Foolish Games by Jewel

Love strikes with the sword, and razes the castle to the ground. Come, come, come! Love has arrived, and the citadel is destroyed. -Rumi

You took your coat off and stood in the rain

You're always crazy like that

And I watched from my window

Always felt I was outside looking in on you

You're always the mysterious one with

Dark eyes and careless hair

You were fashionably sensitive

But too cool to care

You stood in my doorway, with nothing to say

Besides some comment on the weather

Well in case you failed to notice

In case you failed to see

This is my heart bleeding before you

This is me down on my knees, and

These foolish games are tearing me apart

And your thoughtless words are breaking my heart

You're breaking my heart

You're always brilliant in the morning

Smoking your cigarettes and talking over coffee

Your philosophies on art, Baroque moved you

You loved Mozart; and you'd speak of your loved ones

As I clumsily strummed my guitar

You'd teach me of honest things

Things that were daring, things that were clean

Things that knew what an honest dollar did mean

I hid my soiled hands behind my back

Somewhere along the line, I must have gone

Off track with you

Excuse me, think I've mistaken you for somebody else

Somebody who gave a damn

Somebody more like myself

An excerpt from Spy: Uncovering Craig Williamson

On 17th August 1992, at a ceremony to mark the tenth anniversary of First's assassination, Nelson Mandela said that when he received the news in Pollsmor Prison, he felt shattered and completely alone. 

'My grief was all the more poignant because I knew both of the men injured in the same blast. In my mind's eye I saw Pallo Jordan as I had last seen him, when, during 1948, I spent a few days in his home. Similarly, I could see Comrade Braganca talking intensely to me when we met during my stay in Morocco in 1962. But most clearly I could see Ruth: Ruth engaged in intense debate while we were at Wits University together; who uncompromisingly broke with the privilege of her wealthy background; who readily crossed the racial barrier that so few whites were, or still are, able to cross; a woman whose passion and compassion enabled others, including those from liberal and conservative perspectives, to play their part. 

'It is a small consolation that her memory lives beyond the grave, that her freedom of spirit infuses many committed to an open society, rigorous intellectual thought, courage and principled action. 

'Ruth spent her life in the service of the people of Southern Africa. She went to prison for her beliefs. She was murdered because of her acute political acumen combined with her resolute refusal to abandon her principles. Her life, and her death, remains a beacon to all who love liberty. 

'The assassination of Ruth First was not only a personal tragedy of immense proportions, it was part of a pattern of a systemic elimination of leading opponents of apartheid. Ten years later this commemoration is most appropriate, because it is only now that information is beginning to come out about the death squads and the crimes committed in defence of apartheid. 

'Our country cries out for peace. But this will be difficult to achieve until there is a recognition of the real causes of the violence, and the disbanding of those forces at the centre of what is in reality a low-intensity war against the people.' 

An excerpt from We Inherit the Fire by Kagiso Lesego Molope

 

It is a thing quite misunderstood in families, and I want to clear it up: the knowing of secrets, the keeping of them and being entrusted with them, is the very thing that breeds madness. Most people think it's just knowing that they exist without having a comprehensive knowledge of their details that drives you insane. They'll tell you it's being aware of the gaps in your family history that is the trauma, but it isn't, because filling in the gaps is putting together a puzzle- it's a sort of sport. Knowing the details is nothing like a game. It is the safeguarding, this arduous task that you don't get to choose, that has driven the women in our family mad- quite mad, in fact. Mad to the point of wishing we'd one day wake up as someone clean and shiny and brand new, with no knowledge of the things that fill the gaps. Wishing we'd forget our names altogether. 

Maybe what in fact happens is we lose our minds before we even know what it is we are to keep hidden. I think of this as I watch Oumama's laboured breathing. She was not well enough to leave the hospital, of course, but she does seem stronger, even if she now sleeps afternoons off in her own bed. I tuck a loose grey curl back under her headscarf. Hair: a secret. Perhaps the darkest one. Often the root of the darkest ones, at least. Often the beginning of how family stories start and families come apart, in this country. 

