“What blinds me is not always visible”-Dandi

The eleventh of January 2013 it…

After having a revelation filled day yesterday, in protecting my heart I decided to lie to the man who pleaded for my presence and when I was ready to accompany him, he decided to leave all spaces in between our conversations vacant, with a single statement: “I can’t date you.”

“You can’t date me?”

So you wait for me to develop feelings for you then you run? uhmm honey…do you understand that my heart only has one pit stop?

Anyway so the revelation came after another, and i had to wear the amour so yesterday I lied to him by receprocating the statement… “Actually I can’t date you too”… and so the story goes…

Today the last hanging feather of the revelation overwhelms me as I realise that it’s nothing personal, he does this to every girl he meets…I hold back from all things sour and pretend like nothing just moved inside of me…

as I type this, I neatly fold all emotions and lay them in an abandoned cabinet safely displayed in the Friends Zone…

Bob Marley once said, “Only a coward awakens the love in a woman with no intention of loving him”

And in this war, this battleship needs no cowardice pilot…

However with all this said, The Love remains…

theferocity:

Edinburgh, August 2012

dynamicafrica:

MORNING SONG: Habib Koite and Bamada - Din Din Wo (Little Child)

dynamicafrica:

Brenda Fassie: Record Covers

“Ngeke unconfirmeh!!!!!!!!!”

Like rivers of tar that host tired tyres,

I am always there,

Air,

 Carrying your swift movements,

Shipments from one relation to the next,

Your abandoned nest,

My breasts,

Ready to nestle the emptiness of your emotional waves,

My thighs knew yours like unwashed motel sheets knew the newness of scents…

…I was sent to Stay.

Colour me freely,

Paint me green if you must,

For the luscious pastures of valleys hidden inside the treasures of my tongue,

Forbid me from feeling envious,

So spray the unseen colours of the rainbow on my stubby toes,

And watch me grow,

Into a million roadside curbs that house those with no home,

And turn cycles into sonnets,

For each line on my face is a poem,

Written in remembrance of my past selves,

If you may, make art out of my tears,

Etch out of newly cut timber my fears,

And burn the wood that chooses to remain,

At the altar,

For I am to marry the one who sees past the nails drilled into my palms,

And erases the knowing of a love outside the nature of his being…

Send me a butterfly with pink wings,

Tell it to land on my left shoulder and let its presence radiate my womanly glow,

Make use of the gentle kisses sown…

And the ginger scent of winter mornings that the crimson sky line has blown…

By virtue of the goodwill that is in your brush,

Colour my belly with the different shades of yellow…

For I can stomach the light to which my purpose was shown,

And by this alone,

Neither gluttony nor greed bares a face to my name…

So cease to entice my spirit with the glory of fame,

Instead let my children bare the roots and fruits from which I came.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds,

Find the solace of my solitude where poetry hides,

A warrior, whom in their weapon confide,

A woman who saw silver burn and liquefy into the very breast milk

That spills out of the mount Sinai that are her nipples….

So last year was the year where my entity was turned into a battlefield, I fought with everything and against everything.

The year started out fair, broke into it spirited(oblivious to the neuropsychosis that was taking place at the time) and hyphed…in a nutshell I had it all figured out. It took the last chills of the winter season for the veil to be removed from my eyes and for the drama to show me its true ugliness. I was faced with the option of continuing with the cold war, that turned everything around me into ice or to save I and I. And like any other living soul, I chose the latter because feeling was that important to me…

The year was not all bad as I saw Street Tribal grow into a beautiful infant child, nursed by me and my beloved friend turned sister turned soldier in war turned partner in crime Oralic(Boitsholo Bodibe). The baby is currently sleeping but I forsee thunder when she wakes, a storm wrapped around her arms because she is her to take back all that is owed to her.

Last year was trully the breaking of dawn, made friends, lost friends, made love to friends and strangers alike. Met Lovers and Lost loved ones, however the rollercoaster ride was all worth it, every tear, smile, tear and bond.

I also chose my destiny and am currently on that righteous path to attaining my paradise, Zion awaits her children.

To everyone who stuck with me through the war, we are forevers. To soldiers lost in the field, the fire will forever burn and for those met in the along the way, let eternity be our synonym for Realness.

I LOVE LIFE FOR THE LIFE FORCE LOVES ME!!

Praises to The God of Love…we are You and You are us…

“Jah will Protect me, the Lord will not forsake me, the Most high will not Let me suffer in the hands of the wicked”- Bounty Killer

It’s 2013 and we survived the apocolypse…

Now its time for all Street Troopers to Rise and move…pushing boundries!!

If I wasn’t too dirty for you, would you have told the indigo skies from the blue waters that are actually clear?

If I wasn’t that uncivilized memory of arched backs,

Bushmen hunting,

MC’s and their backpacks,

A tribe of insults burnt so as to resemble the night,

Lionesses purring,

Parched lawns and wire fences,

Would you have giving up on all pretences?

If I wasn’t that cracked mirror on your chest drawer,

That shadow you are always in a rush to witness,

The hundreds of sardines on Bree Street suffocated by each other’s presence, in a place where we all shouldn’t be in,

That bible collecting dust

Those military scripts you read, and read and read but the was no war that came with the revolution,

I mean surely the two are never mutually exclusive,

But we made soldiers out of care givers and care givers out of the things that mould us,

Gold rusts and bronze lusts on shimmering turkey thighs, roasted vegetables and those songs that the elders insist I sing to awaken spirits.

