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.
Tag: love
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Small city rain
Beautiful cool sticky city rain
One appreciates after sickness
Or a strange kind of love affair
Or waking in a different home
Pavements rinsed of yesterday
And the concrete eventually sighs, relief
For a weight has finally left my chest
Into the sweet grey merciful day
Tears that stream towards their place
Burning to return the love and move
Move to where the ocean curves.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
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.
A Supernatural kiss
Suddenly you moved, you were kissing me
As though the earth were some other planet
Where the hormones had lost all composure
And the reason for that was in the beginning
I could not remember neither of our names
Nor could I tell that we were both human
Whether we had legs arms wings and tails
I could have fallen a billion kilometres up
I did not care that you had speech or song
I had one breath to sum up your deportment
And even forgot my eyes were there to see
We could have drowned at the ocean floors
Somehow I understood to preserve my form
So drenched in a lover’s design ahead of me
Dismissed that that was the love of all the time
I smiled in despair and warmth and glowing.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
A Human encounter
As though I am built of some other material
That neither you nor I can make out
Whether you are shapeshifting or maybe I
Beautiful warm burgundy animal blood
Humping thumping breathing organs
Fingerprint all my genes awake
Ancient codes in each and every cell
Popping flesh bubbles and children unborn
It’s my turn it’s my turn it’s my turn it’s mine
Survival in the love and war of the breeders
Horniness half hysterical on a cliff edge
Commanding a thousand valleys a thousand streams
Hot savage bliss in the climax to live on
Significant insignificance as we bow our heads
To surrender to such violence in rebirth.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
POET
I can write, sing, paint etc. I am one of those people who love so may different subjects. But something changed, drastically. It began the day that I stopped pretending; when one by one I removed the toxins, the excuses and the lies that I told myself. All the noise.
I had buried my dreams so deep inside of me that life eventually shook me so hard, to such an extent that I ended up in rehab. Part of my journey of healing required that I share my inner world with you. I committed to writing a poem each Monday and sharing it with you. This practice became my way of opening my heart and remembering the way to my dreams. And that is where my musical journey began.
Anyhow, you will find selected poems that I have written between 2014 – 2017, a lot of which are a work in progress towards my poetry book. Currently, my focus is on my music and I am trusting that process. When it comes to my poems, I will let you know as soon as my book is out one day because this is how the magic began. In the meantime, please feel free to read my poems, listen to my music or come to my concerts. Discover what poetry is for you. For me, each poem and song that I write is a plea for love in this world.
I believe that silence is golden. I believe that most answers lie in nature, slowing down. I believe in love. And deep down inside, we know who we are.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
