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.
Author: Nomzi Kumalo
Singer, Songwriter, Poet.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2008.
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.
Season of hardening
The loss of you sits perfectly
In the season of hardening
Learning what patience governs
The rhythm before I met you
For my life is finally mine.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
Age is love
Into the long invisible road ahead
Solitude and a long distance heart
I am here and you are by my side
Exactly where we are meant to be
Timing turned out perfect after all.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
Night traveling
Pillows and sheets quietly left behind
When most others sleep soft unevenly
Now expanding into fleeting inventions
Spinal breathing into silent electric fields
Life beyond the weight of consequence
Escaping the battleground of the souls
Gatherings in the endless dream streams
Briefly united through the darkest hours
Beyond undiscovered universal systems
Where time becomes even more elastic
Making seconds and years and centuries
Movie shaking the living and the beyond
To belong to places that always existed
Nothing will appear intangible over there
Repeating visits retracing ourselves again
And finally waking up to our personalities
Faintly remembering language and duty
Locating the angles of another new day.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
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.
Golden tickets
I love your brown colour
That shade on your legs
She said casually one day
As though talking paint
To enhance her chances
Of better love getting.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
Kitchen in my religion
Hands deep in the communal water
Love, the kitchen cupboards, dishes
Piled up again to live out my religion
My feet and my heart, compassion
How comforting the steaming kettle
Whistling my life pressures away
Naked before all of my confessions
I now wipe the table clear of dirt
Breathe hymns into the soft season.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
Sugar love
A slice of cake so sweet it burns
That chocolate rush pop thrill
Smooshed into a vanilla ice cream cool.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
Schizophrenic times
We cross giant earth bridges
For life was never this divine
Never this wary of sacrifice
These edgy and neurotic soils
Each suspicion hidden in things
Unforgiven.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
Utopia
Bleaching life right out into oblivion
They touch as if they will never leave each other clean
He has a younger woman now and again, immigrant
Double lives
Utopia.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
Treasures overlooked
Itchy ears as they speak of you back home
When you have wandered far enough to miss
Worms snuggling and turning the wet earth
Mysterious signals within the simple duties.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
