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Sunday 27 December 2015

crazy #decemberpoetrychallenge

Crazy

Used to be a thing that was sexy
When I was 16
Be crazy!
Be unusual, think out of the box
Dress weird – but sexy
Drink.
Get crazy!
Kiss boys – but not too many.
Make sure the crazy drunk
Helps you kiss
But forget the nights things went too far.

They never mentioned
When I was 16
That crazy was something I should grow out of
Not into

That when I was 30 drink would be a crutch
Crazy would be a label stuck on my head
Making me undesirable
For anything long term

Or would make me tie myself to
Be dragged along behind
Other types of crazy that would
Tear me to shreds

Crazy is sexy on a night out
Crazy is scary in the tears the next morning

Crazy is me blowing out my cheeks and saying no
When there doesn’t seem an option
Crazy is me shrinking back from a yes that would
Trace me into less than

Crazy is not a choice.
It is not a pair of jeans I can step into and out of.
It is a lifetime of bright and dark and pain in my chest.
Of learning to pick my way with broken glass in my feet.
Of feeling more than.
Of seeing.
Not choosing.
Just being.


Tuesday 22 December 2015

Slow (#decemberpoetrychallenge)

Today I say a slow prayer
Slow enough to hold all the wounds in my mouth
My tongue peeling them in

Each breath grows my prayer

My country
Ah
My country

I slow the prayer down even more
Each letter creeping
If I hold it in my mouth long enough it will
Reach the sky sooner

Ghosts settle slowly on my shoulders
They roll my tongue back into my mouth

Swallow your prayers
They say
Turn your eyes up

No slowness of speech
Will calm the burning

Climb into the flames
Either you will sleep
Or you will soar

Either is better than
Your tongue drying in your mouth
Trying to pray hard enough
Climb into the flames

Look up

Thursday 17 December 2015

nothing (#decemberpoetrychallenge)

I am lonely for nothing
I am lonely for a revolution
I am lonely for a world that will not come

I am lonely for a lover
I am lonely for love
I am lonely for a war that will destroy me

I am lonely for an echo
I am lonely for a sound I know
I am lonely for a mountain to throw the echo into

I am lonely for my best friend
I am lonely for a hand in my chest
I am lonely for a dream that only exists as ghost


I am lonely for comrades
I am lonely for lovers
I am lonely for politics that do not hurt

I am lonely for dark
I am lonely for death
I am lonely for a piece of a peace of sunset

I am lonely for nothing.


Toothbrush (#decemberpoetrychallenge)


Tiny toothbrush
Blue sparkly Colgate
The one that squeezed out in star shape
To try and trick smalls into being excited
About brushing their teeth

I hold the brush solemnly
Meticulously
Aware of the weight of my duty

I hold her tiny had in mine, firmly
She bares her tiny teeth, trustingly

We are there in that moment simple
Big and small

One trusted, one trusting
Each able to fill the role
Holding small sweaty hands

In my tangles 30 years later
I try to remember when a role came
That easily
One that felt so easy to fulfill

When I have ever been as useful
As I was to my baby sister
teaching her to brush her teeth

Tuesday 15 December 2015

Rain



I am afraid of getting old.
Or, maybe, not that,
I am afraid of losing people

Losing my laugh
The way I can run
The years I can imagine as possibilities to fix
The fuck ups
So, maybe, I am afraid
Of the living I worry I will not do

I am afraid of losing my teeth
Or, maybe, I am afraid of them falling out
If I shiver too much
If I clench them too hard
If I hold too much fear

I am afraid of being alone.
This one is hard to write.
Or, maybe, I am just afraid of losing my bests
This one and this one and this one
Of not being able to lose myself in comfort with them
Not being able to grasp the world clumsily with them
Our sweat making us lose our grip
Our tears making soft pools to catch what we lose

I am not afraid of the rain.
Not matter how hard it falls.
Not even if it drowns me.

Or, maybe, it is the drowning that I am looking for.

Sunday 13 December 2015

Guerrilla (beautifulbraves of 2015) #decemberpoetrychallenge

Guerrilla:

“a member of a small independent group taking part in irregular fighting, typically against larger regular forces”

BeautifulBraves of 2015

The moment you sat
In front of the car
Expecting that the driver –who was also a student –
Wouldn’t treat you as part of the street
Wouldn’t designate your life as less than her morning inconvenience

That moment when you screamed
In frustration
At the shiny gold BMW
“How must I pay R10 000 when we do not have R1000 in my house”

The moment you did push ups in front of the car
Trying to break through the barricade

The moment when you wept
After police had fired stun grenades
“I am a student here!
Why did they shoot?”

