Portal for Writers and Poets in South Africa
With potters hands you formed me
Designed me
Made me in your image
Formed me with your grace
With a sculptor’s creativity
You cut away the mess
As if to say
Here is a piece of irresolute clay
An unfinished work of art
Placed in a furnace
To harden and shape
An artist creating
An image of Himself
Loved and precious
Humanity
Millions of pieces of irresolute clay
Irresolute( doubfull, infirm of purpose, vaccilating, unsure of how to act
You made my life a playground
Each time you enter my body i feel out of this world
When i think of you my mind gets dark and
I run out of joy
Why are you so bitter?
You do not tell when you come,
Hope and smile leaves me when you come near to me.
Sometimes i forget that they do exists in life
Your presence in mi body bring rain out of my eyes everyday
You make every question to have answer no
Thoughts have gone black; energy is what i am looking for.
You tormented me
You do not feel pity or shame about my emotions
Sunrise and sunset but you don’t give me relief
Nights pass away with mi eyes open, listening to headache
When i look into the mirror i see rain going through mi face
Looking at the pieces of events, they do not give sense,
Why is a word that dominates my thoughts;
Are you happy to see me in this situation?
What is your aim about me? Why me? Still i get answers no
You direct my mind to the graveyard, where everyone has peace
Where crying and complaining are strange things
What the reason for me to be alive, my everyday question
Happy people around making no sense to me
How do they find hope and happiness in their lifes?
Day’s passes and you still in my body,
Aren’t you getting tired of my complains about you?
Pain i felt you and i respect you,
Relief is what i crave for now, peace is
What i need most, pain go away, go away
You have been mi enemy for too long
Often I feel I’ve done too much this time;
And that there is no way back of which I can find;
My problems surround me like a starless night;
And worry has my spiritual man blind;
I feel like I’ve played You for a fool for the last time;
When I asked for forgiveness only to ask You the same thing the very next night;
If I was You I would have given up on me and turned away my face;
Yet it’s as if before I ask You come and offer me mercy and grace;
Things I will never understand about the depth of Your love, too hard to explain;
Things I could never live without and need more and more everyday;
Nothing can compare to Your ever lasting grace;
That You without question wash my sins away as if I never sinned in the first place;
Lord what makes You love me this way;
I know alot of girls just like me can’t understand why Almighty God would waste His power and time;
On a stubborn fool like me who can’t shake a sin filled life;
But whatever it is that makes You love me so much I am forever thankful and will be until I die;
The hell I went through here will be well worth the moment You and me lock eyes for the very first time;
And You say “Well done good and faithful servant” with tears in Your eyes;
While I can’t stand in Your presence and fall to Your feet and cry;
You lift me up and say “I have been waiting for this moment for a long time”;
As You replay all the prayers I sent to heaven at night;
Asking to meet You face to face and being disappointed when it felt like You ignored my cries;
When in fact You were right there by my side all the time;
Even before I called Your name while consumed by fear in the darkness of the night;
I just couldn’t see for in my spirit my vision was blind;
I can’t wait to feel what a whole heart feels like again;
It’s been so long that I’ve become used to living this way;
I forgot that I was meant to live like a King and not like a slave;
I was of a royal bloodline because of the living sacrifice You made;
I can’t wait to relive my childhood days;
That I miss so much now but were snatched away;
A place where I no longer miss my past and feel regret and blame;
For breaking her heart when I had no clue about life or love or the cost of making a mistake;
Where I can write You songs and poetry of praise;
And watch You read it with tears streaming down Your face;
Where we will laugh at my earthly days;
Where I acted the fool as if I was the most important person to be alive;
A place where there is no fear and a struggle to survive;
A place where real love resides and not the substitute love we’ve come to know in this life;
Where hearts are never broken and where no one can erase your smile;
Where everything is free and everything costs nothing;
Where I can come see You face to face without fighting opposing forces just to tell You something;
A place where my name is written in the Book of Life with gold etching;
Where I feel famous and have a mansion of my own to live in;
And no one can judge me or hurt me for their own selfish reasons;
Where the grim reaper’s clock is no longer ticking away;
Where I can walk without fear or worry for the rest of my days;
Where I need not fight temptation and loose all the time and not know why I do the same things over and over again;
Where I never have to worry about tomorrow and what it may hold;
A place where I don’t hate people but cherish them like gold;
A place where my tears are stored for me to see like the bible always told;
I can’t wait to go back to my first home;
The place I left to fight this war, oh I can’t wait to go back home, the birth place of my soul
Golden sun leaves now
sky darkens slowly over the earth
silver moon is here
I carry my origins in on my face for I am a collection of my ancestor’s choices,
I hope that I have made them proud to name me daughter.
I am the granddaughter of warriors, peacemakers, revolutionaries and poets.
I have forged my character in the depths of despair, in the mist of oppression, in the acceptance and love reflected in a mother’s eyes.
I hope to learn, to grow and be more than yesterday.
I am the hope of my mother, the proof of fertility and the aspiration of a future.
I am sister, cousin, beloved, and friend.
I am the creator of my own experiences and the writer of my story,
I make no apologies and require no praise.
I am a collection of moments and the portrait of complexity.
