Something happened here.

Something happened here. 

I've been here and not known where else to go. 

I've been here and wanted to be here. 

I've walked up and down this long passage at 6 and 7 and 8 

And at 16 cried and said goodbye to these walls one sudden day on my birthday

As you rushed us out and threw us into the gates of emancipation 

That lasted only a year. 

I've dreamt of this place and longed to be there. 

To be back again, hanging out the half open kitchen door, gazing at the stars

Singing my lungs out to the walls that listened

I've loved these walls

And upon returning embraced these walls and my fate within them

I've hated this place until I loved it evermore

But something happened here

Things have happened here

Things that the walls scream so deafening 

Every time I think of here because despite the fact that nobody wants to talk about this exhausted topic of why and why and why are we 

Like this, these walls remain and echo silently day to day

These walls that are still here listening

When someone else should be here listening instead. 

A person. 

The prayers we utter under this roof fall short when breath hits the ceiling 

The words are swallowed in this concrete, never to penetrate through

There's no seeping, saving plea or utter that will deliver the message further than this enclosure 

But the words will bounce around from wall to wall until we entertain them

In our hearts

That someone here is missing and has left us with these echoing walls as a reminder of it 

Because these walls heard his prayers too when nobody else would listen

These walls heard his screams and his tantrums and his pleas and his cries

When we chose to look elsewhere 

They probably know him better than we do

These are the witnesses.

Something happened here.

I'm not sure what it is anymore. 

All I can say is that it happened to me too. 

It happened to all of us. 

But we won't talk about it.

It's bigger than the elephant in the room. 

And evident in the absence of a soul in this stratosphere. 

Surely now the walls reveal to us the secrets he whispered for so long to deaf ears

I gaze about wondering if I can be here or there and still understand so implicitly that some things cannot be expressed in words and neither will they be heard with the ears 

But felt with the heart 

So much that shut hearts cant decipher the thoughts of a babbling man

Desparate to connect to his root

But instead plucked from there and cast out like dirt into the rubble

The rotten apple that fell not too far from its tree

It's worms now gnawing away at the bark through the root that refused to  nourish it. 

And now this fortress losing it's branches one by one. 

I am watering this place with my tears to feed the boabab.

I'm praying to the sun. 

 

Untitled.

Forgive me if I'm a little strange 

I've been strangled free of desires for the most part of my early memories. From the earliest bouts of spotlight lust I was told to hush and retract. I've been believing and I've been trusting. That maybe this love- lust secret relationship with the stage is the beginning of my moral deterioration. That maybe the nail that sticks out will be hammered down and being that nail, never quite able to fit my fat ass in appropriate holes, never quite bending out of sight. I stick out so I can poke you. 

I don't mean to hurt you. I'm just.... 

Inappropriate.

And this stage has scorned me. My whole life. 

I don't  want it anymore. After all, who wants to be owned? 

I've been told that desires can consume people beyond recognition of themselves. 

It seems to me that happiness is a deathly love, cheering at us while we waste away into it. Embracing tight while we slip away. After all, don't they say that pain makes you feel most alive?

My parents love me.

My parents love me at home. Where they can see me. Where they can protect me. 

I grew so attached to those walls, I started talking to them. I sang to them and under that red roof was my biggest stage. In the kitchen, the walls glowed in admiration of my improvisation as I scrubbed the pots and dishes clean. The walls echoed my sweet sonata, a perfect choir in the bathroom, embraced in the mist of my bath water. 

How can an introvert like me feel so trapped? 

Because I belong here, 

I should stay here, 

within four walls 

safe from my desires. Safe, from the world. 

It seems, the stage never left me though. I've been living as if my fourth wall was invisible. I've been dying to put my life on the stage. I've been writing this play as if telling my own story to the universe. I argued with the wind, I quarreled with the light. This sweet soliloquy drenched pages and pages of literature as I lost myself in the wonders of other peoples experiences and fantasies. 

