“Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul.”
Alice Walker.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2018.
Tag: life
Rivers
Spring’s bittersweet tears
For life was never more with us
Than when we bathed in mercy.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2017.
How to remove the dread from the locks.
I used to dread the dreadlock until I let my locks, my hair grow out on its own. So that I can let you know that I too am love. Be gentle with yourself. There is courage and freedom and inner peace to be gained from this.
Dreadlocking
Forests of dark coily hair jerseyed
Into the fabric of my immigrant life
Understanding what is my ground
Something that’s not yours to name.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
“Be careful of your thoughts, for your thoughts become your words. Be careful of your words, for your words become your actions. Be careful of your actions, for your actions become your habits. Be careful of your habits, for your habits become your character. Be careful of your character, for your character becomes your destiny.” Ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu.
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.
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.
I am love
Listening to my heart
Honouring my life
I am 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dreadlocking
Forests of dark coily hair jerseyed
Into the fabric of my immigrant life
Understanding what is my ground
Something that’s not yours to name.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
Reincarnation
How many keep my soul
I swear I hear their sum
In one child’s screeching
That torturous life signal
An unmistakable pitch.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Happy unrandomly
When I see that it is all inevitable
Good and rotten interchangeable
Trip up switch beliefs insane intangible
All the humming room in between undeniable
And then my body warms uncerebral
A weight off my shoulders and mandible
Life is certainly unpredictable
I am no longer my own obstacle.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
