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.
Author: Nomzi Kumalo
I want to start over
Without any fear
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2008.
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.
Winter thrills
Inside the belly of the dark city
She sprinted into the wet icy night
Until her throat and chest burned
To catch the warm fire of life.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Will you put down your weapon first
She winces as he mashes the food on his plate
Salty gravy oozing between his dark fingers
She wonders how to turn this into a documentary
And misses the tender textures of love.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
We grow up landless
I finally placed my mat upon the ground
And set my feet at the tip of its tongue to ask you
Who keeps telling you that my happiness threatens your own
When love is here without favourable position
It was here before any land on earth was ever promised
And it will be here long after.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Jealousy teach her something
Jealousy teach her something beyond entertainment
Tell her to close her legs for he boasts about his latest purchase
But mine is better have you not seen
She feels no pain
He says.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Not enough words for lost
The future is growing up landless lawless
Another man reads his good book in the dark
She clings to her cold creams for dear life
Neither will say I love you first.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Nothing like the wind of truth
In the season of black confetti skies
He is still playing the redeemer
And she dances around that song
While she can still skip the adverts
But for how long.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Love’s location
The weight of your mistakes
Was so heavy inside my body
Almost too dense to contain
So love left to find love again
But love was waiting for time.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
International love
You tell me how much money he makes
When I am asking you about his character
His passport holds no currency in my heart.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
Menstruation
Nights when I watch the hours turn
As shadows struggle with the moon’s cause
And just after the two longest minutes have passed
While my temple of love clings still to my heavy heart
I birth the loss of you and the ill you tried to burden me with
Because it is very human to be human
And pride comes before a fall.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
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.
A Poem’s worth
Each poem is a tiny surrender
A peace offering to you human
Something to slow me down
Long enough to remember you
Long enough to remember me
Home where we know that song.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
A Date
Fumbling through your unfamiliar rituals
For things you two would never honour
How could society leave you alone like this.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
The Sun still shines out there
Arm in arm in brown leather shoes
Strolling under misty autumn skies
Keeping to the mild golden pathways
Only the forgiving day demands of us.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
The Blue in Monday
The air has not moved since last night
There does not seem to be enough milk
In a fridge of drab leftovers and cold
To soothe a spoilt dull and overfed ego.
Surviving the borders
The salmon river moves this way
To finally meet the sea swirling
Without nothing enough to say
About what lies beyond the fjord
And lands rearranging regardless
Of how many die for paradise
To be in charge of something
Anything.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
