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. "

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

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.

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

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.