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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.