The moment you were on your knees
Hands up
They arrested you anyway

The moment you stayed,
First-year awkward
Around the rubber bullets
Hands flying up involuntarily,
With the gunshots

The moment you screamed
“You fuckers!
Shoot! Shoot me now! You want to shoot me,
Just shoot!”

“I am your child.
How can you not see you are killing your child?”

Imbi lendawo

The guerrillas are
Drawing breath
Choosing weapons
Loving each other up
Testing skin thickness, weather resistance
Holding the songs in their throats

Getting ready for next year

Tuesday 8 December 2015

shadows (december poetry challenge: day 1)




My shadows and I (i)

She asked about my shadows,
If I ignore them.
My shadows giggle in my hollows
If only she knew…

My shadows and I (ii)


My shadows and I (i)


She asked about my shadows,
If I ignore them.
My shadows giggle in my hollows
If only she knew…

My shadows and I (ii)

They live in my ears
In between my toes – not like soil, but like fungus.
In my labia lips
In the vertebrae in my neck

My shadows and I (iii)

They burn in summer.
They tell me they have homes in my belly rolls –
They will never let me hide.

My shadows and I (iii)

Inadequacy, rage, shame
Precarity, folding into itself, like eggwhites
Skyrise desire, constantly crumbling, with no stairs,

My shadows and I (iv)

They promise me I can find solace in sex
In drink

My shadows and I (v)

When I sleep they turn my world black
Trick the colour out of me
Sing to me of suicide, always out of reach

My shadows and I (vi)


I make jewelry out of them
I will show them how they shine in the sun
I will teach them how to sing gentle songs
Of how they grew strong, how they grew weak
How they grew brave
How they no longer yearned to be beautiful




Tuesday 1 December 2015

I will live in the sun

Who will the Boko Haram babies grow up to be?
What careers will they dream of ?
Who will they fall in love with?

Will they trail the dark behind them,
A cloak, to hide them when the world remembers where they came from?

Or will they keep the dark inside them,
A chasm, calling out to people who might love them
For company as they throw themselves down into it
To smash on the bottom
Every time they cannot sleep

I would pray for a barrier
Between them and their mothers
If I couldn't imagine a heart beat being all that kept even one of the Chibok girls
Even one of the other girls
Alive

A stubborn life

I would pray for a barrier between them and their fathers
If I didn't know that some one
Would always find their fathers in them

So I will pray for an earthquake
rumbling powerful,
Shaking the Boko Haram babies to remind them that
Each year they grow
They can say more loudly

"I am made of fire
The sun is my father
I have 276 and 241 and 263 mothers

I knew terror before I was born
I have tamed it in me

My nightmares weave spiderwebs
Stronger than states

My pain burns in my chest
Earthworms of fire that have learned to tunnel in me
I have never tried to escape them

When I set them free in the world
They will build us new cities
Of fire and sun

Founded on pain and nightmares
So we no longer run from them

We sleep with them as our pillows
So we can dream beyond them

I am made of fire
I know how to survive burning
I know that beyond fear there is pain
But beyond pain there is sun

I will live in the sun. "

Sunday 15 November 2015

grief finds flight

There is no time for grief
In this fight
But the grief wells up
Overflows

She must grow into something else

Through our bodies
She finds flight

I wonder what bird she will become?

I wonder where her feathers,
As they grow into our arms,
Will take us?

For the guns



The guns crawled out of themselves
They left their metal carcasses
Like that student struggled out of his coat
As the policemen wrestled him

He escaped
Black
Black
Into the night

The police were left
With the ghost of the coat
Still asking them
‘what did I do?’

The guns heard
They crawled out of themselves
Leaving the police with their metal carcasses

They slipped into the throat
Of the student
In the head wrap

They thought they would find food
In her rage

This is what they are used to being fed on

Instead they found themselves
Abandoned
Even by her

Caught in the web of the question
She kept asking the policemen

“How can you not see that you are killing your child?”

The guns wept
Because policemen couldn't weep


- written in the aftermath of the police violence at the UJ Night Vigil on the 13th November 2015.
See

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3qiXOXgpwM

Tuesday 29 September 2015

Wizard. Witch. Sage

I am part wizard
Part witch
Part sage

Part humble
Part hubris

Part book shelf
Part wine rack

Part archive
Part stage

Part classroom
Part hand-in-hand sweat

Part hidden in footsteps
Collecting the imprints

Part standing on beach
Commanding the waves

Part heart of the march
Part inch above the head

Part sleep
Part death
Part umbilical cord

Part past
Part hope

Part you’ll-never-believe-me
Part challenge me, I’ll swallow you
Part hold me I’m hurting
Part Superhuman

Part dancing
Part weeping

Part wizard. Part witch. Part sage.

