Dont blow that trumpet

(For Hugh)
Don't blow that trumpet
HE is emancipated
Through the vistas of time
The dejection and the kick of HIS trumpet
carries with it an incessant memory
of the melody of protest
of the melody of blackness
of the melody of Africa and the world in one
Rise in Power

Did our brothers have a choice? (Marikana)

(Based on the poem of the same name by Essop Patel for Staffrider Volume 4 April/May 1981)

Did our brothers have a choice between
families drowning in hunger and
 a meagre R12500.00 in wages?

Did our brothers have a choice between
A raging Buffalo charging for platinum and
the solitude of poverty stricken shacks?

Did our brothers have a choice between
going home to their hungry kids and
leaving without goodbye?

Did our brothers have a choice between
the thorn of the barbed wire and
the sting of the R5 bullets?

Did our brothers have a choice between
stopping the gushing blood out of their bullet wounds and
staring death on the face as it trumps?

Did our brothers have a choice between
Home and
Heaven?

Did our brothers have a choice between
The platinum-hell miles and miles underground; and
The hell 6-feet under?

Did our brothers have a choice between
A walk in a park
and a deadly run to a bullet hail?

Mystery

Strangers
In a strange way
They make you look
And before dawn
There is no memory of yesterday
A new day is come
And you look foward to a moment
To a time
of untold mystries
To a blissful end

Timeless

What if our world is timeless?
Years, months, hours, minutes and seconds
Are nothing but phantom
Social constructs of delusion
Secretly locking us in moments
When we are, at out best
Soulful gliders walking soaring in timelessness

What if our eyes opened?
And we saw time without beginning
Time without an end
Would we dream of infinity
Would we step into it
and embrace it's never endingness

What if we woke up to reality?
Could we see beyond shadows of time
Beyond yesterday and tomorrow
Or would we be stuck in disbelief
haunted by a never ending time

Would we need another year?
Beg and plead for another day?
In the absence of time
Or would we float
Like nothing

Scars

These scars
Are tales written in pain
Lyrics of a dark gloomy pursuit
A fruitless pursuit for happiness

They tell of the ups and downs
Of the joys and tears

These scars
are a history
A story of infinite pursuits
A story of this person

They tell of the dreams and nightmares
of the successes and failures

And like a shadow
They live to eternity
Branded on this soul

Doomed

In my darkest hour
When nothing matters
I hope I live
For something bigger
For something worth dying for
I hope I live
Beyond yesterday and tomorrow
Beyond today
I hope I live
In the hearts and minds of time
In the hearts and minds I cherished
I hope I live
On the never ending cusp of time
On the edge of endlessness

Or am I doomed?

Ode to a Chameleon

Old lizard

Though you change a million times

Your are the truest of them all

They have known your form

They have seen your colours

But no one knows for sure

If you are green, brown or another 

Yet no one sleeps with an eye open 

Hoping to catch you in your menace 

They know they will never round-up 

Your infinite colors 

You are a breath of change 

You are nature's kaleidoscope

They can never tell your color 

Though you have never failed 

To rise from within a burst of color

And amuse the eyes of the beholder 

They love your colors

Oh mirror of your environment 

They love their colors 

Though they deny

They are ever changing

Just like you

They love your colors 

They love their colors

Chimurenga

Chimurenga

Are you awake?

Is this another rise?

Did you not deliver the other day?

What about the land?

You want to give it back?

Is this another Chimurenga?

Who are these pale hands?

Holding placards that seeks to undo

Chimurenga

Liberate Nyika ye Zimbabwe

These pale hands too?

Don't be a fool

Enemies are not friends 

Don't let them bask in your sunlight 

They blind you with crocodile smile

They want your land back

Chimurenga

Wake up

Don't sleep on your freedom

Don't sleep on your land

they want it 

Chimurenga

What about the lessons?

The leadership?

Was it a mistake?

Should we all go back?

Back to bondage?

Chimurenga 

Don't sleep on your victory 

 

Captured

Your worse captured me
Imagine your best
I shiver when i contemplate
That a damascus moment will unleash tomorrow
and it will not longer be accidental
But a moment in a lifetime

Prisoner

Lock me in the prison of your heart
I am a blowing wind at dawn
Stuck in the mute pursuit for happiness
Chasing after never ending shadows of bliss
Only these words can tell
Only these lines
The ups and downs
The highs and lows
In this valley called life
Nothing matters but a blissfull end
And if it be in the prison of your heart
I am content
For nothing else can ease the pain
and the hunger for affection
Nothing can heal the memories
of a childhood stuck in solitude
In a world that breathes in my head
Inside the innocent whiteness of my brains
Take me in I am your prisoner