I began where they ended, thousands of concluding pages announcing that my tale had just begun. Maybe I won. 

Sawubona, Namaste!

Sawubona ( Zulu): From si- (“we”) -ya- (present tense) -wu- (“you”) -bona (“to see”), therefore literally meaning "we see you".

Namaste: ( nah- mah- stay) - my soul honors your soul. I honor the place in you where the entire universe resides. I honor the light, love, truth beauty and peace within you because it is also within me. In sharing these things, we are united, we are the same, we are one. *

At which point on a dating site do the people stop becoming people and just become faces. Covers of meat bags. Shades of potential fucks. Paintings on a free art show. Images on a passing screenplay. Just faces with no meaning nor depth nor personality. 

While you're scrolling down deciding that you'd rather have your heart broken by someone who actually looks worthwhile, when is the hope lost in finding more? 

Is it initial? The carelessness and disregard of layers that make up a human being or are we just unaware that by the time the online dating account is setup, we've already lost much hope for meaning,  in people who like ourselves would rather hide behind a screen than expose themselves to torturous scrutiny at a public venue while endlessly trying to shine, simultaneously without upsetting cultural expectation and norms? 

Do we upon engaging already know that this, this has more potential to being a waste of energy and time rather than create something beautiful or do we naiively act on, hoping to illude someone long enough for them to get trapped in us so that upon discovering the truth they may wanna stay. Or are we hoping that what we find here will be indeed enough, and start something real and lasting. After all we've heard of worse beginnings. 

And in time, these pseudonames and aliases start to have meaning. They detach the person behind the screen with the person on the screen. Souls detached from being. Just shadows on a playground. Beautiful figures to look at. Artistic works of advertising campaigns marketing products that CAN be sold. Bodies that can be bought with the right bidding. So much variety, bodies that can be disposed just as quickly. Suddenly, faces that can be bold, behind the screen... 

I think I prefer to smile at strangers. 

After all, looking at these profiles, after a while all I can see is myself. I see no souls. Just me. Looking back, lonely and empty and waiting to be filled. Waiting to be entertained and loved and cherished. Demanding from my audience a fulfillment which is really my own responsibility. And the physical  says, fall back into yourself because all you will ever need is already right here. 

Where is the god in you? I see no gods online, just faces. I want to smile at strangers  and greet them. Back home they would greet back. Here, it's a gamble. I want to say, namaste, I recognize god in you and afford you depth before you prove it. Give you the benefit of the doubt. Treat you like a human being. Treat you like a somebody with layers. Show you Ubuntu. 

That is still a concept to be learned out here. 

Even this language I'm using now has it's shortcomings, for me. I can't express in it some of the things I want to communicate to you. I want to say hello. Sawubona: we see you! We, my ancestors and I. The people I carry in my very DNA, the blood that runs through my veins, these legends and stories and accounts and ideas and memories and concepts and dogmas and souls. We see you! We recognize you, human being. Muntu! We see you, living soul,   breathing spirit of God. We acknowledge your presence and rejoice in you being. Sikhona: we are here, siyaphila: we are alive and how are you? Unjani? How are you, all of you! From the mind to the body to the spirit, how are you? 

I want to greet YOU.

But here it's a gamble. Everyday seeing faces that don't smile sometimes. Don't greet most times. Faces become empty vessels. Just bodies, in motion. Everyone on ther way. I may as well  be behind a stupid screen, scrolling through profiles. Disposable pictures with faces I won't remember. Responsive robots I needed for conversation. Ego boosters I needed for motivation. 

I think I'll take more walks. I think I'd rather smile at strangers who don't smile back. At least that way, even if they won't show themselves to me, they would've seen ME. Even in passing. I am here. I am alive. Im so full of everything inside! We are here! Niyasibona. Content with ourselves and our heritage. Through my smile, you will see all of US! 