Would you come home?

If I remember the stars and write about them again,

How destiny is a dance between fate and chance,

How romance is a sickening aphrodisiac,

How Greek mythology is based on African history

How every time she throws the bones something moves inside of me,

How burping is a divine act among prophets,

How what I dream, frightens me most because it always proves to be realer than what I see,

How an army of men are praying on their knees while a congregation of priests are mid-night thieves,

Would you accept me for me?

If my pockets where filled with more money than ideas,

My heart with more stability than fears,

My smile more daggers than milk teeth,

My eyes more vision than prophecies,

My nails, more skin than dirt

If I lived more on this earth than inside of me,

If I wasn’t that loud remembrance of your sleepless nights in the ghetto,

That pap and milk dish throughout your childhood

Would you stop running?

If I wasn’t a science of untold mysteries,

From a bloodline of murdered witches,

Seeking justice,

Those old Converses, you’d love to wear… just one last time,

But are too torn to hold your feet,

So you keep them in your closet, knowing you will never wear them again.

If I didn’t wear my spirit in the form of mantra beads,

Chanted and danced to the beating of drums,

If I was more class than soil

If I didn’t demand spiritual Anarchy,

Against those who still choose to arrest God’s truth as their own

And those who are too foolish and blind to believe in the unseen,

If I wrote more poems with less substance to inspire but enough

Metaphors to resonate,

Like this one

Would you listen to me?

What do you know about scars that come alive at night?

…Scars that send your spirit into exile?

…Pus that floods your windows’ Nile?

Silence the last sane resort.

Beaded ankles and calluses,

Feet that beat the earth until everything underneath it is revealed.

When all coldness is thrown into the fire,

When there is no other place to hide,

Not scars that suggest the presence of death,

No!  the kind that will haunt you in your afterlife,

Visible only to those who believe in them,

The malicious kind, to tear joy into an anthology of wounds,

The lonesome moon,

The dark side,

Dead skin on breathing bodies,

An army of lonely.

Impatient scars that insist to rise with the sun,

Scars that smile at you, laugh with you,

Irremovable scabs that stab your insight,

Ugly truths.

Scars that will have you question tangible beauties,

Like Love,

The scent of fresh cut flowers

These scars are known by your ancestors

Hand gestures, these scars are known by the priest who baptized you

The cow that got slaughtered and the umbilical cord lost to new pavements…

These scars will have you hate the mirror,

Lemon trees,

Yellow like Red isn’t loud enough

These scars will have you bleed, repeatedly.

And no they are not old wounds

Supposedly healed,

They are scars…

…Dead.

Badges of honour, bravery, courage,

Remnants of bruises that prove life exists inside of you,

Scars that will have you praying with one eye open,

Scars that come alive at night,

40 cigarette buds on your window seal in one week,

Afraid to feel

These scars will leave you weak

Hiding in old chimneys,

Afraid of the ocean and the snakes that live in it,

These are the kind of scars that will have you spit, in front of your crush,

Unapologetically,

Because a lady or gentleman’s pain is more sophisticated than what these scars have turned you into,

An uncivilized battered soul that stings the universe with its menial existence,

These scars come alive and they will have you fishing for company in beer bottles,

Accumulating material wealth

They will leave you hungry

For more scars,

The blood of warm hearts,

These scars will save you from one war into another,

The primitive spine of a baboon,

These scars will have you hunt for nothing

Tiresome you will rest on a hard pillow next to lost causes

These scars are not your own,

Unaware of the loan,

You will recklessly wear them,

With a pride foreign to all things good

Your parents will never claim them back,

Nor will your grandmother with her vague memory of beautiful things black,

Your spirit will remain in exile,

You will stitch these scars onto your children’s necks as they leave your thighs and into their father’s hands,

You will command tissue oil to remove these scars,

You will pay good surgeons to add plastic where real has died

But until you realise that these scars where borrowed

You will not wake out of your sorrow.

BY GRATITUDE FISHER                                                                                                                                                   15/11/12

THE SHOW IS HAPPENING THIS FRIDAY AT WALL STREET CLUB IN TEMBISA

DOORS OPEN AT SIX

COVER CHARGE IS R30

21 PERFORMANCES: POETRY, HIPHOP AND DJS

PLEASE ALSO BRING NON-PERISHABLE GOODS AND OLD CLOTHES AND LETS DO IT FOR THE KIDS SO THAT THEY TOO CAN HAVE A DANDI CHRISTMAS!!

MY SET WILL BE AS FOLLOWS:

CONFESSIONS OF A SELF DESTRUCTIVE AMPHIBIAN

IT GROWS ON ACIDIC SOIL

HER DIVINITY MISUNDERSTOOD

A POEM FOR AFRICA

WORDSMITHS AND LOVEJONES

IT PROMISES TO BE DOPE SO YEAH…SEE YOU DEYAH!!

“PEACE IS FOUND WHERE THE ELEMENTS EXIST IN HARMONY” - GRATITUDE FISHER