I am my experiences, worries, fears and prejudices.
I am a warrior.
I am a poet.
I am the past, the now, the potential.
I am as I have always been:
DIMAKATSO.
Its been twenty years
still you’re my fear
tried to forget you
WHAT can i do
wine i have tried
only to make me tired
avoid your name
unfortunately its a common name
your husband has forgotten you
i only pray that mine does too
you’re not in the country
i am still not free of you
its been twenty years
you’re still my biggest fear
so now i am on meds
please thoughts leave my head
perhaps i should cease to exist
thoughts about you wont persist
With a smell of my mama’s breast milk;
And a t-shirt or occassionally a shirt in my mouth;
Crunching and crushing it with my two little teeth;
The only teeth I had had, in Zulu we call them abathakathi;
With no pants, just a diaper that had inherited a new color;
I was living a sedentary lifestyle; But what nobody tacit, I’d started working; My career in writing had instigated, already. I was doodling and scrawling on the floor, In my mama’s stuffed little rondavel; Nicely polished with a cow muck; Mama cooking on a three-legged pot, On wooden fire, unfettering a pungent spiteful smoke; Or sometimes washing dishes, On a cream-white pail, that was once white, But now, tainted by the smoke. I paid no attention, I got used to it; It was my daily perfume; All I cared doing was to doodle squiggles on the floor, Scribbling whatsoever I wanted, the way I wanted it; With no rules for syntax and spelling.
It all looked like noughts, or infinity signs;
But meant the world to me,
And I could perceive what each nought meant;
And if I could speak, I’d declaim it out loud;
Nourish the people from my demitasse of gen;
Quench their thirst for knowledge,
And I’d let em gulp from my rivulet of wisdom;
Those noughts were my insight;
And they were foreshadowing my writing career;
And Yea! I am a born writer
It took me a day to know you, but a decade to know you from the inside.
It took me a minute to fool you, but a lifetime to love you.
Though I may forget about you for a second, its nothing compared to how I feel about you for hours.
Your pleasant, appealing appearance makes my world much brighter and my days much easier.
I played with your heart a thousand times, broke your trust a million times but still you showed me more million ways to love you.
In you did I not only find my being but also my well being and if I were to be kicked from home, your heart would be the first place I’d think of cause that’s where it feels like home too.
Your place in my heart is like the greatest star of all heaven, it does not move across the sky like all the other stars do, it blinks much faster and shines much brighter than all the other stars, just like your place in my heart.
I thought I loved you but I lied cause at first it was just love at first sigh.
I love you without knowing how, when or where.
I love you simply without pride but with passion.
I love you not for what you have but for who you are and made me.
And if I were to lose my memory, I’d still know that I have loved you with all my heart and that has always been enough for me.
A day to savour
For an eternity before
My day was your night
Your sun my moon
Twice we touched the same time
Thrice we whispered the same line
Once a day to savour
For an eternity in between
Disconnected at the shore
Before the volcano erupted
Timelines were corrupted
We were there before each other
On a day to savour
For an eternity thereafter
Days are days
Nights are nights
But in that winter’s mist
Your lips were kissed
Always this day to savour
Here I sit vigorously trying to escape from behind these crimson bars of doubt and shame
With yet another thought and looking for someone else to blame
Tears fall from my weeping eyes dropping to the dirty musky floor like acid rain
Hello? Can you hear me why don’t you answer and how can you not see my pain
The echoes of my call flow out me like sharpened daggers opening up the wounds I closed off and left untreated
The vibration of my trembles moves in synch with my beating heart dropping me to my knees suddenly im feeling defeated
The silence suddenly has become louder, the echoes of its present throbbing in my head
Who is that? That familiar gentle voice inside of me? All this Confusion of what is being said
My hands grasping tightly to the bars that have imprisoned me, the essence of all I am trapped and deeply hidden alone in the darkness of the night
Through bleeding eyes of wounded tears I try see through the blur and distortions but nothing, not even the sign of hope or possible freedom is in sight
Nobody is hearing my cry nobody seems to care but wait hold on doesn’t seem like anyone is there, is this a delusion just my own creation of a prison created by unfounded fear
I know I removed the shackles from the chains that bound me they weighed me and measured me I know they gone because I see them near
But yet the staggering pain has dug itself deep into the very wounds that have reappeared and opening up deeper and more prevalent forcing me to accept whats real
To break free means to pull apart the parts of me I tried to hide, the parts that became versions of stories that changed to fit in to something good to feel
To see the light I have to become the light, Embrace the pain and break the chains that I and I alone created as a shield of my own protection
To break free is to accept, to forgive and let go of all that was and all I believed it to be and to do so in a humble confession
Thought is our own worst enemy, it creates the actions that become the parts of us we no longer recognise, it reshapes us into beings of denial and shame
We walk around with wounds we think are deeply hidden yet when we come out we see just how much we had them exposed we gave them a name
That name became doubt, lack of self worth, courage and even stripped us of the freedom we meant to feel to fully complete our journey of self discovery in order to be fully freed
I am enough, the wounds do not shape me, the choices do not define me, I will rise to the beacon of my brightest light, I will be free I will succeed yes this is MY CREED
