Moment of Silence

 It is a moment of silence

Say no to thoughts running wild

Hold close your heart

Before its captured by rapturous fires

Angers and joys of sadness 

Its time for yoga 

Dont roll out a mat 

For its the soul that needs to 

stretch still on the mat of silence 

Find calm in the madness 

And stop 

the rioting blood, the angered hope 

There is tomorrow, another day 

Another hope in the rising sun 

But for now stretch out 

On the floor of anguish 

And agonize on nothing 

for today is history
tomorrow is an idea

yesterday is a mirage 

with all its ills 

dont let it live

Stretch it out on the mat of silence  

- for 1 December 2020

 

Vhuhwini

Vho makhulu vha gai?

Vho malume ashu vho vhonwa nga nnyi?

Khotsi ashu vhana ni?

Vho ela sa mutshundudi

He vhaya ahu athu vhonwa

Vho khuya vhuhwini, pfamo isini mikano

Sedzani mashubini Tshipange

Lavhelesani Ngulumbi

Ndi mudi de usina tshitanga?

 

Vhudzisani

Ni vhone arali litshe lo lala

 

 Makhulu vha kha divha tshiulu naa?

Tshine ra tamba ti tshi gonya

Khe ho tou duu?

Muludzi usa tsha lila?

Naa vhathu vha gai?

Vho farwa lwendo 

Vhuyiwa ndi vhuhwini

Aredi hanengei

Incomplete

 A word

A sentence 

A paragraph

Chapters and Sections

Hardly a book

So nothing can be read of my covers

Incomplete and seemingly never ending 

A string of expression, muddied 

In this muted pursuit for things that seek expression

For George Floyd

I didn't write a poem,
when they choked you
I didn't write a poem
When his knee was on your neck
I didn't write a poem
when you expired
I didn't write a poem
When they rose
I didn't write a poem
Throughout the eruptions
I didn't write a poem
When like a wild fire
You soul set the world alight
I didn't write a poem
For their knee was on my neck
I can't breath
Living on borrowed times
Handcuffed since time immemorial
Face down in internal surrender
hissing and gasping
For a better day tomorrow
In a Whiteman's world
 - For George Floyd

P.s whats a poem for a nigga gasping on his last breath 

Messiah

There was a time
The Lord ran for dear life
He found refuge
In the motherland
She has been abused
Raped and debased
But tell her kids the truth
When the Lord was captured by fear
Rejected by his kith and kings
And for him, his father sought safety
He came to us
Then what of our motherland?
If the Lord found refuge in her
She saved him
She is the Lord's Messiah

Masses

Masses are an alter
You bring them in I perish
I cannot stand to suffocate
I long for a place far off
In the hills and mountains
In the valleys
Far from this chaos
Of a madding crowd
Happy in their joys
Happy in the anguish
Set me afar from their happiness
I want the truth

These Two

These two walked on together
Hands pretending to hold firm
They are walking  apparently
To the end of the rainbow
But nobody asks whose rainbow?
Who owns the red, yellow, blue?
Who owns the glittering pot of gold
At the end of this rainbow
Can it end already
So that the owner can take his gold
And return home
His gold he says
Dug from my land
Dug by my sweat
Polished in my toils
But apparently we are walking
Walking talking in harmony

The Great Race - Runners (The Freedom Ave. Series)

Its a race beyond the human race
Racing to an unknown end
So they run and run

Run to sunday school
Run to primary school
They keep running

Run to fall in love
Run to fall out of love
They keep running

Run to the store
Run for dinner
They keep running

Run to the table
Run to the tree or the toilet
They keep running

And along I start running
Along you start running
The they continue running

No one knows where the race goes
But the race continue
Breeding runners along the way

Some fall by the way side
But the running continue

They run to bury them
They run to forget them
They keep running

Its not a circle
Its not a square
Its an infinite string

No one knows when it started
No one know when to shall end
But someone lives to see your end
When at last the race run faster than you
And you fall by the wayside

Running to the cemetery of runners

Misunderstood (The Freedom Ave. Series)

Don't break me up
There is no peace in my pieces
I fear I bleed too much
Fragile, I shatter
Under your microscopic watch
I have been there all along
Under your vivid scarlet  eye
Blood gushes out, veins burst
Before you can see through
And go like the rest
Loaded with nothing
But sheer misunderstanding
Weighing heavily like gold and diamonds
When its nothing
But a figment of your delusions

