She found the river
And left no footprints behind
He will have to find his own way
To the river.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Author: Nomzi Kumalo
Singer, Songwriter, Poet.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2008.
Winter turns
A crisp breeze of new love on its way enters the kitchen windows
Rustling handwritten notes along the wooden breakfast table
Winter turns to quietly summon all her workers once more
Without any reason.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
City trees know
Buildings stand as concrete as the cold truth
Revealing a day as empty as a new rubbish bin
Yet the trees seem to know what to do with this
This longing longing longing for the eternal light
Leaves now quivering in the chilled silver winds
Yes the city trees do what they are meant to do
Nothing more despite the facades of progress
They are not anxious about it, no not at all.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Over the Seas
The oceans swell
As tears become saltier with loss
And bodies crash behind wintry doors
Groping for any familiar textures of humanity
That these foreign lands begin to recall
For mothers and fathers who abandon understanding
Just to smell the soil of a better life.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Inside Autumn
Multicoloured leaves along the street in a hill
Wood soaked and sweetened by the rain falling
Merciful water dripping onto quiet pavements
Dribbling slippery down the tarred thirsty road
A neutral sky where the air harbours no pressure
The rooftops and local windows leaking domestic
An uninspired dog lays heavy by an entrance hall
When there is nothing to do is there nothing to do
Flattened tired carpets still pretend to be luxury
Inside wooden walls of the same old thing again
Sometimes the coffee steaming will hold comfort
One of those days without a name to label it by
Forgotten picture frames capture some yesterdays
Glossy managed smiles and gestures from parties
The trolls and magnets and broken love messages
Settled into grown up life and ways of escaping it
The stale kitchen mood meets a crisp autumn air
Spring long dead visits the city to play some tricks
Sunlight so mild giving agonizingly little warmth
To feed the endless day ahead and years of ordinary.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
Originally posted 10 October 2014
Falling for compassion
The price I paid
For any kind of love
To finally awaken
To the surface of my body
And where my mind had taken me
There is no greater peace of mind
Than falling for compassion.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Love until the end of time
When beauty no longer misleads us
When our bodies no longer separate us
When our achievements are forgotten
When all our mistakes have softened
When talking is no longer a commodity
When love abandons physical currency
When you have been there all along.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
Originally posted 8 December 2014.
Love has work to do
Something about survival
That holds love hostage
When love can not be kept locked up
She pleads for her own release tonight
To see the light of day.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
The Fabric of love
All the same
Sexual reflectors inform us
That we desperately seek love
So I sewed the hole in my pocket first
For what remains sacred
What keeps me warm
In my heart.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
That straightened Volvo life
That straightened Volvo life
With a boy and a girl and a dog
That I kept trying to make
Rejects me over and over again
Telling me to stop it
Stop lying to yourself
I apply for the umpteenth time
Embrace the struggle
To love.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Blue is the quietest colour
I can hardly breathe for the love
When light makes our skin so real
Scars and marks I won’t recognise
I have no want to join such details
Many tones of blue before dawn
The colouring of regret and hope
Blue ink drenched all the surfaces
To soften the stretch marks of life
Curling up into this our ordinary
I can now smell the quiet of you
Hearing that love can’t get closer
For love is sleeping outside of me
Your skin now glowing blue milk
I do forgive you, I do forgive you
I reach out to celebrate your body
Make you witness your choices.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
Originally posted 22 May 2014.
Summer break. Wishing you peace.
I am love
Listening to my heart
Honouring my life
I am love.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
After Hell
Brought to my knees
Yet I am still calling out an Earthly name
Whose claims of love I never believed
Even when he stood in the fire with me
Because there is not enough desire
No not in this world
To drink disappointment away
Devastated that you are always thirsty
As God and death wait patiently
For me to leap into love once more
Without a single promise
What is my name.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Forgiveness
I scrub away your burden
Down the drain
Everything softens in the shower.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Published 5 March 2014
Mad pleasures
The tender movement of goosebumps
To the winking awakening of my flesh
The bad itch of I will not surrender yet
Funny how itchy chooses a place
An urgent sensation I never invented
Oh the thrill of mad mad gratification
Madness out in a perfect sneeze yes
For the next irrational swelling.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Published 02.04.2014
Endless March
The sunlight hits the floors
Warming the cement walls
Perhaps it is cold in Paris too
And there is a price to pay
For hurting someone
There as well.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Poof goes my oppressive ego
I know what I am doing
Where I have no earth master
When I listen to how it is
Still and want for nothing
My sweet pace
My love.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Follow faster
Religion
In a rush
For my life
To work
The way you want
Or have seen
One lifetime
In a movie
Or the neighbours
Are the fittest
In the selfies
Last week
Head anywhere
Come on
Follow faster.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Pray for Spring
Warm gentle rays
Briefly unclench the concrete town
Winter draining into the swollen underearth
Whose bowels digest the dark of your discontent
But who am I to mistake your magnificence
Your cool air invigorating life’s purpose
Oh lift me up
Once more.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Alive
The day you realise that you are
A drop in the ocean
Against the pressure the urgency of the importance of your veins.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
You are her brother
She had lost her mother tongue
How he laughed too at her standing hair
That place where he felt stronger than her
So she sang empty reassuring words
So that he could sleep.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
When is Spring
Waiting for the bus to come
To take away these long arctic minutes
Oh sun have mercy
Reveal my forgiving heart.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
New winter believers
A Light feathery dance
Snowflakes settle neatly
And cold one after the other
White wilderness arouses suspicion
Life muffled to somewhere else.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Liquid sunshine
A hot bowl of butter nut soup
Liquid sunshine in her belly
Keeping her own codes of love
Summer is a small fortune away.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
The Sounds of love
Atoms alarms and lizard links
Sacred spirits with breathing hearts
When even grief itself is losing its grip
And humiliation has lost my name
Only time has all the time in the world
While my memories carve my place
Warnings may not sound like love
Love may sound like warnings.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
