The Matrix

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.