To document

To document.

To document.

To learn how to fight.

How to fight?

To learn how to fight without burning our homes,

How not to burn ourselves?

To fight for breath,

To Fight!!!

 

 

Busisiwe performing at Ram Jam Soul Sunday 28 Feb 2016

To breathe

Unlearn Yourself

Break out of your cacoon

Medium rare

When I say I love you,
You think of something big
Dont you know that I can fit these words
In the gab between my teeth?
Because my love is air that you find in the bubbles of your champaign,
One drink down and I am no more,
One drink down and I am flirting with the bartender
another drink down, I am riding in a cab explaining to the driver
that this was my first drink.

I tell him I loved a man for 6 months
and for the first time
I learned that he keeps all of his love in his wallet,
flashes a hundred rand note for my smile;
He wants to buy me something
I already sold to myself for free.
When I finally get home,
My mother will confuse the smell of alcohol in my mouth
for kisses
because some times men smell like hangover.
I tell her no man has touched me,
that I dissappear when love calls my name,
it feels like death, throwing yourself at a shadow that has no face.
She will show me the seeds in the growing grims of her nails,
crystal stones that she collected from the sweat of men.
Next to the tomatoe garden in our backyard,
My mama is growing men,
she is growing a son,
she is growing the man my father should be when he returns.
We have adam's apples for breakfast, lunch, and supper
and from each meal we get a rib,
to build a broken woman back up.

Houses

When the police come to arrest him
tell them to put handcuffs on the door.
This house is a culprit, constantly watching us bleed without moving.

The first time he turned beast, the walls collapsed our screams into a song
and the neighbours thought we were dancing to a sharp melody.
This house will watch us get killed and say nothing.
The walls will wear our blood like paint,
Our DNA washes off into colour.
It is a ring in here, with only one boxing champion who gets to pick a fight.
Constantly we kiss the kitchen tiles,
Slowly rise to our knees,
Leave our blood mopping the floor.
We are learning prayer
With the celling slapping our words back to our tongues, There is a kind of heaven that we will never reach;
Where men don’t exist to molest women,
Where houses are not ghosts forcing a painful memory into our thoughts,
Where fathers love their daughters.

This house will let us die, The tiles will shallow our skeletons,
This house wants to be a graveyard.
There are sessions of memorial service in each bedroom
Old obituaries hanging like curtains,
Each morning, windows open to wave life goodbye.
Those who came before never won this war.

And those who came before were us,
We’ve been dying here each night.
But today police are coming
If we are dead when they come,
Tell them to take this house with him to a prison cell,
Because it got comfortable in watching us bleed. 

Sun Bird

I don't know what they call you,
I am convinced that they cannot see you.
Your furthers flip through fighting for recognition.
They stole you and your shade,
now sun kissed dreams melt on your memory.

The wind ignores your arrival,
when you pass through it,
its currents drag you down.
The land is angry at you.
Every time you come to feast on its belly,
it reminds you that you will always return to the sand,
as beauful as your journey is in the skies,
you will return to dust to eat.

The clouds are tired of your chirping,
you expect no reply,
because you know that the world is listening,
and you pray that one day you can have a conversation
with its heated storms,
undress its anger.
learn its language and tell it of your stranded anger.

When staring at the trees you rest on
becomes norm,
you fly across the bore
and flap your wings to kiss the sunlight.
its rays reflect on your  tatooted limbs.

The bliss we mistake you for,
the battles we forget that you faught,
your history is trapped in your throat.
no one understands why you chase the sun
when you know that arrows are waiting for you to dance in the sky,
break your bones and declare you meat.
it is painful how all your dreams roast in the fire.

sun kissed bird burnt to ashes....

Unconditional

Love, you visit me
with the burning lamp of pain in your hand.
I can see your face and know you as sunshine.
You became the stitch between two dead layers of skin,
after soul has ripped through its flesh
into the audience hall of silence.

The world has scratched you with its pain,
asking for its return in songs.
Throwing prayer at your face
like some form of God.
Slaving through the floor with wounded knees,
offered benediction in exchange for a comfort song for all  who can't sleep.

No matter how many insults you are forced to engulf,
you hold your right fist in the air,
your left arm wrapped around the broken ones,
pull through dust,
and sacrifice your meal for the unbelieving dry throat.

I have heard your harp break into an ocean of formless forms,
my hatred floats on top of your body,
you diffuse its existence with a smile,
and hug the doubtful spirit without disgust.

Love, you visit me
after my deeds break hearts.
when honesty is not in my apparel,
you cloth my nakedness with your forgiveness,
when I have buried your image in the grave of darkness.

You watch me die in my sleep,
let me  howl as a ghost
and remind me that as much as I walk through walls,
I wont penetrate the floors,
the ground has rejected to accept an un-lived life,
so I learn to breath again.

I learn the chronicles of living every time you visit,
watch me slowly unmask myself,
and allow me unmask you.
I finally learn, you are God,
the healer of unknown.