Black lives are more than just numbers

I guess what I am sitting with are the effects of pondering over things for too long.
I guess that's one crucial reason why this becomes a convenient outlet for me.
And in the event that these conversations yield no fruit, would they have been in vain?
Certainly not.
Not IF I have managed to unsettle others in the process.
Not if I'm not alone in this.
For I do not want to be unsettled alone.
I'm unsettled by the numbers on our lives.
The numbers which replace our lives when we die, unsettle me.
I am more unsettled by the number being done on us while we still live.
I am one who truly cannot settle with this.
I'm unsettled that many are still made to only amount to data in a stats report.
It's troubling.
That the value of our lives are reduced to black pawn pieces used in a chess game.
Except when we fall, we do not get to 'play again'... no, for they don't have the power to put the life back into our empty bodies.
The numbers are dehumanizing.
Where do we even begin unpacking how behind every number there is an infant that becomes an orphan or a spouse losing a bread winner? The dark figures of crime further forming a dark cloud over the perception we have of ourselves, troubles.
When the poverty is inhumane along with the racism affecting us.
(I too want to ask: what is the price of a black man's life?)
Surely we are more than just numbers.

I write as one who does not believe that this can be over iterated.
There is an urgency for conscious dialogues in our circles of engagement.
We are more than just figures. We are more than just variables.
I feel these are the flowers we need to give each other while we are still living.
Black lives matter too.
The fear of just amounting to a statistic grips those who know they form part of a generation. It's startling.
Though expressed differently, we do see it in the life-long concerns people have in building their names, and the legacies they want to leave behind.
These are noble ambitions and worthwhile endeavours.
Such accolades of life cannot be fully expressed in a number.


It is the aspirations of the fallen young ones who died revolting which unsettles me the most.
How Hector Pieterson also had ambitions, dreams and hopes.
He was human.
He was a person.
He was a priceless embodiment of sacred life.
Him and his classmates...and they were many.
Their lives mattered too.
Numbers will never justify the meaning of their lives lost.

At this stage, there is a social war against a capitalism that knows no morality.
There is a need to have the statistics humanized again.
An audience needs to be cogniscant of the reality that the masses are human beings too.
Both the casualties of the past and the present matter.
No human life should just amount to a mere statistic.
I am hoping for empathy on the part of those who encounter accounts of lost lives from now on.
ALTHOUGH the media may report 'numbers', we should perceive deaths for what they are: a plethora of human experiences snuffed from the face of the earth.
It's axiomatic for me to point out how the masses today still live in standards below par... and how behind every number there's a family that is crying.
It really is unsettling.

This leaves me further unsettled when I think what meaning this highlights regarding the sacrifices made in the struggle. How land is not the only thing apartheid took away from us.
How the most precious of lost gifts are innocent black lives we cannot claim back.

This unsettles me, and I write about it... hoping it unsettles you too.

I will write and I will riot

If she is black and poor then to her may I be a loyal servant.
May I concern myself with the poverty that has concerned her.
I will write for her sake at times, for it conflicts me that she is still often defined solely by the quality of her womb.
I will write of my frailty in this regard... for I too sometimes only see her that way.

And so I will present honesty pieces of my eternity short lived, not for my reader's sake, but my own.
For I will not to have to look back tomorrow and doubt the cognitive conflict I am going through.

I reflect on the works of my predecessors and I am inspired.
I acknowledge modern day role-players and contemporaries.
I feed off the energy of my peers as we share stories of our backgrounds together.
I will write of the common goals and champion the common cause we have.
We are black.

I will write what affects me.
I will write that it may affect others.
I write out unto my saviours and in hope, I hope, that in the process I will save others.

I write as one who has heard the war cry.
With pens and thumbs beating the drums to the sound for the call to arms.
I join the mob assembling with 'QWERTY' pads and keyboards declaring the blood of those who died revolting.

I uncover the truth behind the jests...how we have embraced the omission of certain parts of their language medium.
It serves as a parable to me: that there will always be something missing- my speech feeds off the criticism it receives.

I am the subject of my writings.
They are paragraphs of a vision.
They are narratives of a single eye beholding the answers within a question.

I am conflicted.
I write to afflict my confliction.
I write to remedy my crisis.
I write for the sanity of my person.
I write to be at peace with myself.
Beyond the objectivity of rational thought and cogent arguments...I will write because I have found it okay to be otherwise.