Written on wind or water
Word is flesh. Soon or later
Flesh must speak in tones
So dark they pierce the skin.
Stigmata are not revealed
At such times: There are wounds
A Thomas would not dare
To plunge his hand within.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 30th birthday.
The mirror spits your grandmotherback at you.
Her determinedeyes.
Her machetemouth.
Her howling courage.
You are third-generation
Messiah.
We present this work in honor of Human Rights Day.
To be a jacket
To be a slave
To be a stepladder
To be forsaken
For you to understand
You must have a disability
To be a breast of money
For those who are abled
And be the belt
For civil servants
And be a grass mat for feet
The feet of the rich
The feet of the wealthy
For you to understand
You must have a disability
And ask for help day and night
No one will listen
The government and community
They all emphasise
They emphasise your worthlessness
And you also feel worthless
But for you to understand
You must have a disability
Discrimination has become obvious
To be undermined
People see a disability
And do not see a person
But for you to understand
You must have a disability
If we had our country
To mold in our hands
So that this soft clay could shape the face
And heart of freedom
Each toll on love
Each tick of distance
Could be some blessing
For I would have
The rare fortunes of a bird
After every mission abroad
All encounters with foreigners
Would reinforce the reason
Turning the strange into loveliness
The urgent to certainty
Of reunion more desirable
For like the birds
Nightfall would kindly lead
To favored nests
To recount encounters
Hatch new flights
Till together we can soar
To heights where such long-distance throbs
Which may pulse pain
Are ever foreign
Being alone will be forever alien.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 40th birthday.
I
we share the same teacher, she and I.
he, who considers each poem
a breathing, pulsing thing
brain, muscle, skeleton, breath
all essential for it to thrive
on its own, without its creator
and how these boundaries overlap
breath floods brain
rhythm drives intention home
meeting in the space where silence
lives in the body on the page –
the in-between.
II
next week, when deadlines haranguing
her head have passed, she will go in search
of the in-between
and write those poems
waiting within her
a selfless, selfish act
of reaching within
to reach without
Who was it that cried out? This cry,
a call that opens night
breaks out like a bird
breaking to greet dawn, or
the arrival of a high tide
that brings schools of fish
whose scales make the waters
glint and shimmer, glint and shimmer.
Who cried? Who woke us
to such things on such a dark night?
Do not ask. No, do not ask.
The moon will make a basin
for tears and where your heart beats
a well will dry up and the weight
of ships leaning against the wind
will make you think of a woman
hanging in the hammock
of an early death.
We present this work in honor of the Day of Reconciliation.
in the night when everything was black
burnt to a cross of ash
on the blind glass
and the dog’s bark a dark kite
blowing away in darkness
to where the moon
tears like the keel of a sinking boat
I dreamt my language
the title page smeared black
with signs now undecipherable raw
and inside the book
I saw my reflection
standing there three times
first among dead friends
with mottled grieving faces
like dogs staring directly into the blind window
while their thoughts like empty glasses
turning in the hands
and I was there
thin neck and moustache
our poems are slaves each with a full wave
feathers proudly on the head
then in a tableau at departure
in the garden of the night
with cape of white hair
my mother an aged virgin in my embrace
and further back
in the folds of memory
all other trusteds as torches of forgetting
were I now the prophet
sent to spy if there is life
in this world
or the senseless exile returning to say
our language was a footnote
under the illegible page history?
a last time on a bench in the empty garden
of a madhouse of toothless ageds
as skeletons with little bitter flesh
swaddled in the blanket
and wild tuft and eyes blind marbles
bow and mutter bow and mutter
many words oh many words
but only the whispering of dead slaves
but not enough to groove or make boat
and outside of the book beyond all listening
the bark and the wind and the ash
of the moon in dark water
We present this work in honor of the 75th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Tell me friend,
What is knowledge?
I dress up nicely,
I carry a cane,
I get on the road,
I eat well?
Tell me my peer,
What is knowledge?
Is it going to school,
Reading the book
Until I am bald,
Turning over pages?
Tell me mother,
What is knowledge?
Is it to be a speaker,
Be applauded by the whole world,
Interpreting the laws
Without understanding?
Tell my father,
What is knowledge?
Come my boy,
Let me pull your ears:
“Talk a little
Do bigger.”
We present this work in honor of the South African holiday, Heritage Day.
I’ve nothing for hands and feet here,
the rest was lost in transit:
the dazed heart, the nervous tension –
then again, what would be made of them?
To compare what’s been lost
to what’s around, to grasp at light and sound
though I don’t look or listen,
I still have the senses on my face.
And in my breast and belly space
I apprehend something else was in that place.
Who’d have known that emptiness would be
so heavy, that being unimpeded would result in such a bind?
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 65th birthday.
He fell from the ninth floor
He hanged himself
He slipped on a piece of soap while washing
He hanged himself
He slipped on a piece of soap while washing
He fell from the ninth floor
He hanged himself while washing
He slipped from the ninth floor
He hung from the ninth floor
He slipped on the ninth floor while washing
He fell from a piece of soap while slipping
He hung from the ninth floor
He washed from the ninth floor while slipping
He hung from a piece of soap while washing.
Poets Corner 