TCOUT

The Chair of Uncomfortable Truths

In the lap of the chair of uncomfortable truths
You can feel every lie.
There’s no cushion from the
guilt that presses into the flesh.
Buried over decades, centuries, generations.
To a Westernised mind, the hostility is unfathomable.
Strangers.
Ear to toe, flank to forehead, bound by skin and chains and
terror.
Ships moving in six degrees of motion across the Atlantic
Defecation, blood and despair stain the deck.
Dignity laid bare and thrown overboard
Bodies tangled in sweat, vomit and panic.
Heave, sway, surge, roll, pitch, yaw.

Delivered to shores where value is
In the number of teeth left in your head
Shillings, farthings and pennies
for Black wombs
and burly Bucks.
Wooden boards around necks,
mutilated by branded burns.
Wailing, adrenaline and the stench of fear
stifle the air.
Foreign mouths curled with hate and
a sweet tooth for torture.
Generational wealth built on sugar
and bloodlust.

Siblings made brotherless
separated by fields and big houses.
Girls made mothers, by brute force
then childless by the same token.
Dialects snatched from native tongues
Whitewashed scriptures jammed
down their throats
Words garbled on the passages between
Portugal and Ouidah and London and Gorée
And back again.
Lost.

Now we sit back to back
in the seat of civilisation
With nothing to hold us up
but each other.
Imbibed with tales of how the West Indies was
Won.
The history books tell the victor’s story of
when the sun wouldn’t set on the empire
and British fanfare rang out on home shores.
Where their pain bought you comfort,
and their shame bought you pride
The world’s eyes turned blind.

Church and state sanctioned brutality
Words manipulated in the name of the Lord to
Divide and conquer.
And even when the metal chains were unshackled,
the residue of nightmares had already camouflaged itself
in their veins.
A lifetime of discomfort
The damage is done.

The hard truths fade and fall on deafened ears
Warped by time and distance
but the pain is irreparable.
An endless aftermath.
Yet still, we pay for the sins of our fathers
The cheques kept rolling in
Compensation
in the wrong direction
But how much is enough?
What’s the price of abject And
The answers begin with the remembering.

Komali Scott-Jones