* source unknown but definitions accepted by general public consensus

An Ode to our first kiss

I struggled to find a title for this piece because I don't know what to call this situation, sitting in an office all the way across the world 9 years later and still feeling guilty. I feel more loss than guilt. I only have immaturity to blame. Just youth and inexperience, and maybe a little pride.

So here I am on a rainy day on an island in the East Pacific, listening to Des'rees' "I'm kissing you" and all I can think of is you. My stomach knots up just like that day we broke up and  I want to be sick again. Because now I realize how it all falls into place.

How insignificant is a school girl crush on a school boy who fades into the background always?

And she, for five years, falling with you, fading and dissapearing into the wonder of your world because for her, that was all the light she needed.

I asked you to take of your glasses and you did.

I asked you to unveil your soul to me and you did so, both times without restraint or hesitation.

And, peering in I spent a number of days and weeks and months just splashing around in a deep pool of wonder.

We were children, never lost, just discovering a world of our own.

And then one day you wrote me poetry.

Your words challenged me.

I was not ready to drown.

This is an ode to our first kiss, the one that never happened.

I realize that I am still that child. I'm still that child but now I'm ready to drown. I've been ready to drown for years but now its too late.

I still have your poetry.

Where are you now?

And just like Des'ree, out here today I am kissing you.

If my heart is honest, my heart has kissed every thought of you since that day I walked away.

Caressed it gently and held it tight. Gazed into the moments that we spent in conversation with the teacher interrupting us to make us do algorithms we didn't care about. While we waded the shores of consciousness, entering unexplored territories together we embraced more than most teenagers would at our age. Our hears were bonding long before we became a couple.

So if I bow out of the earth today I want you to know that I have loved you. That may not mean much now but save  the thought under the filename: high school, and reference it to the girl who upon meeting you boldly walked all the way to the front of the line and asked you to take off your glasses just to see YOU. 

And know  that that was my truth.

Des'ree- I'm Kissing You 

   

  Pride can stand

A thousand Trials

The strong will never fall

But watching stars without You

My soul cried

Heaving hard is full of pain

Oh, oh, the aching

'Cos I'm kissing you, oh

I'm kissing you

Touch me deep

Pure and true

Gift to me forever

'Cos I'm kissing you, oh

I'm kissing you

Yeah hey

Yeah

Where are you now?

Where are you now?

'Cos I'm kissing you

I'm kissing you, ohh

Ocean

Yesterday the preacher said that god does not have reactive love but that love is a part of his being. Like, he can't help but love us. It does not have reason. He is love. 

I thought about myself. I thought about how people hurt me, intentionally or unintentionally and I go back when there's absolutely no reason to.I thought about a lot of people that do this. I thought of my relationships. Am I mad? Do I think I am god? 

In the past three years I've said more goodbyes than I care to recall and initially I thought, since I have to get used to this each year, it will get easier with time. My heart will get stronger. This is how things work in this country and they seem ok...

It has not. Not one struggling bit. Each time it gets worse. The more I hurt is the more I love.

Am I mad? Am I god? 

Eros, agape, philia, stroge! Name them all and in my being it's a champuru of heart strings tangled in a mess with frayed knots and scarred laces trying to pull it all up together before it falls apart. 

There will be no falling apart here. No spilling. Somehow I manage to twist and contort this heart muscle into a different position so love can shine it's light again. Buttocks in the air? My heart has been exposed to more wind than that.  

I've learned to keep my things though. Selfishly hold them in now so that unlike Ntozakhe Shange, nobody has any chance of running away with my stuff. I keep mine and if you feel like you wanna run, you may go ahead and the wind will chase you. I'm too busy taking care of my things and pondering over this love-god that has no sense to forsake a hypocrite like me. 

So they come,these wonderers, exploring my shores.

I have yet to meet a conqueror. 

Before long though, it's clear that a holiday at the beach can only last so long. A splash to refresh the soul and they're gone. 

