Archives for December 2014

Diary of Fitting a Museum inside a Suitcase (twelve experimental haiku)

Blood knot. Tap root –
Passage into Helenvale.
Primitive Buddha.

Buddha of Salt Lake –
Ice lungs. Glaciers taste like salt.
Pirates find glory.

He gutted the fish –
Trimmed the gills neatly.
Hollywood squalor.

A scrape. Slow dance. Church –
The Buddha has seen skylines.
A sheet of music.

Hens in the backyard –
Past. Slick glaciers. Wren. Music.
Fig jam. Biscuits. Faux.

Spring and winter boots –
The butcher’s wife. Cake. Bread.
Author’s words lost moons.

Cairo. Ghost stories –
Kitchen table wisdom. Lamb.
Sprigs of rosemary.

Missing war. Alice –
We are made up of dead stars.
Drink up your school milk.

Red. The Christmas card –
Boughs. A series of mania.
Library of wounds.

Minor earth. Silence –
Typewriter and wedding cake.
Secret handshake. Glut.

Cold vertigo. Feast –
Faces solemn in the crowd.
Asphalt Winter Sea.

Grotesque Oracles –
Of nature’s bride. Alleyways.
Cardigans. Wormwood.

Unspoken words

Teary eyes
Not blinking
Sealed lips
Hands tied with paralysed legs
No hissing sound of breath
Just listening to my heartbeat drumming on my chest
I tried hard to speak, but no sound came out
The harder I tried I just mumbled
My unspoken words
Words that put life on a standstill
This are the lyrics I had to relate
This are my feelings when I can’t write
This are my dilemmas when I can’t perform
This words are my artwork
Ceasing to share this artwork means ceasing to “be”
The unspoken words
Art of rhythmical composition
A “being” I can’t discard from my soul
Withholding this in me will be talk in vain
Free my soul, let me be
Let me speak, let me say this unspoken words
They are my treasure and for your pleasure
The unspoken words dicovered

a thousand years

It was yesterday;
I picked you up for a walk
Under the moon and stars
A chance for us to talk
Your eyes so bright, I was enchanted,
With your lovely smile
I lacked the courage
To tell you how I truly felt
Somehow I was under a spell.
Regrets lasting a thousand years,
God gave me an Angel
Caught up in a dream,
I left heaven pass me by
While staring at a closed door,
Finally the thought crossed my mind;
It was a year ago.

A thousands years by Tumelo Malebo
14/12/2014

Defeated

Days like these I feel like ripping every ounce of myself apart, jumping on my heart barefoot and setting it ablaze.
Sometimes I hope I’d wake up to whispers of a sweet lalaby reassuring my conscious self of the dream I’ve been dwelling upon for the past two years.
My faith be tested beyond measure while my heart be rendered invaluable, where do I go from here, do I contine with the faith and determination to love limitlessly or do I throw in the towel and declare myself DEFEATED…

Blue

In this story there are two sisters.
One is a case study being held under observation.
Her day starts with pharmaceuticals, on pins and needles.
Good morning. Tell me. Confess this.
You said last week you would make the effort.
Set the wheel in motion. Release all the silver
Linings of the clouds of your surface tension.
Tell me the words you would like to hear.
Make yourself happy. It’s a sin not to try.
Blue is the sky. Blue is the swimming pool.
Blue are the building blocks, paint, and the box of rye
Toasted crackers, the earthenware, the plates,
And my high school swimming costume
With the white stripes that I changed into in
The school bathroom. Lap after lap. I felt lucky.
I use blue crayons to draw vowels and consonants.
I’m chained to them. Built a home for them

Mapped out inside my mind’s eye’s atlas.
I want the beauty, the purity, the suicidal illness
Of innocence, the pleasure of English literature
And the wuthering heights of it. I fell for you
Because there was something about a paradise
About you. Something exotic like an avocado
In a suitcase in Sylvia Plath’s iconic bell jar, like
An American who puts on a fur coat before
She turns the key in the ignition and fills her lungs
And head with carbon monoxide. I am a Romantic.
The war poets dead and buried. They never
Completely recovered from the war. Slaves every one.
In the end aren’t we all slaves, take the housewife
For example, the poet or the Romantics?
The other sister is bored with life. She has so much
Money she doesn’t know what to do with it.
So she gets a visa and goes to America, Thailand, and India.
She never has to phone collect from overseas.