Thursday 24 September 2015

Heritage day

What do I wear on heritage day?

A map of stolen land
A veil of screams

Rape

High heeled shoes
Made of bones
Of slavery

Rings of border wars,
Indentured labour

Arm ornaments
Beaded delicately
In languages lost

Necklaces
Of bullets
Collected from bodies

My hair tied with rainbows
That double as nooses?

I will wear nothing.
Not even words.

I will just wait for Nonqawuse
And the New People
to rise from the soil

Tuesday 22 September 2015

Trophy

Yesterday
I heard that the man who
Raped my friend
Speaks of the accusation:
"This chick is accusing me of rape".
He speaks of it
Almost with pride.
A subtle boasting
For this particular conquest.

I have decided to honour his
Treatment of this:

The next time I see him
I will cut his penis off,
Hand it to him to mount on his wall
A trophy
To commemorate this rape.

Tuesday 7 July 2015

On agency and the moon

I would like to be the moon
Not talk to or be lit up by
Or have the moon activate my
Longing or nostalgia or womb

Not to see the moon as her
Or paint a smiley face on it
With my monthly bleeding
Because that is
Where feminine is and isn’t

And I am tired of the rage and the pain and the love.

No.
I would just like to be the moon

A lump of rock, silent
No thoughts
No conflict over agency

A peaceful species

Dead, alive,
Malleable and fixed.

And silent

Or far away enough that no one could tell the difference.

Wednesday 1 July 2015

Death and the King

Death sits silently
At the back of the audience

Her eyes focused on the king
She taps, with her toes

Her rages begin to hum.

She breathes – gently
Although she doesn’t need the breath
This has been her project

Personal and pointed
Apart from her soul-collecting work

She feels the heat with her hands
This person at the back

And this person
The person in the corner
And the person outside in tears

Death sighs
Although she doesn’t need the breathe
This is her work
Pointed and personal

Apart from the soul collecting
Death begins – silently, slowly
to dance

And as the crowd cheer the king
The ground begins to shake

Death is calling her rages

They are ancient rages, and new ones
Born and reborn

From this silence
From this burning

The King opens his mouth
Death opens hers

As he begins to speak
She begins to sing


Her rages squirm themselves
Out from under the floor

Their humming holds them together

Death directs her eyes
Towards this corner
Towards those tears

Her rages fly
Scream, burn

The audiences hear nothing

But this corner,
Those tears, are held in flames
by the rages


They hum themselves into the bodies
Death closes her eyes

The King’s days, she knows, are numbered
The rages will warm the corners, the tears, enough to take the king in his sleep
To take the king in his talk

And the rages will return to her

The King’s days are numbered, she knows.
But he is just one king.
That she knows, also.

Thursday 18 June 2015

Mosaic

I found you smashed tonight
No - not you
But my emblem,
My memory of you:

The mosaic plate you got me
For my 21st birthday,
Of Santa Maria Novella.

That time we went to Florence,
I opened the shutters into the square
And onto the world

I learnt you and Tata in a
New way then.
You snored gently,
Smelt of old,
Your mkhaba wrinkled but solid in your centre.

Tata took out his dentures

We spat watermelon pips in Rome

I started drinking coffee

I experience you as married

Not lovers, but companions.
With all the angles and curves
Accompanying that


I opened the shutters on
Santa Maria Novella square

And onto my life.
It snaked different ways after that trip.
I had a new palette for my joy
A new map

The square was dirty when I visited again
Years later

You were wizened
Hardened
Too much poison in your roots

I found you smashed today
Santa Maria Novella
Mixed with instant coffee
On my kitchen floor

I saw you disappear
Last Thursday
When I couldn't get you in the car
Your body is still too heavy for me

You were angry
As i pried your hand from the seat
You had to hold onto me so I could get you in

You disappeared as you held onto me

The stroke
The poison
Ate you

I won't see you again.

I will remember Santa Maria Novella,
Watermelon pips in Rome

I won't clean the kitchen floor.

Not for a week,

I guess.

honeysuckle

I am anticipating
The loneliest funeral

I will sit
With my small sister

Remembering angels flying down
Through the honey suckle

In a time and space
Where I still felt safe

Now I sit at 30
Everything is fragmented

I am happier than I expected to be
And sadder

But sitting on that church pew
I will be lonelier than I thought possible

Trying to say goodbye to some one
Who was only as real as the tin angel
Flying through the honey suckle

Tuesday 2 June 2015

Grown Up (sauntering into 30)

There is a wry smile on my lips
As I watch my friends turn 30.
I saunter towards that mark,
Not particularly interested in
The honeycombs that are only behind me

Not overly concerned with the pools
That will mirror gravity, ahead

I am just sauntering towards 30
Feeling that this time, this decade, will be more mine
Than the previous ones

Proud of my friends who enter this state
In all sorts of diversity

Praying we will remember to tell our daughters,
If we have them,

That there is no such thing as grown-up.