Dernière Danse by Indila

Everything in our world is touched with the awareness of an ending

- Niq Mhlongo

 Ô ma douce souffrance

Pourquoi s'acharner ? Tu r'commences

Je n'suis qu'un être sans importance

Sans lui, je suis un peu paro je déambule seule dans l'métro

Une dernière danse

Pour oublier ma peine immense

Je veux m'enfuir que tout r'commence

Ô ma douce souffrance

J'remue le ciel, le jour, la nuit

Je danse avec le vent, la pluie

Un peu d'amour, un brin de miel

Et je danse, danse, danse, danse, danse, danse, danse

Et dans le bruit, je cours et j'ai peur

Est-ce mon tour ? Revient la douleur

Dans tout Paris, je m'abandonne

Et je m'envole, vole, vole, vole, vole, vole, vole

Que d'espérance

Sur ce chemin en ton absence

J'ai beau trimer, sans toi ma vie n'est qu'un décor qui brille

Vide de sens

Dans cette douce souffrance

Dont j'ai payé toutes les offenses

Écoute comme mon cœur est immense

Je suis une enfant du monde

Swimming by the Pond by How Great Were the Robbins

It's a wonder tall trees ain't laying down 

- Neil Young

I. Not Here

It goes with wine

Swimming by the pond

Cold like ice

Frozen to the core

I left my mind

Standing by the clothes

Like salt now in water I dissolve

I know this feeling like I know my hands

Pours in my mind but can't fill my head

Wish I could yield my assertion forever

Reach me and deep down I swim

We'll be in tears till the winter ends

Till the last drop of water I dissolve

II. Not Now

Don't say goodbye like you are

Just human to my own very eyes

Like you are about to leave my life

I'm so one dimensional

No change in sight, a simple kind

Don't leave me behind

Not here, not now, it's not the time

To drown in this blue world

I know it's not the time

To drown in this blue world

I'll wait tomorrow

I know it's not the time

I'll wait tomorrow

Tomorrow

Don't say it's too hollow

You reach me and deep down I go

Reach me and deep down I go

I'll wait tomorrow (Not here)

I'll wait tomorrow (Not now)

Reach me and deep down I go

In the water

Nothing else by Michael Benjamin

 " The reality is that men are hurting and that whole culture responds to them by saying, "Please do not tell us what you feel." 

- Bell Hooks

I found the key to the worry land

Unlock the door and I walk right in

I take a look, but I can't feel a thing

You found the key to the worried man

Unlock my heart, you walk right in

You take a look and make me want 

To feel again

I don't want nothing else 

I don't want nothing else but this

You pour a drink and I fuck up again

We talk shit, we fight, 

We don't mean it this time

Love can be so quiet at times

I still break shit, but I hate it

I've got my love stuck in a loop

Honey, I don't want nothing else

I don't want nothing else but you

I've got my love stuck in a you...

Again

What The Water Gave Me

 

"But you will live in [Durban], where the ocean protects you" 

- Sello K. Duiker

On this side of the earth, inner silence rules the grey bays

Our lamentations, and despairs are lost to breaking waves

Immovable objects are other people, but we are the waters 

Waters that weave between their rigidity to our destinations

The ocean is calling to us, so we shush our protesting defeats

So we can hear our names mist and spray across Umhlanga 

We've broken ourselves against its rocks so our jagged edges

Gleam in the sunlight, rubbed to humility with humidity

The sand, the vehicle taking us towards the throat of the sea

The seat of our calling where algae cushions, seaweed garlands

The shock of our skin leaving it to form a crown of obsidian

The queens and rightful heirs of an inheritance of ocean

This mirror of surviving, of thriving at the very shorelines

Of our existences. We live. We live. We live. Bow down

Slipping my dress over my head, I draw myself even closer

Look back and see a woman resembling Ingrid Jonker

Wink at her acknowledging our shared plights and purposes

I'm risking the wet of life so that she does not have to

Defeating her drowning and turbulences to free her

The throne is missing a jewel, the love we both carry

Ruling over a yawning adulthood, the work has only just begun