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.
Tag: What Are You Waiting For
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.
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.
A Place called young
I do not want to sleep
Miss anything tonight
And join Monday world.
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.
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.
Pity party
So then I repeat my disasters
Swap their miserable positions
And frame every single misery
As though each is honourable
Nail them fast to the afternoon
They protect the other reasons
Tiring each other out once more
But oh so familiar and oh so safe.
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.
Migraine
Persistent afternoon pressure
Tears gathering and clinging
Consistent knotted thoughts
Trapped squeezing days until
Liquid relief sweetly bursts
Salty drops of unpunish me.
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.
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, 2014.
Bliss
Without animosity
Without complexity
Without anxiety
Without possession
Without pressure
Without desire
Without time.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
Insomnia
Up late at night
A strange animal
That has lost its wings.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
What’s the currency of hurt?
If we could see the evidence
I promised I would not adorn it
Or put it in a jar or many jars
And then start comparing jars
And then selling jars of hurt.
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.
Mysterious attachments
Where do I push the hurt to
Where can I place it without it leaking
And stay there where I put it
Or will it travel back to its original place
What is its shape, size and colour
I promise I will not adorn it.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
Cold feet
And so I have spoken too soon
Your pressures in the sunlight
Long weekends overexposed
Arctic water drops from your hair
A dark rock eclipsing the sea
You insist on what you know
How do I move a stranded whale
I think you must keep your place.
Copyright © Nomzi Kumalo, 2014.
