poetry

Is God not here?

Is God not here?

In the backyard by a blue door

where a mother

spills milk like memory

which is to say: lightning

& flashing sirens of remembering

the daughter she buried

cracking skull to recall

melodies of her unique footsteps down the hall

Is God not here?

On a Friday afternoon at 3pm

when a sister calls her little brother

passing an envelope

of despair from her throat

to the postbox of his consciousness

which is to say: earthquake

Of earth moving beneath the reality

flinging them into an unknowing.

Is God not there?

When a brother phones

to announce the divorce

official papers, like swallows

fluttering in the presence

of love - now gasping

for a second chance,

which is to say: dissolution

of the mundane

of a household

shattered

Is God not there?

When a friend's betrayal

Stings like a hot poker

Burning forever into ashes

of trust toppling

when one person pulls

the wrong building block

Which is to say: Jenga

of loyalty, evaporating

Is God not there?

8am on a Friday morning

your sister finding your mothers lifeless body

Having to run to your father

Like broken telephone, "I think Mom has died"

Him, busy dicing pumpkin

Abandoning lunch plans

Which is to say: many deaths

happened that day

Is God not there?

When your hands are pregnant

With the remnants of your mother

tinged with the ochre of memory

smoke billowing inside of you

Which is to say: I will miss you

of bone-deep sorrow

racking my body

as I heave

etching you

a daguerreotype of us.

God, are you not there?

Salt Tongue

Here I stand:

on the shore of my existence

wondering if I braved the swells enough

if I stared enough into the deep blue

and called it courage,

even as my heart softened

waxlike within me.

Did I wade too often in the shallows where the water barely moves?

Have I at least once surrendered

to the riptide offering abandonment?

I don't know if I did enough,

I only know I walk away,

with salt on my tongue,

and a quiet hunger for freedom,

swimming through my veins.

We Were Always Free

My history is not slavery,

My history is the Shamans of the old earth,

the readers of the sun and the animals.

My history is bare-foot Kalahari-desert exploration,

a skin unafraid of the sun,

a skin which can withstand even the roughest conditions.

My history is sun-kissed cheeks and hands not lazy to work in the earth.

We ascended from a people who shut the crevice between two worlds,

with a void so big that you will be forced to renounce your 'color',

all in the name of power and economic freedom.

My people never were 'yellow', 'coloreds', 'basters', 'hotnots', 'meide',

We were always all beautiful-brown divine,

all bountiful hips and unapologetic hair,

pearly teeth with mouths wide enough to swallow our grief,

and a skin imbued with the song of the moon.

I am shedding myself from historical oppression,

and I become the Khoi-San gods:

I am Heitsi-eibib, here to collect the royalties of the past, readying for the redemption.

I am Coti, giving birth to enlightenment, in a world ignorant of the truth.

I am Tsui'goab, with rage rumbling inside, prophesying the fall of those who have denied us.

My people were always free.

I was always free.

We will forever stay free.

Wild Hive

My heart,

a wild hive,

you – the bees

honey dripping

from the mouth of my wounds

harvesting my joy

with patience

tasting the sweet ache of desire

suffering the sting

of love,

and love lost.

Echo's against the cliff

A cliff tears within me

when I cried to the mountains,

I was hoping your voice would come back to me,

searching,

answering,

like a homing pigeon through the wind,

but it's gone forever

who would have thought your silence would be as heavy as sorrow?

Elizabeth

Last night I dreamt every desire from my childhood

had washed up at the sea of remembrance.

I heard the call to come to that sacred place,

I stood waiting fixing my eyes on the horizon,

you appeared, gradually getting bigger.

You, with that determined stride

Coming to save me from my broken reality.

You stopped when you saw me,

and started waving at me,

you did not call to me,

and I did not run to you.

We understood the law of the invisible line now drawn between us,

one not being able to cross over to the other.

I did not call for you,

but my heart did,

as it always does, even now.

My chest -

a raucous concord of longing

a burning desire to touch your face once more.

We looked at each other and spoke

with only a glance,

with only one look,

like we had done so many times before.

In this space our words were meaningless

and goodbyes too permanent.

I understood.

You turned your back on this broken world,

moved with your distinctive, purposeful walk

towards,

then beyond the horizon of longing,

until you disappeared again.

On apples, and trees

The shifting winds perceived it was me,

as the call of chickadees surrounded you.

