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LEBOGANG MASHILE
ABCs
It takes just 26 letters to create a universe
The world is dismantled and then reassembled
Through the lens of a pen and verse
I have lost myself in books
And then found myself in words
Living in a world without imagination
I can think of no fate that is worse
I’ve walked through the lives of individuals
Whose eyes I’ve never known
I’ve been to cities and villages and country sides
Whose skies, to me, have never been shown
It was in this solitary cell
That my greatest strength was honed
I saw that my mind was just a shell
And it’s abyss simply a hole
And the hell of a heaving heavy heart
Is still my friend
Every story has its place
And history never ends
The writer is an architect God child at play
On a canvass of memories
She lies naked between the covers
Her own lover
Her own worst enemy
Navigating between extremes
She is both the judge and the judged
The vile despised and attacked
The unashamedly beloved
The unassuming friend who’ll tell your business
When you’re not in sight
She pulls commotion out of stillness
In the cavern of the night
And South Africa is a fractured mirror
A paradox of schizophrenic selves
Who don’t talk to one another
Who fear each other
Who revere each other
Who loathe
And pretend
And try to blend in
With each other
And this is the time when you can become
The greatest substance of your dreams
Unless you live in a shack
And don’t speak English
And don’t know what this poem means
Tell me how it’s possible for people
Who walk on gold to not know how to read
Tell me how publishers who’ll never taste their tongues
Can comprehend the words that these people need
Because they’ve never been scared of stories
The ones who uttered the very first
The ones who’ll hand them to their children
Calling out the rivers of their self worth
The ones who’ll write a narrative in the ear
But who won’t call the ear a page
The ones who’ll rhyme without pens
And perform without a stage
I don’t have all the answers
I’m just a colonized African
Who breaks down the Queen’s English
Until Sesotho understands it
Still I’m compelled by those
Who may never inhabit my language
I wonder if trials and translations
Could help them to traverse my landscape
South Africa is an old fashioned mutt
Who knows how to sing
And knows even better how to cuss
Who knows how to piece together prayers
When she’s about to run out of luck
Who knows how to laugh real hard
When the tears have run her into a rut
Who knows that race is a farce
Because when the light’s are off
Every body’s fucked
And when the welts and wounds
Demand healing salve
Words are just enough
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TPB's note: http://www.african-writing.com/hol/lebogangmashile.htm
ANDO YEVA
No One Lives Here Anymore
on all the homes
that lie bereft
along the plains
that line Zambezi's shores
on silent farms
of extinct tribes
that nurtured yams
and coddle mines today
we found the hands and feet and
decapitated heads
that lay like pitted blackheads
on the turning cheeks of Africa
and know for sure
that no one lives here anymore
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TPB's note: http://www.african-writing.com/aug/
RASHIDAH ISMAILI
Lagos
Lagos you are dirty
Your sand is soiled
Your fruits pithy.
I am tied to you
in a strange land
by lines that queue up
for foodstuffs you
should be eating but
ship off to me here
where I stand on check
out lines and marvel
at the cost of one
paw paw, just one mango
singular, along and apart
from you my dirty city.
O Lagos, your streets
are packed and pollute
the air while here in
a smug smogged city
I choke.
Your cord cuts my throat.
I am hurt and I cry like
my Mami market mothers
who go home night after
night with the same tin pots.
Their food is rotting and
ought to be thrown out to
the birds and beasts of
the forest/ but the lines!
O God, these lines are so long
and between the houses and
the foodstuffs so many palms
must be oiled.
Nairas are dripping with black gold
and yet a beggar man’s lot is the
same/ He covers his shame as best
he can and little boys skip school.
A policeman holds his right hand out
a green car passes him dash. And we go
dash you dis and we go dash you dat
and mek we do business.
O Lagos, Lagos, ah say, you don tyah
fo dis? Yousef wey you de com fom?
Me, I long for the cleanliness of
sand roads that breathe long in carefully
spaced intervals between cars running
wild like mustangs roaming the plains.
There are no drivers to speak of.
They have vanished over the hills and
into gulleys.
The seeds have been planted. It is a
bitter harvest we reap. The deeds have
been done. What has been sown is the
flower of our calabashes on the eve of
harvest. If only the waters in the Marina
If only the waves would whisper
louder the secrets of her beaches I would
know all/
My harbour is named after a queen whose
son’s footprints are planted like a bad
seed on the headdress of my children.
Lagos, lay your plans carefully. There
is no way to stop the rise of bicycles
and lorries, hopeful bodies and empty
pots. You divert dash for food, care
for business. We are not an oasis in a
dying desert/ Have we not learnt, o
Lagos, the sound of seductive songs
and sights that blind us
between need and life there must be hope/
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TPB's note: www.african-writing.com
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