The Runner (The Freedom Ave. Series)

He runs for dear life
from peace
from war

All are
But meaningless shadows
Lifeless behind him

He runs from the sun
from cold
 from warmth

He longs
For emptiness within
Unattached to him

He runs from his shadow
from himself
from the future

He shudders
at the possibility of his shadow
finding expression in him

He is alive to the possibility
Of waking up to nothingness
A sweet end to the mute pursuit

He is at peace
When everything is left behind

David (The Freedom Ave. Series)

Many sing your songs unknowingly
A harp is for summer, a psalm for glory
But summers are distant in their memories

They don't recall when last did the sun shine
But the sun did shine, making a lot
of seemingly endless summers

Tomorrow not guaranteed
But the end is certain
Certainly for you, wrinkled soul

Sitting somewhere wild
Clinging on to your blunt black pen
For the verse is too heavy on you

And so you write a poem
        David
        Though King among kings

A poem for a season
        Your splendour is far off
        Only the shadow of your fall remain

A poem for reason

         Couldn't beg for love

         Nor count losses when lovers lost

A poem for a poem

         Your shadow remains to the day

         At the house of Uriah the Hittite

For on the flip of time

Your ills are a crown, golden

A blissful your story in the end

A tale worth telling 

To the silent pages of time

The holy grail of your crown 

Happiness (The Freedom Ave. series)

Happiness is not the wind that blows
A fashion piece that comes and go
Its not the sun that shines
Its not out there
Its not the villas and valleys

Happiness is not the moon
That shines from afar
Yet dull on the surface

Happiness is not a moment
That you pursue relentlessly

Happiness is a place
Happiness is a mountain
Happiness is a river
A tree, a shrub
Within

Happiness is not a queen
Dropped in marbles and diamonds
Her crown is a shadow

Crowned by freedom
Happiness is King
Though stuck in darkness

Love (The Freedom Ave. Series)

Love is a song for a summer day
Sing it when the sun shines
And thorny roses colour the veld violently beautiful
Don't mind yesterday's gloom-stuffed weather
Don talk of the rain that soaked the soil wet
Its a summer day after all, forget the mud
Sing the song with all your heart
Not for the audience,  their hearts are deaf
Not for cheers, they have no cheers left
Sing it for your heart
For a summer is here and there
It passes and comes back again;
Passes again and comes back once again
Lest you sit and wonder
When the summer day is gone
And there is nothing left but to hum a tune
A song once sang half heartedly

The Thinker (The Freedom Ave. Series)

Head bowed to eternal knowledge
An infinitely insurmountable mountain of thoughts
Chin held by a withering arm
You time is spent
Far away from the harrowing reality
You are stuck in the immortal depth of despair
Your thoughts are walls
Wells and fountains of endless enlightenment
Too heavy they bent your back
Cowing you to the lacklustre reality - life
Of simple ideas, ways of man
No too deep, to drown him and not too high, to escape him
But your ways are similar to rays of sunlight
Permanently on the face of the earth
They pass unnoticed
But your splendour blinds the eyes of those who care
To stop and watch as you find your way through the darkness
You are the Thinker, carved in the freeness of time

Shadow

Against grandmother's walls,
you loomed large
The flouroscent lights that flooded our home
Nearly dimmed your presence
But throughout the years,
you have been my tail
Though you are all I see
Always, I knew
When I walk with you
I am walking alone

5 lines

(for Maambele)

5 lines for the next Lap
An epoch pregnant with untold promises
A journey, nevertheless
Overcome by your giant Leaps
Unendingly, keep walking tall

The Corona

Good Morning World,

The Coroner stands by your door 

No sure what the Corona intended 

He has come to count

What the ugly sweeping hand is doing

To this the beautiful world

A vulture awaiting on your souls

A silence that sneaks into the world

A new world choke-held by lockdowns

and panic buyings 

Curfews in the age of globalisation

What a contradiction!!

The Corona knows no fed tummy

His hunger is infinite 

He cares not for the bones 

Of hungry little kids

Protruding from their worn torn garbs 

He is hungry, feed him

He has no use for your piles of toilet paper

He must be feed

Wash your hands, drink vinegar 

But who will disinfect the soul?

