Bome pome

Asi bome pome
ndi bome pome
Ndi lunzienzie ali lali
Ndi khangala khanyise
Ndi lumbile mbile ya Nevondo
Ine u viiwa ya beba mbilanana

Vhanwe vhe ndi Magupta
Vhanwe vhe musetsho u Nkandla
Hupfi asi zwone ndi Duduzane
Vhanwe vhe ndi Gigavha

Ho sala bome pome
Na vho Ramaphosa avha zwikoni
Wotsa na bada, muthelo wo ya
Wo swiswinwa ro sedza

Ho sala bome pome
Vhanwe vhe ndi ANC
Minwe i sumba i songo sumba
Ha sumba na ya vhaloi

Khea mabunyu
Asi hevhe hevhe ndi hevhe hevhe
Vhaamba vha sa fhedzi
Ho nwalwa na zwirendo
Hu imbwa na dzinyimbo
Hone vhungoho he ndi bva vhubvo
Ndi bome pome

Not a poem

Don't write a poem
for a hungry child
Don't sing a song
For a landless people

Their agony is not in verses
Their pain is not in rhymes

Don't write that poem
from a table set for steaks
A hungry child will not eat your echos

Don't sing that song
from a mansion of opulence
Landless people won't be sheltered by your high notes

Don't write a poem
Don't sing a song

Beware the wings

Beware the wings
Broken, life is an unbearable chalice
Don't marvel
when you see wings broken
They break a soul
They break tomorrow
Into fractures of hopelessness 
Beware the wings
Broken, reduced a King Eagle into a squeaking birdy
And a blissful flight becomes a drag
that drips with sorrow and tears
Some fly away
Some wither with the night

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