I have been a tumultuous rage of squalls in my lifetime, throwing many a ship onto the rocks and icebergs. I had also been a healer of singed souls. 

I don't wish to be any of these things at all. Have I lost my mind? Have I crossed the bar to the far left? Where emotion rules and there is no trace of intellect? Was I ever even slightly to the right? With the calculating fusion that would make me human? Was I ever like that or was I just pretending? 

Or do I keep sliding back and forth, in seasons? 

I choose this side. 

After all, what calculating god would look at us humans and say, hey, they deserve kindness? What calculating love would look at the fickleness of my heart and say, yeah she's never been loyal to me but I'll just bless her to please myself? 

Call me ocean. Kiss my forehead before you go, and smile. I will dream of you despite not wanting to. And tomorrow I will bleed you onto a page for the world to see.

William Shakespeare- Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, 

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 

Within his bending sickle's compass come; 

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

   If this be error and upon me proved,

   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

Skitz Gemini

Just before I turned 15, in high school grade 10, someone pissed me off. 

I wasn't a really happy teenager, in fact  things sucked badly. One day, after my Saturday Math and Physics classes, I stumbled upon some interesting looking teenagers outside the city library on my way home. They looked all hip-hop. I had just started falling in love with hip hop.
Among these I spotted some people that I knew from primary school. A friend told me that inside the library, at the basement, there was a poetry session going on. I was thrilled. I was curious. So I asked the girl I was walking with, a friend at the time, if she wanted to come with. It was all good. We had a bit of time before curfew at 5pm. 


It was dark inside as we walked in. Only the stage lights were on. There was a tall, brown man standing at the back with long dreadlocks dressed in rasta colors with bohemian shorts and a scarf on his head. We were told to join the rest of the audience sitting on the floor. I found it strange but beautiful. It was all kumbaya-peaceful like. We sat towards the front. On the stage were two teenagers, a guy rapping out his lyrics as a girl sung a melody and then they would swop. It was mesmerizing for me, the beauty of their art. 

As they finished the tall dread-locked man at the back approached the stage and started rapping on his way up, all the way to the stage. I was so surprised! It was just majestic. I was wondering who all these wonderful people were and why I had never met them before. As he reached the foot of the raised floor he took his shoes and scarf off. It was sort of like a ritual as he laid his shoes neatly to the side and stepped on the raised floor, un-scarving his dreadlocks as if unwrapping his nakedness, ever so carefully and laying the scarf, folded at the corner of the stage next to the shoes. Under my breath I mumbled "Oookaaaaay, whatever makes you comfortable..."

To my surprise he, at that point exclaims mid-poem: " So, whats wrong with being comfortable?!" with so much feeling and passion that I was embarrassed I had said anything. Honestly I didn't know he could hear me and he carried on nonchalantly as if it was part of the poem . It could've been, but at that time I was so stunned that I wasn't listening anymore and kept wondering if that was part of the act or if he had actually heard me and took offence even though I wasn't offering any.  

The poetry continued and I was already immersed, having acquired comfort in this new zone. It felt like home. The people there were friendly and spoke to me like I'd been with them at those sessions all my life. It was easy to make friends. Before long though, my accomplice pointed at her watch and said that we would get into trouble if we didn't leave soon because it would get dark and we would run out of taxis. I told her to hang on a while, one more hour before the session ended. It was 4.30pm.

She wouldn't hear of it. 

I told her that our parents were the same, maybe mine even stricter than hers. I knew I would get into trouble. I was thinking in my head that for the first time in my life I didn't really care. I wasn't doing anything wrong by enjoying WORD. I told her that if we stay together, since our parents know each other, we could vouch for each other in telling the truth. Its not like we had decided to go drinking or do drugs or have sex in dodgy places like our parents were always insinuating we somehow would. Like some of our peers, however few and between and distanced from our daily lives, were doing. Surely truth counts for something?  