From this menacing world and its anguish

Feed the Corona, feed him some more

For the Coroner must get to work

Its almost morning

The Crown is calling

(written during the pandemic )

Gemini (Union of two eccentrics)

Everything is sharply rejected and despised
T'is hard to tell if life passes by
Or if T'is a deep immersion into its depth
The mind that wanders
And the mindless wanderer
Complacent and unaware of the roving winds
That keeps hearts steady
Never longing for warmth
An observer walking afar
Yet at times weary of being on the outside
Looking in; from a heart whose blood is drawn
Robot like going through life in a dream
Far away from the ashy shadows of social validation
Keeping everything private; far from the piercing crowds
For another eye is an eye too many
To stare and glance deeper into a bloodless heart
There must be world for the unknown
For those who anonymously walk through life
 It is a world within; of endless experiences
Free from the heartless imprisonment of unions
Embracing the sweet reluctance to romance
In union with the hunger and emptiness
Of a life lived within than the life lived without
In the union of two eccentrics

Cape Town is a bitch

Her lure has drawn many to her bloody bath
Imagining a beach - they gun for her
Unknowing she has been there a million times before
Dreamers leave villages brimming with hope
Only to find fulfilment in her long bosom
At last, the mute pursuit comes to a nope
To stand face to face with one’s soul
But the price of freedom is the entire village

They return, a song whose tune is unknown
A quack in speech like geese
With traits of everything gone wrong
Camouflaged with an air of affluence
They come and go; sometimes never come back
Come and go; but the dreams are nowhere to be seen
All we have is a shadow of hope; for the bitch had her way

Only in her bosom - they breath
For far from her; at home they are strangers
Their soul yearn for her comforting cleavage
She is a bitch who has laid her bed with roses
They bowed; enchanted by her sweet aromas
Never anticipating the thorns that soon prick
Behold - no blood left; for the bitch has had her way

The Butcher

You always stood outside his door, didnt you?
Ready to pounce when he blinks
Your shadow a bubble wrapt around his head
To shield your gnawing dagger from his soberness
your bubble gets bigger and it did
Making your horns look seemingly like a crown
He sought to own it
He blinked
and swiftly, you pounced

Tearing through his inflamed chest 

Ripping open his melancholic brain

With your fiery arm on choke

Wrestling against his faintly gasps

Instantly, leaving him little but a shell

A shadow of immense greatness
A lifeless heap of nothingness
Another steak neatly cleaned from your table

But what of your insatiable hunger for gore?

Outside whose door do you now wait?

Ready for carnage

When you turn came

You said never to hopelessness
But when you turn came you bowed
What happened to the war within
And victories untold?
It’s sad, to see you withered
When it was time to stand your own
And face demons within
 Now we are left here
 To deal with the menacing pain
 Of the years you lived
And the years you died
Until the day you bowed out

Spark

How can a spark shine so bright?
Warm our hearts with hope
Lit our paths crystal clear
Even far afield in Cape Town
How can that spark,
Shine to death
Without ever becoming a flame
A fire that sets our hearts warm
And ignite our hope
How can a spark shine so bright
Only to leave us in the dark
With no glimmer of hope
Why, why, why, why, why, why?
Why did the spark that was our hope
Shine so dimly until it faded away
When all we needed was fire

- for Reggy

Reggy

It’s a bitter pill to swallow
The bearer of bad news has called
With a word you are gone
The journey to yourself curtailed
It’s a horrible dawn
 Cut short before the rising sun
All we have is a memory of a dark night
No one knows if the sun was about to rise
 Or if it’s rays would have pierced the rain clouds
 Or if the night had its eyes set on infinity
You are a memory painfully etched on our hearts
A hope unfulfilled

 - For Fulufhelo Reginald Ratshitanga (R.I.P)

Phoenix

When rain clouds gather
And fearful darkness looms
You are unafraid to heed the call

To Burn a heap of  ashes
Til' there is no trace of yesterday

You are the Phoenix
The master of time
Renewed with each every passing second

You are not afraid to burn
Vanish into vistas of nothingness

You know time comes
For the ashes to breath
For the bones to move

You rise again
Against fearful odds


(There is a phoenix on Mutangwa's wall)