ZULU, THE LANCE AND THE LANGUAGE

First, the language refused to enter my ear and be understood.

Instead I chased words around,

words that hovered beyond grasp

and flew like swallows beyond Inanda hills,

 beyond Ixopo mountains

and down to the Umgeni rivers.

Zulu held a knobkerrie and threatened to knock

my head every time I pronounced a word wrong,

Some phrases came crushing down like violent waves

at Isipingo beach or stretched my tongue like a tent

and nailed it upon my teeth.

I remember some time ago, I tried addressing a meeting

of the Indunas at Umthimkhulu in isiZulu – Oh dear me;

It wasn’t my intention to kill those warriors with laughter

“ Uthini Lo muntu?” they asked.

It felt as if my mouth was a jungle –

A dense forest of entwined foliage,

Where it was hard to come to comprehension.

It felt as if my tongue grew a tangle of grass,

The sharp blades piercing my palate.

They didn’t know it was hard speaking Zulu,

It had to do with the clenching of jaws

and the wielding of shields and spears.

WHAT’S THIS PLACE AGAIN?

A herd of cattle still graze in the field

On the plot of land where the authorities

Had proposed to build a shopping mall

Its proposed name on the rust-stained board

Begins to fade and peel away

The windmill that used to supply the villagers

With water

Had since went dry and leans heavily against

An old crumbling concrete slab

And so are hopes and dreams of a community

Hanging in spider-webs

I sit beneath the Marula tree and watch

The black bull in the eye where it graze

The grass is dry – the land parched

The name of the village on the signpost

Had faded away too, a passer-by stops to ask:

“What’s this place again?”

Image: Mpele Thokozane, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Firework Scars

I stepped by the waterfall,
memories restless, awakened
from induced night slumber,
drugged with bottle contents
until the pain of tears vanished

Until the misery of wrought hands,
twisted iron becomes but another
breath catching exercise, a cleared
throat from pasts immemorial to

Walk beside in space and time
to final resting. A blackout
after wounded crackle of static
on the airwave, a signal taken
too little from words

We passed as codes in dark
corners, back and forth through
wire fence.

A look at the roadkill, the tar
paper pine, the burn rubber leavings
of last year’s party favour revolution

Tells of nothing, save regretted
rancor: the lonely scribe dying
with his head firmly perched

To righteous side he’d never take
in fear of too much certainty.

Image: Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Dülmen, Kirchspiel, Wiese in der Bauerschaft Börnste — 2016 — 1523-9” / CC BY-SA 4.0For print products: Dietmar Rabich / https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:D%C3%BClmen,Kirchspiel,_Wiese_in_der_Bauerschaft_B%C3%B6rnste—2016–_1523-9.jpg / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/- Alternatively: Dietmar Rabich / https://w.wiki/9AYK / https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/https://w.wiki/9AYK, https://w.wiki/_tsVi (Shortlink)

The Cost of Belief

Eighteen thousand dollars a year,
a Jesuit tuition fee.

How much Mom believed
I wasted now that I was an “atheist.”

I tried finding God
everywhere I was told to look.

His house, in prayer, in the stained glass of saints sad,
even under the pews. The Others must have laughed. I’d never find them
in a place this stifling.

Grand Pas

Half past last call,
I cue one more song,
set my headphones atop
the turntables and dive

into the sound I have shaped
within this hollow space.
Friends once flooded here.
I conjure their memory.

Around me, a ballet dancer pirouettes beneath the laser glow.

Il saute à travers
a beer stained dance floor.
He twists and twirls
I try to jive.

Balancing the memory
of a mosh pit
on his extended knee,
our sweat salts this ocean.

Carry on

The wisest thing I ever said at 16
was that we all have baggage,
but we can split the load.

You liked that enough to try
carrying mine so long as I
could carry yours but we learned

that shouldn’t be the only job of a partner.

So after, you kept my thumb-holed hoodie, half
my friends. When you tossed the rest back,
The shape had changed. I couldn’t get a grip. My knees buckled.

I begged, but you seemed happy
to have your hands again.
Since then, I’ve stuffed it all down

best I could. Whenever
someone offers to take the weight
of even a carry on, I take off.

Scared that when I do
spill everywhere,
they won’t.

Half-American Lunch

Mom and Dad tried to pack me sandwiches
for lunch. American cheese, ham, lettuce, and tomato
on untoasted white bread. Doused in ketchup and mayo.
Wrapped in a napkin and tin foil. A good sandwich

served fresh. But by lunch time, ketchup and mayo coagulate together,
twisting into an off pink goop. Soaking through the bread. For a while,
I stopped eating lunch. Until they noticed how much
I would eat at dinner. Mom and Dad switched tactics.

Leftover dinner for lunch. Just whatever Filipino food
from the night before heated in a thermos,
to be served over a bed of rice in a tupperware.

Once, a white boy named Sammy offered to trade a bite of his soggy
sandwich for a bite of mine. Dad loved whole peppercorns.
Always too much. It was an art, picking them out. I offered him a whole spoonful,
telling him it was the best part.

Image: Someone Not Awful, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Shadow

A shadow always follows you,
Hollows you out,
Screeching a song, telling you
You’re wrong, you’re hideous:
It’s insidious, but it’s inside you
And outside, crawling on your skin,
Creeping up your spine,
Burdening your back,
Deadweight that you can’t vacate,
An albatross, a cross,
A symbol that you cannot shed
Or shred.
It shows you greener grass in front
Of someone else’s house,
Tells you you’re in the
Incorrect box, that you’re a peg
Neither square nor round,
That you’re a fake,
A foil
From which people recoil
In horror, in disgust
As you flake like rust, like snow,
Nursing a secret you know they know.
You are falling apart
In all the wrong ways
(As if there’s a right way)
But there is this shadow
You want to wish good riddance
But it’s a riddle, a rattle
Of deafening critique,
Always pathetique,
Always there,
Reminding you and your half-ass
Half-empty glass
That it’s five o’clock somewhere.

After Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

Image: Matthew Bowden www.digitallyrefreshing.com, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons