Ageless Leo

This age thing,

I was hoping,

It would be a sage thing,

But somedays,

It feels like nothing,

But an age thing,

A not to slumber on thing,

But a gauge thing,

Like a weather thing,

Where any thing,

Is everything

But for a moment,

I am not a thing,

And a birthday brings,

More rings,

And more greetings,

To remind me,

That life flings,

More numbers,

And more learnings,

More slumbers,

And more churnings,

Every cell is replaced,

Every 11 months

How then,

Can an age thing,

Define anything?

I am more,

Than anybody can sing,

Than any poets words can ring,

I am not a thing,

But an ageless everything

The Bus Ride

This is weird!

I’m on a bus in the Karoo,

B-grade movies blasting away,

Unsettling,

Offending,

Disturbing me

I can’t understand why,

Or who chose them for me,

Watching movies here?

It just highlights the house of cards that this global society is,

A simulation of life is what it is,

And out here,

There is no hiding from it

All you have to do is look,

Look out at what this semi-arid golden hilled,

Natural piece of land,

Spinning through space,

Actually is:

Reality,

The nature of nature,

Even what man does out here looks natural,

His fencing and rails and roads look insecure,

Dwarfed!

This is what I’ve always loved about the Karoo

When you look out at this,

You feel alone,

But not like you do in the city,

Here you feel alone,

But you feel presence,

Am I the only person on earth who feels this?

This craving to re-join or be a part of …

When I see the clouds meet the horizon so far away that it becomes indiscernible,

Distant,

And all around you,

You feel the globe of the earth

This is what it means to feel infinity,

To know it,

To savour it,

And find your place in it

I am no longer a child,

But I am a child!

Colours so subtle,

But so deep,

They lure you in to join them,

Purples and golds,

I wish I could dive into it,

Like some big swimming pool

Ah,

Time moves slowly here,

With lots of blues slowing it down,

Those clouds …

Here,

I can drink in the earth,

 With this big moon-ball,

Hanging high above the horizon,

Clouds streaming towards it,

Like great water highways of rivers,

Niagaring towards the big blue,

Indiscernible in the distance

I know this was needed,

The Bus Ride,

The moon,

Like a rock-locked pebble,

Rocks in and out of these great rivers,

And the poetry,

For once,

Lies outside this window

The sun leaves only hues of purple-blue to remind us of the day

Its wake, every day,

Leaves our consciousness refreshed,

Rested, unstressed,

With its hues challenging boxed perceptions,

Colours blending of their own accord

Beauty lies in process,

Aesthetic is what is left behind,

The scraps off the table,

The Maya,

Left behind for everyone else to piece together!

What is this world if full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?

So here we are making more movie violence,

This time ancient violence

It seems this theme is persistent,

Our ever present madness!

Until we truly lose this we will be bound by it,

Never to truly live,

So we are trapped in a hell of our own making!

Who you calling a Settler?

 

Professor Mamdani;

I am a settler and a native,

I am both,

You don’t speak,

Of us,

The marginalised shame of this continent!

How can a settler become a native?

You ask,

When even natives become settlers in Africa,

And settlers are migrants and trekkers,

Of various colours,

Including Black,

And Brown

Is there a New way?

You ask,

For civil and customary right to be erased from memory?

Am I a settler,

With nowhere to go?

I have a way,

I am the way,

I am the New,

The Un-bordered,

The Un-divided,

The Un-colonised,

The Un-ethnic,

The Un-everything,

Which is everything!

I cannot hold either of the rights of which you speak,

My right is that to life,

And humanity,

Long denied,

Since Slavery, Smuts and Verwoerd,

Lost in the woods

I am the New,
Which can emerge from the old,

From the mixes of settler and ethnic,

Like the Xhosa,

Who know how to mix sources!

We are all mixed here anyway,

And we’re all settlers in some way or another,

Except the Khoisan,

And there’s a bit of him in me,

Am I then the true native?

Or is it Australopithecus?

What sense does all this make?

I am a native of the Now!

A mix of the past,

And my future,

Will be written,

As old words die!

I am free!

Searching for you

Searching for you,

I found,

Eternity,

Through you,

I can see,

Through my tempest seas,

And into me,

How every moment,

And every touch,

Has brought me,

To you,

Eternally you,

I hungered,

After you,

In every life,

Through every inch of strife,

To be near you,

I chose any fate,

Thrown to earth,

I clamoured in the Guff,

And called Gods bluff,

To be near you,

I carved through stone,

And every thing I know,

Says I cannot grow,

Cannot go,

 A real day,

Without you,

I need you,

And can’t leave you,

Alone

I stand accused,

My reluctant muse,

Of thoughts unspoken,

And held too close,

Dishonest words,

And bravado jokes

I hoped my poetry,

And attempts at books you see,

Would bring you close to me,

The real side of me,

Always playing with you,

My childhood friend,

I would bend time,

To find that rhyme,

That makes you mine

Am I Kahlil?

