Ukwamukela by Mawhoo, Tycoon & Nkosazana Daughter

Nhliziyo yami zifundis'undisu okwamukela

Nhliziyo yami, zifundisu kuthobeka

Ay ngoba labantu babantu bayalimaza ekujulenikwakho bayasikhubaza

Aw ngithi Shwele baba shwele mangonile

Lolusizi baba, luyophela nini nkosi

Yehla moyo ngcwelehhh

Uzovuseleli themba

Aw Leli themba

Ay mina nginethemba lokuthi iksasa

Lami alfani nelabanye ng'celungsiz'ugcinе yami

Ukwazi kwakho

Empilweni yami

Ezandlen zakho

Lyntaba ngaphezulu namazulu

Amanzi angaphansi nempophoma

Ukuphila ngokomoya

Nokulashwa ngokomphefulo

Ukwakhiwa ngamazwi

Your Voice

There is a voice that doesn't use words. Listen.- Rumi

I rolled out of bed with my eyelids heavy with poetry

And I rubbed my eyes onto the eager page 

Unmistakable words darkened the white space 

Rearranging themselves into something palpable 

Closing my eyes in recollection of the night before

All I see is your voice, as though it were a vision

Emanating from places further than geography 

Only a finer place than this can give rise to it 

Tempted am I, to slip on the red chiffon dress you like

To twirl to the elegance of this unintentional song

But your voice pulls me into the rolling waves 

Of your love lullaby, calling me to an essential rest

It insinuates me onto the centre of a tall butte

Where everything falls away on all sides of it

Summoning peregrines to perch on gloved hands

The centre holds and nothing falls apart

It is an elaborate yet simple thing, your voice

Substantial and securing but unencumbering

A whole mood and meditation; a coming ashore

After a long swim in the long days of making a living 

A drifting to sleep, it is a recumbent love

With a pitch that rolls me into a yawning reprieve

Turning pillows into clouds that hold my head gently

Flight above the tundra of barren and frivolous personalities

Your voice hushes the Cassandra within me

The anxieties of the next morning are vitiated

With that, the land of nod welcomes me into its city gates

In my sleep, like Sade's Somalian woman

I comb its streets for pearls of poetry with my eyelashes

With a heart full of love instead and not stones

Hallelujah...

  

Higher Places

 'He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.' - The Psalmist 

I'm not of a heavenly height as Common raps in The Light 

And though, my vertebrae have been decompressed, a musical instrument 

My asana practice has affirmed the ground with both feet and palms

Standing in the bustling highveld, I am not tall place enough  

So I climbed the double helix of a Jacobean ladder to higher places

Where the sequencing became stark and exposed for what it is

Jesus, with body barely covered, kept a promise on a high place

Most of the promises I make to myself end in an ellipses

Could it be they get underfoot of busy highways and byways

trafficking cars and getting trampled to death by weary pedestrians

This city teems with ambitions, thick air that chokes dreams

The metamorphosis of my promises needs a different kind of air

So I hike up a mountain in Mogale and hold out my promise like Rafiki did Simba

Waiting for the quiet of the mountain to a-stone-ish and time to throw the bones

Of the skulls, Golgotha, my arms still outstretched, draining of blood

Except instead of nails through palms, a promise on high without stigmata

On these high places where alternative pasts are made manifest

Altering presents, futures, and reconciling pasts, not without pain and sweat

It is both a labour and a passion to close the circle of a promise

A cross had to be carried and suffered and a promise had to be carried and kept

These high places take it out of us, draining us of blood and conceits

Life was drained out of Jesus so that death may be drained out of us

The mountain side, lush and verdant, irrigated by the fluids of our stains

Oh, what a marvel photo-sin-thesis is, life in exchange for death

Down the mountain rolled the severed head of the reaper gathering speed, soil and sin

To the foot of the mountain where the feet of the weary pedestrians trampled on it

Excalibur can now be returned to the a-stone-ishment of the mountain

My promise, steeled, sunned, sustained, and still standing.  

All Souls Day by D.H. Lawrence

Be careful, then, and be gentle about death.

For it is hard to die, 

it is difficult to go through the door, 

even when it opens.

And the poor dead, when they have left

the walled and silvery city 

of the now hopeless body

where are they to go, Oh where are they to go?

They linger in the shadow of the earth.

The earth’s long conical shadow is full of souls

that cannot find the way across the sea of change.

Be kind, Oh be kind to your dead

and give them a little encouragement

and help them to build their little ship of death

for the soul has a long, long journey after death

to the sweet home of pure oblivion.

Each needs a little ship, a little ship

and the proper store of meal for the longest journey.

Oh, from out of your heart

provide your dead once more, equip them

like departing mariners, lovingly.

Grave by George Ogilvie

I could be found

out on the corner making my way down

to where you'll let me leave my body again

out of focus wonder when the time ran out

I could be tamed

for a moment then you walk over my grave

where we'd lay and dream the weather away

until we went insane

So lower me down

We could have been

that heaven we've been missing

it's all hope but no action

it's all hope but no action

So lower me down

There I lay for a week knowing nothing else

Lower me down

Don't walk over my grave

A Lamentation

 All strong rocks are broken here 

All strong rocks are broken here 

All strong rocks are broken here

All strong rocks are broken here

All strong rocks are broken here

All strong rocks are broken here

All strong rocks are broken here...

Recrudescence Realized

Turtle was gone a long time. He was gone six years, and when he came up, he was covered in green slime, he had been down so long. When he reached the top of the water, he only had very little earth under his nails, all the rest had been washed away. 

- John Moriarty 

We are the dirt carefully scraped from his fingernails

The dirt from which we were made and to which we'll return

The turtle carried Adam under his fingernails 

He carried me and you under his fingernails 

That which we would easily discard as filth was life a priori 

Perhaps we are the Leviathan at the bottom of the ocean

The parts of us that prefer to live in bluey darkness

Pulling others into our crooked and piercing depths and ways

And perhaps the Lord's sore and great and strong sword

Seeks to slay the Leviathan in us and the psalms in our vocabulary