The Matrix
from Africaiswoke.com
The future is black, the future is queer.
by James Mbuthia Ndung’u
The creator’s code:
Input, persons
Function, love
Operating to create freedom, output.
A farmer
cultivating, and tending to their farm;
reaping an infallible world order.
The human plant corrupts itself with fear
of losing freedom that was never lost,
a virus.
It transforms some inputs into ‘bugs’- persons into queer, black, animal, and slave.
They ‘debug’ my unbroken masterpiece,
slaughtering in vain
the inputs that my system sustains,
and dispense a freedom where everyone is in chains.
In me you can see your bits and pieces,
the creator’s code perfectly rewritten,
Your make up, your fashion, your games
Your language, music, art, and names
Your sports, your sculptures, your history, and fame
The politics, movements, resistance and religion
In science, and justice we fight undefeated
to create that which we only see in visions
The creator’s gift of a graceful freedom.
You can never be free, until we are all free,
This much is written.
We are the Doctors, Lawyers, Preachers and Cleaners
Writers, Actors, Diplomats and Leaders
Activists, Artists, Engineers, and Teachers
Characters, Animals, Factual, and Fiction.
We are coded in time,
your family and friends, inputs
the creator’s key to a new kingdom,
Antidotes to fear,
remedies to this broken world order.
I am the farmer’s child
planting, love
weeding, caring
pruning and cutting, tending
ripening the human fruit
for harvest, when the time is right
Queer and Pure, I am the code’s cure.
Input, persons
Function, love
Output, freedom
The future is black, the future is queer,
The future is now, the kingdom is here.
James Mbuthia Ndung’u is a non-binary artist from Nairobi, Kenya. They are a writer, artist and student currently working on an anthology of poems titled, The Gender Binary is a Prison.