Seeking out his cup,

Again,

In another lifetime

Even now,

I wait in vain,

And I knew how to do my thing,

Until I felt your sting,

And went bumbling within,

To find you,

And find you I did,

A million lifetimes with kids,

And every time you hid,

And teased me just a bit,

To let me know,

That I should never quit

And quit I never will,

I know your heart isn’t still,

I know it rustles and shakes,

When my voice breaks,

So, on my knees I’ll beg,

Please don’t leave me here again

Real love is Magical,

Mystical,

Spiritual

I adore you,

And want more of you,

Addiction,

To worship you,

Constantly you,

Everywhere

My pretense,

Is past tense,

Strengthened and weakened,

Leaning over your fence,

I have no defence,

It makes no sense,

Like Incense,

How long,

I burn,

For you,

Everywhere I turn,

It’s you,

And only you,

My Eternal glue,

Now unbounded,

Clearly I see you

The Path

Body being passenger

To the mind

The mind being the path

To the soul,

I got lost in the valley

Of gratuitive obscurity

And found myself on the

Edge of realisation

I walked out the possessor

Of a world not my own

An occupant of eternity

Fixed into being

A love supreme preserved in tears,

The path long walked abolished fear!

I Won’t Forget

I won’t forget,

I can’t!

But I can only piece together,

What I’ve seen,

Felt,

And heard,

With the fragments,
That persist.

I remember,

Lost youth,

And hard childhoods,

All the rejected,

And abandoned,

Of my kind,

My generation.

Even if it’s just me,

I’ll keep the weight up,

And the hate up,

Till you hear me,

I’ll scream!

This is not a battle to lose,

Not now,

Not when we’ve come so far.

How can I forget?

Even with all this regret,

Blurring the vision of my heroes;

My mother, my father, my family, my friends,

My tree,

With Malcom and Steve,

Long rotting in their graves,

Only Tupac,

Could feel our pain,

And the drain,

Of lost youth.

I will remember,

My kind,

The boys on the corner,

Caged into slavery.

My sister’s struggles,

So much more,

In the jungle,

Where we find our trees.

I see them still,

Making monkeys of us,

Ignoring us,

High up in the trees,

Far away from the safe earth,

The land of true liberation,

The land of education and literacy,

The glass ceiling,

With the Rands mounting on every gilded,

Step of the social ladder.

I know this lie,

I know this slavery,

It isn’t much different from before,

Only now,

We’ll learn to ignore both black and white poor,

Cause we’re so blurred with regret,

Our vision can’t hold their gaze,

As we drive by in our metal monstrosities …

Do we fail to see it?

I can’t relinquish my pain,

Because I see it etched on the faces,

Of so many races of babies,

Sick, neglected,

Poor, disaffected,

They all know rejection,

And the lie of unconditional love,

The lie of childhood,

And the lie we’re now expected to act out,

In this cruel human system of men and rules,

Of greed and abuse,

Of treachery and history,

So much slave hate in it!

So I’m keeping my pain,

And I’ll have to accept my anger,

So I can continue to find the way forward,

And keep reminding us,

Like a Sangoma,

Who has to know great pain and will engage with it,

And commit to suffering,

So that he can continue to heal others,

By knowing it!

Don’t ask me why,

All our saints die,

You know,

How Martin Luther King and Brother Malcolm,

Steve and Tupac,

Took the pedestal to voice this pain,

Knowing that the blows and the bullets that would come,

Wouldn’t compare to the pain,

They were already holding inside.

That the bullets would bring relief,

From the misery of their struggle,

Taken from their people,

Into their hearts,

Using pain as fuel,

Using love as energy,

Using hate as defence,

Making the true sacrifice,

To speak the Truth!

That our children still suffer,

And our women still struggle,

Our babies still die,

Of neglect and ignorance,

Living in cages that teach very early that,

Home is a place to escape from,

Home is a place to flee!

And they ask us why?

They say we have weak minds,

They say we don’t know how to live,

That we choose to be this way,

And with every breath,

They breathe life into the fears they put into us,

Through a myriad of brainwashing experiences,

Our minds are lost to the wizard,

A wizardry they are unable to see themselves make!

Or so they claim

But where were they to teach us,

Where were they when our parents,

Had to cower,

In the presence of theirs?

Where were they on June 16^th,

And where were they in ’64,

Where were they in ’49,

Where were they when Steve died?

Do they even know what I’m speaking about?

This is my religion,

And these are my ancestors!

This is my duty,

This is my Way,

This is my path,

To bear testament,

To my experience,

With every honest ounce I can muster!

If I am to preach,

This is my prayer!

To take the pain within

And make healing of it,

Is to know true strength,

How to suffer for the love of others,

Like our mothers and fathers,

Who took the pain,

Who took the humiliation,

Who suffered more so we could suffer less,

These are my ancestors!

My whole membership to this world,

The world of principles and rules,

Seems false,

At every turn,

I see my ghetto boy responses,

Betray my lack of synergy with,

Inclusion in,

This machine!

I feel like a pretender,

In this world,

The world of so-called higher thought,

New theory and old history.

I know my history,

I know all your lies,

Past, present and future,

Sown into the very fabric

That I am forced,

To engage,

To get paid,

To get laid,

Slave!

How can you reject me?

If you never owned me,

And why,

Does your rejection hurt so deep?

Somehow at the core,

Of who I am,

Slave!

Push out those tears!

Push out those fears!

Be Free!

From:

Resurrection:

Reflections, Collections in Anger (2001-2004)