Tuesday 28 April 2015

Verona

We watched opera in Verona
Over 10 years ago now

I don’t remember the opera
Aida, maybe?

I remember you,
All our childhoodness caught in one breath we breathed together.

Your fragile-strong
Around me, always.

How we learnt together:
My stubborn chin-forwardness,
Able to adventure because of your fragile –strong foundation.

We could stand in the wind together.

That night Verona’s colosseum
Held us together, a basket of stars and voice,
We were so close we didn’t need to hold hands.

Over 10 years ago, now.

I don’t have the words to tell you how I miss you.

Into your hair, we sing

We hold you up
On our broken legs
Glass shards in our feet,
But it is your breath that is failing this time.

We hold you up
Take your heart out of your chest
Put it on the roof for the sun to strengthen

We take each of your fingers
Kiss them gently, take off your hands.
We put them in a tree nest, so they can sleep
So they can stop their frantic tangling and rest.
Remember their writing, the hands they have held
And the banners.

We dip your feet into a bowl of salt water
They are bloodcaked from glass shards and thorns,
From your own blood and the blood your carry in your mouth
Below and above and around you

Into your hair we sing the sea and
Futurepossibles
Some flying fish
Some sunken stones,
Our broken voices just able to curl round your face
To take some of the weight,

Just for today

I wish you dancing

I didn’t know you
I know only your ghost
Traces of you
Snail trails of words

Of marks on my lovers body
In his car
His phone
His email


I felt your fight
Your life, your grief
Pulsing through him

I fell in love with you a little
Your pulse through his fingers

My love for my lover bittered
Through you
You, lemon in milky tea, turned
Us sour

We have never recovered.

I have never forgotten you.

I touch you sometimes in digital space.
My fingers tracing your face.

He left you for me
After he left me for you
After he told each of us about
Marriage
About dlozi and home.

Now you are dead
I hope this was your choice
I hope you took a breath and flew gently, away
From this world of fight
World that you didn’t have the right dimensions for
Too wide, too deep for such small ribs

I hope the choice was yours and
Not the man you had run to
In your pain
The man whose violence played your pain
Out
On your body

Now you are dead
Sky-bound only

I send you sky-fish for travel companions
And I wish you dancing
Happy, wild, hard
I wish you dancing.

Wednesday 25 February 2015

To lovers, to the moon, on endings of things



I tend to tie myself in knots you see,
Thinking you don’t get my intricacies and then I am left – when you walk away-
With a ball of string that wont reply to my questionings so lets
Stop

Stop and let me try this another way

When you kiss my hair and I feel to pull away
I’ll stop
And feel the shudder anyway
that shudder that you,
If you are perceptive,
Will feel and eventually you will leave

No. Not like that.
So lets stop.

Stop, wait,
Let me try this another way
When I am talking your and your eyes glaze
And my dreams and my monsters are lost in the haze
Instead of swearing at you, screaming, I will go quietly and
Put my dreams one night into the salty sweat of another man
And then come home to you

But wait! Wait, stop
That wont work you will feel betrayed, slighted
And my dreams will still be lost, dried and rewashed in some one elses bed

So lets stop,
We can try this another way, when your breathe is too
On top of me and your hands too deep into me
When it hurts and I want to say stop I’ll just breathe til
You come and then we can sleep sweet and close
And our dreams can make up for what we lost

But wait, I know myself that will never work
I will resent you sickly sweet and I’ll spit at you,
And slime away and sleep shivering in the area designated
My side of the bed

So lets stop.
Stop, there will be a way,

Last chance, last try maybe
When I want you to hold me and you stand mannequin
Esque hands at your sides
When my body feels untouched and I really just want you to look
I’ll … I’ll go and shower and take that vanilla cream you like out and
Rub myself seductively, just, in your line of sight until you….
Or if you don’t I’ll put on my pyjama’s , those comfy fuzzy ones,
And I’ll sleep sweetly next to you, resenting your breath until you wake up one night with a pillow over your face and I’ll

Wait, that’s not right I
Just get myself tangled up sometimes and
I cant see which side I am on with these
Lines

So maybe,
Maybe we should just

stop.

Flies

I am so busy
Sweeping the dead flies
From the floor
That I have no time to
Deal with the body
Attracting the flies
In the corner