The First Time

 Lord, it's a feeling/ That I felt/ It comes to find you/ Like no one else

- London Grammar

I have felt this feeling before, about two decades ago:

It's the feeling of hearing Freshly Ground percussing in Mbekezeli Khumalo's mouth in song

A behemoth of an adolescent with skin the hue of dangerous dungeons and drowning depths

And a booming voice enchanting all things living, the blades of grass in the field not spared

Which intimated at courage and stood straight backed, armed with sharpness, on stand-bye

With the softness to allow this plover of a song to land in his crocodilian maw unmauled

A heavy-footed boy who treads through corridors like the mythical Nephilim of the past

Yet a disposition so light that this song confidently offered its hand to him to lead it 

On the dance floor of life without a single concern for mishaps due to any asynchronicity

Not that all put together, courting dishevelment with facial hair as wild as John, the Baptist

And probably the last straw of why we could no longer wear Drimacs as part of uniform

And yet, a song hand-stitched to perfection, for months, like a beautiful Balenciaga gown

Would, in its finery and daintiness, lay itself down on the dirt for him to rest his body on

This gust of a wind of a boy with a guffaw that threatened to lift the skirts of giggling girls

The only person approved to lift this hammer of a song and strike the Ground aFresh with 

Sending shock waves of low decibel sound waves into our hesitant and trembling hearts

In the grip of the fever of the Molotov cocktail of hormones known as falling in love

I want to tell Zolani Mahola, the one who sings, that this tower of a boy also sings

Singing songs of uniting love that invoke the heights and histories of the Taj Mahal

Bringing down the Tower of Babel with its multiplicity, babble, and confusion 

I need her to understand that this boy whose afro was full of curly intelligences 

Could humbly, embrace vulnerability, and with sclera as white as a Canadian winter

Look into an eye struggling with maintaining contact and sing: "I'd like to call you sometime"