Archives for January 1, 2016

To those who dare to stand!

I haven’t really said anything online concerning how I feel about students protesting over fees being too high and stuff. It’s not that what I think they did wasn’t brave or really admirable, it’s that I wish I had maybe had the “apples” to have done something that amazing when I was in varsity. I recall scrapping registration fees together from relatives to get into a University to study something, anything I just wanted an education.

I couldn’t afford to step foot into a varsity and I know it (so does my bank balance) but…what they did was very brave and I take my bra off to them. I do this as the highest form of respect for real.
To stand up for a cause takes a lot of “apples” and I wish I had those “apples” in every area of my life.
I am a coward of note and would never risk doing anything that would land me even a stone throw away from a holding cell, let alone an actual jail. There are numerous reasons for this, number one, I fear having a criminal record because I heard even Shoprite won’t hire you as a packer if you have one of those and who would want to be rejected by Shoprite?
Number two, my aunt would kill me before I would get the chance to explain why I was there. My fear for her is too great to fight any system regardless of what it is, I am sorry dear comrades. Number three, I don’t wanna know what teargas smells like, I cannot run to save my life, I’d probably be more of a liability than a comrade during a protest. I am a giant coward and that is it!

It is with all these factors that I admire the students of 2015 who dared to stand up for what they believed in. So…power to those of you who know how to stand up for yourself at work with an unrealistic boss, in family matters with stubborn uncles, a government that buys luxury jets, or at school with ridiculously high fees. In all the fighting that you do, know that there is a coward out there that is me who is thinking and writing about you in her safe little corner admiring your courage.

Blessings
Pops

I got married the other day

I tied the not a little over 6 months ago and it really has been a experience I will never forget.

 

Ever.

But …this isn’t about me and my marriage, it’s more about the journey towards getting married from everyone else’s experience, lack thereof and all the advice I received, wanted and unwanted that I will write about.

I got advise from elders, young people, spinsters, bachelors, happily married folk, unhappily married folk, pastors, fiends, EVERYONE who pretty much had a mouth and an opinion.

I was told not to do it and that this would ruin my life because he would change after we got married and I’d be his slave disguised as a wife. I was told not to do it because my freedom would be a thing of the past, I’d never again see the light of day and that he’d never let me go out at night ever again! I thought snap then why do people still do it on that show that plays every Sunday at 7pm?  Why is Home affairs filled with bookings until next year?

Those really were confusing times for me…

During the count down to the big day I had all this advice running through my head. I was freaking out…what if I was really going to marry someone who pretended to be a Prince but instead would lock me up in a tower and I’d have to wait for an ugly ogre named Shrek to save me?  They told me I’d have to cook and clean and be a sex slave and I’d never be the same again. They joked about how married people wish to be single and how I was going against freedom.

So…I had a private meeting with myself and the god who created me. I told him to please teach me how to discern, I could not get how a man so sweet would turn into a big bad wolf because a ring was on my finger. How could so many years of knowing someone change after all we had been through.

I couldn’t get how people who didn’t know who he was could say that there was a 100% chance of being cheated on because he was a Zulu man. I asked my maker to teach me how to create a filter that would separate hogwash from wisdom, how to see someone who is speaking from a place of expertise and one speaking from a place of hurt. I wanted my maker to help me remember the advise to keep engraved on the palm of my hand and I asked him to show me the advise to flush down the drain.

He did that. I did that. We did that.

I am in no big place to give advice about marriage as I learn everyday, but what I can say is in all things seek the one who made you to be your ultimate teacher.

 

Blessings

Pops

 

 

 

Ten cents

My father was a great gambler. When he won he came home with pockets weighed down by jingling coins and a nip of brandy. On those days we knew that he got lucky with a fafi number, the chinese game that was so popular in the township;still is. It made no difference to us, my mother and I, whether he won or lost, because we knew that we would not get even a cent from that man.

He was a tall and imposing man. His shoes where always dusty because he kicked up the dust when he walked. He shuffled rather than walked. And when he was drunk the dust went up to his pants. On some ocassions the dust even went up to his shirt. My mother was constantly scrubbing away at his clothes, but no matter how much she scrubbed they never got clean because there was never any soap with wich to wash. My father couldn’t even bring himself to buy soap, but he was constantly complaining about his clothes not being clean.

