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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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. "