A Poem The Whole World Can Understand economic exploitation is a universal condition of the 20th century, there is no world untouched by multinationals, nor any mind unexposed to the lure of mass produced glitzy designer consumables what I mean is nearly everybody in the world has caught the wave and tasted coke or at least wanted to / is this really a well crafted poem? it doesn’t matter, what matters is how well we get on with helping each other deal with the aftermaths and legacies of colonialism, those unavoidable struggles must and will be the subject matter of world literature, the necessary priority of millions of us, millions of us, no matter how unpoetic this prophesy might sound next to Shakespeare, what do we do with the world after white people have conquered? How do we cope with human and environmental disasters? That is the question all our literature must in one way or another strive to answer assuming we have time and they do not drop the bomb, the strategies and dramatic movements of people of color will be the stuff of short stories, novels, poems, critical essays and feature length cinema, say what you will, agree with it or not, the future is not white and this poem, like it or not, is a statement the whole world can understand —kalamu ya salaam