I was lifted from my afternoon nap,

under the apple tree.

I was lifted from my afternoon nap,

chirping chickadees harmonized with you.

The shifting winds had spotted and told on me,

on the hammock under the apple tree.

The chickadees song came to an end,

and the wind came to rest,

it was under this tree

where the apple

did not fall

far

from

the

tree.

Borrowed grief

I am meant to be brave,

I have stopped borrowing grief from the future yet to unfurl.

I heard that in high doses

grief can open the eyes of the understanding,

with symptoms of increased alertness to our fragile mortality,

an acute understanding of the feeling of gratitude,

a chronic pulsating need for purpose and meaning.

See,

I mourn everything.

The flesh of the peach I just bit into five minutes ago,

the way my laughter was without heaviness only a few years ago,

my childhood.

Joy is sneaky,

she seemingly finds a way to hide under the bed and surprise you,

like how finally oiling that one creaky door

floods you with accomplishment,

or how cooking with what's left in your fridge can make you smile.

It's a sunny day in otherwise cloudy Amsterdam,

joy is to be found, and lost, just to be found again.

There is a calling for me to be brave,

so I have stopped borrowing grief from echoes of my memory in waiting

I feel like I am going to be ok.

On the scent of dying

Of earth, tilling:

break the ground where the house of my childhood stood.

Break the branches from the tree of life.

Crack the window and let the light in.

A memory surfaces: what is a house without a mother?

Sound lingers.

The senses hold still.

This is the dry down,

when grief no longer calls but stays.

I raise my wrist to my nose.

I can't smell you anymore.

Let the trace of you remain,

on skin,

in air.

Do not thin.

Do not lift.

I fear what pain alchemizes,

loss into forgetting:

land,

childhood,

family.

The burial:

of identity,

of sonship.

Do not let me fade after you.

Gold

It is noontime,

and my affection for you is at its most tender.

As you lay your head on my chest,

petrichor rises from the soil of your skin.

I found gold within you,

peace within the pews of your perfection.

You file my fears under 'unwarranted',

turn around giving me a reassuring smile,

as if you did not just change my life.

did you know?

your eyes glisten with the vibrancy of my future,

I have waited for you:

in airports

at the foot of mountains

and in the shores of my fate

waiting for you was worth the weight

in gold -

I have found within you.

Tuesday journal entry

melted wax

lies at the front door

grains of dust collide with first light

morning

i drink honey with mine

some find it strange

sweet and milky

it hugs my hand warm

coffee

cold air whips

as my skin sticks to it

tongue to a freezer

bicycle

click click click

forgotten passwords

i laugh a little

maybe too loud

office

i lost 3.5cm

as i push feet out of shoes

i plop down

hand in phone

i fell asleep

couch

you, in the front room

few words

it's better

i say "hi mom"

you say "hi baby"

you kiss me

goodbyes

stay here with me

stay here please

Upington, 2001

school holidays are here, my cousin has come to visit

months before, excitement would rise from my belly like magma

i want to spend every waking moment with him

we watch 'Harriet the Spy',

so many times that we start to recite every single line

inspired us to spy on neighbors and run to the kitchen

to make tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches,

just as Harriet did.

It's a summer afternoon in Upington

the heat an animal, hunting

alert, waiting for you to turn your back

few places offer reprieve – here, in this small town

this hungry animal

devours the peculiar

here,

where imagination is water in shallow ponds

evaporating quickly under the scorching rays

under the Papaya tree in my grandmother's yard

we ate freedom like summer fruit

weaving worlds together

joy upon joy as offered sacrament

of tea and toasted cheese

of ghost stories

of special-rock-hunting-in-the-field-days

where highs and lows and which rock will hold your weight in the climb,

became second nature.

of days lived

with hands outstretched in the fields

holding on to the rock

of two cousins who raised one another.

A mother is a kitchen

In the crisp cool of morning

I see the breath of our love

billowing from moist lips

I remember

warm afternoons

rays of sun landing

onto wooden chopping boards

illuminating a thousand cuts

made before

you kneading dough

of love, rising

in the heat of your hands

kitchens turned graveyards

black burnt pieces

clinging to unwashed pans

cold and lifeless

when my warm lips

kissed your cold forehead

on that Tuesday afternoon

the sun low in the horizon

a thousand cuts

of letting go

of your hand

but never of you.