One day, while I was pushing a brick around the yard, and my mother was inside the house (a one room shack that was divided into a bedroom, a sitting room and a kitchen through various ingenuities) cooking the wild spinach that grew in abandon on our backyard, I saw my father approach. Our house looked directly into the main street, all who came and went passed this way. He shuffled his way through the street, singing to himself. He had a great baritone voice wich made an impression on anyone who heard it. I unfortunately did not inherit that voice, when people hear me speak or sing (if ever they could catch a glimpse of those private moments) I imagine some doubt is kindled as to whether I am indeed my father’s son.
He pushed open the small metal wire gate, wich sagged to the side like an injured dog. Both of his pockets where also sagging, the tinkling coins accompanying the melody of his voice, and the nip of brandy adding a jolly enthusiasm to that rich baritone. The dust had enveloped him from his shoes, to the collar of his shirt.
I stood up from my game, swinging my hands and walking like I was in a robotic marching band, I approached him.

“Pa?” I said.
“Yes, son of mine” he bellowed.
“Can I have ten cents?”

I was not in the habit of asking my father for money, and he was not in the habit of giving me any, but I wanted to test him on that day.
He looked at me with one eye closed, as if I was the subject of a very intense study, and the other eye was getting in the way of close and proper inspection.

“Ten cent, ten cent, ten cent…” he said, as if contemplating the wonderful concept of a ten cent.
“Ten cent…Matemusho,” he called to my mother.
“Eya papa.” answered my mother from inside the house.
“This child of yours is asking me for ten cent, did you send him to ask me for money?”
“Ha ah papa Temusho, I did no such thing.”
“Children of today…When I was your age I never asked my father for money. When I was your age my back was already bent from hard work.”
His back showed no trace of that particular childhood affliction.
“But I am too young to work” I said.
“Too young to work? Listen to this boy…Matemusho, how old is this child of ours?”
“He has ten years papa.”
“Ten years? And he says he is too young to work? Children of today, have you ever heard of such a thing…”
He shuffled off and is swallowed by the door, to regale my mother with tales of wich she has no interest.

I went back to my game of pushing bricks, with a plan formulating in my head. My father didnt care anyway. He didn’t care that I wore the same shirt to school five days in a row, washing it once a week in the gentlest way because I was afraid of getting it torn. He didn’t care that my pants were riddled with stitch after stitch, that my feet licked the ground because the soles of my shoes were gone, eaten away by one too many steps.
I knew that by the next day the money would be gone. He would drink it all or gamble it away, and arrive home looking like a wet cat, not at all like the jovial singing maestro he now was.

At night my father gave me his dusty shoes to polish, or atleast make them look presentable for another tussle with the dusty streets. My mother had already gone to bed, and I could hear my father fiddling with his belt, getting ready to get into bed as well. I brushed the shoes slowly, letting the time pass. When I heard him snore, I went into their bedroom and put the shoes under the old chair next to their bed where my father put his clothes, folded neatly and ready for another day. I was always amazed at how he managed to fold his clothes with such military precision, even when drunk. I took another look at him to make sure that he was still sleeping. He snored with his mouth open, drool running onto his pillow.
I tool all the money from his pocket. There was a small amount of brandy in the bottle of nip. I thought of drinking it, but then decided against it. I was about to leave when an idea occured to me. I went back to the chair and left a ten cent coin in his pocket.

In the morning I was woken by my fathers bellowing voice, as I expected, and I tossed my blanket aside, bracing myself for trouble.

“Wake that boy up, I’m killing someone today, I swear it.” said my father.

My mother came into the living room slash place where I slept, my father following behind with a belt in hand. I stood up immediately.

“Did you take your father’s money?” asked my mother.

“No I didn’t…”

“Hey don’t lie tome boy, give me that money!” said my father.

“I didn’t take it I am telling you I didn’t take it, I don’t know what you are talking about.”

My father raised his hand, the belt came down, I ducked and he missed. My mother had positioned herself on the door. when I ran towards her she opened the door and we ran out, my father following closely behind. There we where, me in only my underwear, my mother still wearing her once white but now yellowing hand me down silk night dress, and my topless father chasing us around the house, vomiting all manner of expletives known to man. At times he stopped and ran in the opposite direction hoping that we would run into him, but we we also stopped, and waited to see him turn the corner, at wich point we ran in the opposite direction. He would never catch us with that shuffling run. He soon got tired of chasing us, so he made his way into the house to get ready for work. We could hear him cursing to himself inside the house while we stood shivering in the early morning cold.

“Mama, I did take father’s money.” I confessed.

“I know…”

“You know?”

“I saw you last night when you took it,” she said with a smile, “Where did you put it?”

“I put it in a tin and buried it in that patch of ground where the wild spinach grows.”

“You did well, but you father is going to be angry for some time, so as soon as he leaves we get our things and head to mama Josephina’s house.”

Mama Josephina was the old woman next door who always provided us with shelter whenever my father went on a rampage. We stayed for four days at her house. After wich my father, singing with a jovial baritone, his pockets rattling with coins, came to fetch us.

“Mama Josephina, give me my people, I have come to fetch them”

He looked with one eye closed at the new shoes on my feet. I lifted them up for inspection unconsciously, my hands in the pockets of my new pants. he patted me on my head, rummaging in his pockets, and gave a ten cent coin.

Chain of Change – Inspired by Madiba

You made a change
Which made a world change
Which made me change
I hope to be the change
That can create change in others
So that your chain of change
Can be sustained.

The things I remember

I remember that day, like I created it myself, you watched me draw Constellations in the skies,
While speaking the native language that I read in your skin.
I wrote floodlines in the palm of you hands,
I loved you slowly like gradualness of moonlight.
I will hold you like ‘always’ holds onto ‘forever’.
And talk in a tone only understood by halos in the dark.
Remembering…
When my heart was a tsunami hitting the shores of your hands.
When my body was an earthquake that trembled everytime the tectonic plates of your lips separated and you smiled.
When sandstorms would form whenever you blinked.
I used to try and flood away the drought you left in my mouth each time we spoke.
I am a natural at being a disaster of a human being.
And your name is still the only colour I bleed
If you only know what your presence did to me,
you’d came up with words to call all these emotions I bury underneath my flesh.
You are a painting with colours have yet to learn.
A love like a sentence without a full stop, because its endless.
Endless like the galaxies God drew into existence

I remember how your voice easily resonated with my soul as it traveled with the wind,
causing hurricanes to breathe in my chest every time you looked at me.
I see no else but the king who stands before me.
Whose heartbeat is the song I wouldn’t mind falling asleep to.
You echo rivers into oceans, flowers into trees made a woman out a girl who was once afraid of complements as much as she was afraid of death.
I remember when I used to hide lies in the inside of my chest.
But now I stand for you, stand for us, I see nothing but the crown you carry on your head.
You are the gravity that hold me down in more ways than one,
I need you like the earth needs the sun.
I watched you grow into beautiful,
Promise me that you will stay beautiful.

Remember when we existed in time where love didn’t even understand us so it gaves us away to different emotions that spoke in a voice we never fully could hear.
Its been too long and I finally allowed the truth to escape from underneath my tongue.
I only have 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year, which I will chose to love you differently each day,
At the end of each year I’ll start all over again.

God forbid that the world has to build walls high enough to keep us apart, I’d write you letters of forever everyday, when you read them the word will sing in your presence.
I will whisper my name in leaves…
hoping they will travel to wherever you may be.
So you might have a reason to hold on to me.
I will kiss loyalty into your lips,
Scratch bass drums into your skin,
Allow the sun to rise on your shoulders, and set on your hands,
Paint the truth in all your thoughts of me,
you are my brand new set of angel wings,
And I can never fly without you.
I swear your voice has become my conscience,
And I’ll walk into your life like a size 4 commitment.
For I’d bury my pride, abandon my doubts, and abort the part of me that thinks I can survive without you, because that part of me is usual good at lying.
I know I can tattoo happiness into your life, pierce in all the reasons why I love you
and repair your eternity ’til I become what you would live for.

You are light and it’d be foolish not to love the solar power which you are.
I’d be the backbone that’s makes you taller,
I will forever stay your pretty young thing even when we older.
I’d be the sleeping pills that drifts you into comfortness,
Living without you makes no actual sense.
I’d be your favourite book because you are the only one who has been able to read me.
There is a part of you buried inside me.
I pray that every morning you wake you will still pick me over everything.
I hope I am all the things you remembered about me,

Because…

King you are still all the things I remember….

The return of Imogen

She’s back Imogen is back
my toxic friend of days gone by
she haunts my days ,my nights
I tell myself :”Your’e not real –
you cant hurt me ”
its all in vain as she laughs
for she knows she controls me
controls my mind , my loves
my hates
my face distorts as she appears
hatred swells into my body
when she returns logic leaves my mind only to be filled with anger
hatred self loathing this is life
that comes with Imogen
i cant take it anymore
and i reach for the box
and little white pill inside
just one is all i need
slowly Imogen disappears
to return another day