When I look up at the night sky I know
There are stars, the moon, the Milky Way.
Perhaps Milton is looking down at me a father-figure.
Inspiring me like Rainer Maria Rilke or Goethe.
As they stretched their arms outwards
Toward imagination so do I. Imagination
And the ‘voice’ can be complicated, complex,
And psychological, and I’ve learned so can I.

Liberty

Liberty;
where is Liberty
our youth is corrupted,
our beloved children smoke drugs
They always drinking alcohol,
young children bore babies
Is this Liberty,
You call this Liberty?

Liberty;
where is Liberty
Children are raped,
women are abused
crime is increasing,
young and old people commit
suicide; everyday
Is this Liberty,
you call this Liberty.

Liberty;
where is Liberty
our government is corrupted
There is fraud after fraud,
In the country of blindness
one eyed man; is the king
is this Liberty,
You call this Liberty?

“Refuse to be weak”

Refuse to be weak
It seems so tragic that;
Everyone under the sun
Suffers the same fate,
That’s why people are not
more careful to be good.

Instead, they choose their own;
mad course;
For they have no hope,
There is nothing ahead
But death anyway
But listen try hard to be good,
Refuse to be weak.

High Moon: Garden of Eden…Evil

Aiwa’s flying feet lead her towards the silver pool. With the touch of her hand she revealed the perfect picture of her golden body. In all her naked glory she dived beneath the gleaming water, into the loving embrace of death.

Deceived by trust on one moonlight night, faceless was her seduction beneath the high moon in the garden of Eden. The golden touch turned the garden into evil. Her once aching fingers turned into clawing nails digging into his corded muscles.

Faceless was her seduction…one touch…one whisper, an attack now remembered for eternity. High moon…the garden of Eden…Evil

Canvass

So I find myself with pen in hand while staring at a blank canvass
Where do I go from here
Equipt with arms for war
Will I conquer?,
Will I defeat my greatest nemesis,
Raise above the quakes of hurt and regret
And find within that canvass what once belonged to me
My self righteousness!

My Childhood

In childhood, my father loved his meat and potatoes.
Once there were towers. Towers of the radiant sun.

Thrones of them. My sister is queen. My brother king.
Curbing anything oceanic. The stalks that grow from

This world are like any green feast. They are perfectly
In rhythm with the sleepless sea, that mocks me. I have

Found so many people now that worship my fear
For them. I anchor myself in the closet behind winter

Dresses I will never wear. Protection needs order,
Routine and gravity. Norms and values. It is not easy

To sway from the blue of the sky to where East meets west.
The Oriental girl with her matchstick legs gives me

My cookie to appease some sinful nature that I have
Forgotten even exists. I am the scapegoat, the lamb, the

Unmarried woman, the insomniac, the nurse, the confidante,
The keeper of secrets. I answer the telephone. Wait until

It rings three times before I pick up waiting to hear
His voice but you see it is complicated. Great men are

Often complex. Relationships with great men are often
Complicated. How I long for the sea’s body to cover my

Own. The weight of water. It is fire. How it burns. How
It sates my skin. It goes down like a single malt whisky.

I am in Ward 7 again. Tara. Walls closing in. Evaporating.
Becoming fainter and fainter. Fading away. Bars at the

Window. People indifferent to me. Nurses aloof. Angelic
Creatures who are in possession of night medication.

I take those pharmaceuticals. I drown in them. An empty
Vessel or royalty. I fly home. Onwards towards the light.

Sweet Jesus. A cave of flesh. The birthday girl with her
Twenty-one candles. The pastor strums his guitar. We all

Sing hymns. Later we eat cake like there is no tomorrow.
Later he plays the piano. Much later, years I turn thirty.