Something about survival
That holds love hostage
When love can not be kept locked up
She pleads for her own release tonight
To see the light of day.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Tag: poetry blog
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.
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.
Forgiveness
I scrub away your burden
Down the drain
Everything softens in the shower.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2015.
Published 5 March 2014
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.
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.
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.
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.
