Breaking the Silence (for 16 days)

On Sunday afternoons,
It was her father’s friend The family favourite;
“He’s so good with the children,” they said
The one who stole youth from the young.
And the cousin - the elder, boy, cousin
The one who liked her to play in his room
With the door closed.
No one noticed he was too old for “playing”

It was a Sunday night,
and he, a complete stranger to her.
She a young woman, alone in the night
Who carried within her, a world of possibilities
“What was she doing there anyway, what was she wearing?”
“Was she drunk?” the infamous they, the black hole, they would say
As they recount the story of what was taken from her,
On a library pavement,
Where I spent my childhood years drinking in the innocence,
of Judy Blume and Nancy Drew.

For her, it was Sunday mornings
In the house of God
Defiled by the devil himself,
Approved by the highest universal authority,
Protected by the pact of silence,
“This will be our little secret,”
“No one will believe you anyway.”
A little girl who had not been taught the language of emancipation,
still bound in her adulthood she cries;
“Mama, was I bad mama?”

Everyday for her, it was,
Her father,
Who took her as a wife At age 11,
Becoming the mother of three.
A mother to her own siblings
Before the blood and pubic hair of her womanhood
Had touched the fabric of her panties
As she lay in the big bed
And got to drive a big car at age 11

Breaking the silence
Shattering this non-reality
To see the scars inflicted by the cycle of abuse
That which cannot be seen when we silence the voices
In lies that we feed ourselves
To see that which does not always bear visible marks
As women walk alone in the dark

sometimes you have to start back at the beginning

the place of departure and the destination remain the same

apologies to margaret atwood for this blatant plagiary

You Begin
by Margaret Atwood

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.
Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.
This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.
Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.
This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.
It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

Welcome to our world Dylan James Robert

It doesn't get more engleeeeeeeeeeesh than this...

My first blood nephew welcome to the world! It's sad because my sis is so far from me... it's hard the older you get when all these "family" things start happening in the family and your are separated by hours by plane... and $$$ etc... I am sad I wont get to see this little guy growing up much.... he might even be jetting to Singapore soon to live there..but i am so glad he's in the world...

Vinnie 14/02/2007 -7/05/2007

Unfortunately, this is goodbye. The vet called me this morning, and he said to me that this little puppy is really suffering. I have seen this puppy suffering since Wednesday last week. He was almost emaciated, his body was in pain and he had literally been vomiting for 6 days and he was such a small little guy. After seeing the drip in his leg the pipe in his nose, and yesterday a blood transfusion, he's gone through so much. They said they have done everything they could possibly do for him and he is just not responding to the medication and they suggested he get put "to sleep".

Everything inside of me at this point wants to scream, I've come this far with him but I cannot possibly let this little guy suffer anymore, so I have agreed to this. I cannot keep him alive because I want him to be a part of mine and Ali's family.

Little Vinnie, it was a pleasure to know you for such a short time. Thank you for coming into my life, even in that short time you taught me something and I'm setting you free into that better place so that you dont have to suffer anymore.

Luckily Tears have offered to cover all the costs I have incurred which is really nice of them. I just thought I would mention that in this obituary.

salt..

yes i know i have repeatedly posted this poem of mine lot, but I haven't posted it in this blog yet and its really the theme of my life right now..i wrote it for a stranger...

salt
to a stranger...

Sitting here,
Im listening
it's my friend’s voice,
she’s telling me a story,
recounting a moment
so void of caring
and the tears start to fall.
I’m choked up,
face clenched into a fisted heart
I push hard to keep my eyes shut
but through the cracks they come pounding,
flooding, damn (these)walls,
and i think to myself,
stranger your story has touched me,
I wish my tears could reach you
so that you could taste the caring

Poetry; a weapon against mass conditioning

I am posting an portion of this here, its called Poetry is Dangerous....

"My body exists politically in a way I can not prevent. For a moment today, without even knowing it, driving away from campus in my little beetle, exhausted after a day of teaching, listening to Justin Timberlake on the radio, I ceased to be a person when a man I had never met looked straight through me and saw the violence in his own heart.".


to read more... go here Kazimali

Where The Rainbow Ends - Richard Rive

There's going to be a place, brother,
Where the world can sing all sorts of songs,
And we're going to sing together, brother,
You and I, though you're white, and I'm not.
It's going to be a sad song, brother,
Because we don't know the tune,
And it's a difficult tune to learn.
But we can learn, brother, you and I.
There's no such tune as a black tune.
There's no such tune as a white tune.
There's only music, brother,
And it's music we're going to sing
Where the rainbow ends.

Le Beach Nuno

Ho-ok, so its Saturday on Fishhoek beach.

Kids are building sandcastles and dashing in and out of waves, this is when Nuno and I hit the beach.

First Stop Nuno: She runs into the ocean, and amongst crashing waves, blatantly takes a dump in the water.... I closed my eyes playing ostrich, cringing, dying, can a sand dune please cover me right now. Typical Nuno, you bring a plastic bag to the beach and she doesn't shit. You forget to bring one and she does.. or shits where you can't get to it.

Next Stop: She bounds up to an fragile looking old woman, whose half hunched over... and stops dead just a few feet away from her, the look on her face... priceless. Nuno is such a tease.

Last Stop: A little kid in the water, probably no more than three years old. Nuno springboks into the water towards the kid. I am busy smsing Ally while out of the corner of my eye I see this. I promptly atart running after Nuno into the water clothes and all, which in hindsight was probably not such a good idea because the kid then started to plough his way through the water towards his dad screaming. Nuno who is now even more excited is still bounding towards the kid and is completely ignoring my desperate shouting (actually this is probably egging her on). It was horrific. Finally I get hold of her, I am almost up to my waist in water, I grab her by the collar and plop, my cellphone falls into the sea.

Lol! What a trip having a crazy dog.

Namhlanje (TODAY)

It’s the bent key,
in future's door
from where you standing,
on past’s floor.

It’s the hurt you live and relive again,
cried to many tears to alleviate this pain
Cried to many tears and from tears I refrain.

My need is freshly minted, newly cut,
the cold steel burns into this rut.
Take down this picture of me standing alone,
the print is all too familiar, its probably etched in stone.
The print leaves me hungry, Ethiopia to the bone.

Leave it on the heap, top of the rubble,
where I sat unpacking the lies,
I have no regrets, it was with humanness I tried
And with humanness, that it all died.

I am taking up new territory, I am marking it like a man
I am stabbing at this pattern
Like pre-1990 ANC ban.
I am becoming my own fan…