Black man thinking on the throne (not the Almighty’s), but doing what all have the right to, yet many don’t.
Author: D’Bara Arruda

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Toilet reflections of a deep-skinned man
with laxative questions for clogged-up minds.
— Perfect for those constipated with common sense...

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It is here, in this singular moment, that I — noble.
Noble, yes! Until someone proves otherwise:
all royalty shits…
And behold:
it doesn’t smell like French perfume.
Their wicked thoughts reek of whips,
of burning beggars and bribes
from stolen health funds and school meals.
Mine?
Today, it smells like centuries of indignation.
It’s diarrhoea of revolt and lactose intolerance
from the milk of the profane cow (Habemus Sanct).
— Existential? No. Just dehydration
of my humanity and roots...

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Listen up!
The Black family tree grows downward into the earth
and becomes compost that flowers into diamonds.
Police reports turned toilet paper
for oligarchs by the hands of politicians.
Apartheid here?
Oh no...
Here we call it favela.
Oops — “community”, I meant.

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As vomited by Mackenzie, “cathedral of pure races”:
— that Black, scholarship-holding, lesbian girl,
‘Burnt Cigarette’ in the foul mouths
of boys with coats of arms and pedigrees?
She deserves, at best, a silent plastic bag...
(But oh! if she gets rich, her crime becomes glamour —
and the plebs applaud the upgraded shame.)

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While the school seals the case with gloss,
the press chews the scandal with a happy end —
and another Cláudia is dragged — not by the asphalt,
but through the bathroom tiles of hypocrisy that divides castes,
where one kilo of that “people’s” shit
is weighed against the sigh of the Black scholar —
the only orgasm the elite accepts from her is the last.

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Meanwhile, TV edits the mourning into the perfect close-up
— cut to the beer ad...
Which one?
The same one that goes down smoothly
and sponsors both the preacher and the armoured police truck.
No redemption — Sunday’s got beach concerts,
along the boardwalks where pleasure and horror are sold.

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pssshhhhh...
The show goes on, the media is constipated...

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...Yesterday and today.
But tomorrow?
A shattered mirror of the same yet distinct hatred:
— and what doesn’t come out of this stray-bullet target
where, besides ‘kinky hair’, I also carry
brain matter — daily dish
at the self-service of barbarism,
a gourmet delicacy
in the hunt of hungry uniformed foremen.
(“Aim for the head!” said His Eminence, the former governor.)
Social cannibalism.
— The State pulls the trigger, the elite signs the minutes,
but blood is all the same — only the label changes,
which dries and rots like newspaper ink
(or like blood in the coroner’s report).

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— ugggghh
(frrraapp, vrrrp, toot)
— while the police blotter
becomes the State’s toilet paper,
the flat with electric fences
and separate entry for staff
applauds the latest census
and whispers:
— “One less Black...
...Phew!”

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Epilogue

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Why did they open the doors of the big house?
Your integration policy is a failure,
a dug-up corpse every 13th of May.
Yesterday, abolition.
Today, quotas.
But segregation…
still reigns.