wreck
Cutting like sugarcane
Beaten by the sun
Struck by the Black Mamba
Red like the earth I ask
Where is our God? 

I have no voice
For I am voiceless
A pitcher without water
And a body without a mind
I am a slave to a master
A child in the African way
Across the great desert 
I have been sent to die
Where is our God? 

For the days and nights
That I dragged this lifeless body
Seeking salvation from the masters
Whipped and beaten over and over
Bashed and broken
Dragging a left leg
With foot gashed
Until I could escape by death
In the hot African sun? 

Where was my God
When I lay before my master
Begging for mercy
And not the laughter of evil
I was his mirror
As he was mine
Laugh cry laugh cry
"Until you die"
and I did

Here is our God