Despite my pleas, she left me there to decide for myself. I chose to stay. I have never regretted it. And then my old best friend from primary school pitched up out of nowhere! She recited. She was wonderful! An hour and a couple of new friends and excellent poetry later, I left for home. Got a taxi and got home 6.30pm on the dot. 

My dad was at the dining room table working on something as I walked into the door. He looked up and didn't say anything, the way he does when he is mad at me. In his head, I can imagine all the thing she had invented as to the reason his wicked daughter was home so late. Class ends at 1.30pm and she arrives 5 hours later.

Mom calls me into her room and tells me that they were worried about me. As I'm explaining where I had been she tells me that she received a phone-call from my "friends'"　parents. I sigh in relief thinking I'm exempt since obviously my friend had made sure they knew where I was. Only to find out that that wasn't quite the story...

My friends parents were very worried about their daughter but were glad to hear we were together at the poetry session. What they didn't understand is why I refused to leave when it was getting late at 4.30pm. My friend had had the sense to leave and tried to convince me that it was best this way but I had refused and tried to coerce her to stay, drag her into my defience. The disapproval of my character was blatant and discomforting, never mind the insinuations that were coated onto my insolence. I mean, how can they be sure I actually stayed at the poetry session, a whole hour more and got caught up on the frequent long queues of commuters heading home on a Saturday afternoon after a day of shopping in the city? How do they know for sure that 4.30 was interval time at the poetry session so people could get refreshments and a bit of air after sitting in a dark basement for two and a half hours? How do they know that 4.30 was the end of the session and I had gone with my old best friend to do...god forbid!
I remember thinking to myself that she would have done better not to even say I was with her that day, now that my reputation had been tainted by imaginary sins. I was mad. I got so oooooo mad!

My father gave me a hiding that day. 

I seldom get angry but that day my anger BLEEZED. 
In my room  I sat down with a notebook and a pen and just started jotting down all my thoughts. I was mad. At her! I had obviously taken the fall for both of our guilty pleasures. Guilty for loving word and pleasuring my ears. This sinful indulgence called art. And she was chaste. Chaste as a blooming daisy. 

So I wrote and wrote down all that I felt, expelling her from my system , lacerating our friendship there and then. When I finished crying, I had my first diss rhyme filling my page. Suffice to say that SKITZ GEMINI was born on that very day. 

A few weeks later I was to recite this to my emcee boys at school and back then I didn't even know what punch-lines were but, I was officially team. 

Skitz Gemini is the schizophrenic gemini that is me. She has a dual personality. On ordinary days she's really sweet but when really really pissed off, which doesn't happen often, she pops out of me and starts spitting venom. I have no idea why she needs to be really angry to do this though. And I was plenty angry as a teenager. There have been less than a handful of people able to make me angry enough to bring her out. Its usually women, too.

 Lately  I feel her wanting to show her face.

Zulu girls Can...

I am sure

I am very very sure 

Of the abilities of Zulu girls. 

Despite their background. 

Despite their upbringing. 

Regardless of their social limitations, 

Whatever their programming. 

Aside from their challenges. 

That they can: 

Travel anywhere they want in the world. 

Adapt. 

Learn. 

Get by with the language barrier. 

Make friends. 

Make interesting conversation with strangers. 

Touch a heart. 

Be someone's secret sexual fantasy. 

Inspire. 

Invoke anger. 

Invoke jealousy. 

Teach. 

Love. 

Trust. 

Abandon their hearts for something bigger than themselves. 

Tell stories. 

Make sacrifices that others would find surprising. 

Keep faith. 

Cry long and hard. 

Whine sometimes. 

Carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, with a weak but determined smile.

Carry their men to glory even when they are not aware they need to be carried. 

Protect their youth.

Fight for their families. 

Punish. 

I am well aware of the abilities of Zulu girls, that too are aware of themselves. That too hold, the power of self knowledge.