Love Poetry For Couple

Scared and frustrated, Ke t�ohile batsoali, What are they going to say, When I tell them? My wallet all wet, Containing my money And my bank account cards. My Canon camera�s Lens is blurry, My Motorola leaking ink From the inside. Ke tlo kopa thuso joang, Coz I am drowning Like a dying cat. My lip balm filled with water And my smart watch not working, Manaka a eona a eme tsi! Joalo ka pelo e sa pompeng mali. Metsi. Metsi. Metsi. When I thought of my drawings, I wanted to cry, Coz those were the best Pictures I had. Ha ke nahana ho qala qalong Mosebetsi o tloba mongata. Then I cried joalo ka lesea Straight after birth. Ahhhhhhh! Tsebo Makakole is a 17-year-old high-school student from Morija, Lesotho. He enjoys photography, filmmaking, hip-hop, soccer and writing poems and stories. He plans to pursue these interests and to become a professional, multi-disciplinary artist. Tsebo Makakole

whom he looked up to, if there were poets in his head who stirred him, people who sculpt morning out of night to make life sufferable, individuals who scrap memories of strife. That�s what I asked him. It was a deliberate question, for he had to know about the origin of beauty the way a priest knows the face of God, a star the sound of a nameless world that spins like a top in a vacuum as it floats by, a star bright in its capacity to light the dark. Beauty in forms of colour, summer ushered in by swallows darting, each trailing the ribbon of its tail behind. I said to him: everything is in a poet�s nib, you know� the love everyone dreams of at night when rain won�t wane, magic that makes what�s under a child�s bed disappear with morning, a morning that is sometimes grave with concern when the sound of no one breathing comes from an adjoining room. He looked up at me, making me wonder again whom he looked up to. That year blossoms invaded summer branches, reflected in a poem I read one...

You should never put words in sorrow's mouth but must acknowledge the ones already there, when it tells a street the secret of how far home is, the only certainty being fear, whose name and blood type are part of its life. Like when a cripple drags itself from a crowd, whispering sentences of broken limbs. Sorrow knows that. It has travelled the road to Emmaus; it is the dinghy drowning at the bottom of a sea, the Aegean, the Mediterranean; it has sailed into the devil�s face and looked back, unwilling to return. But it knows words, the feel of a heart in the mouth, when you have nowhere to go and have to still yourself against the words and worlds of others, the sorrow of midnight when a hospital bulb is your only light. Khotsofalang

For anthony, bob, claude, claudia, dennis, edward, geoffrey, kei, kwame, linton, lorna, malachi, marcus, mervyn, mutabaruka, olive, opal, pamela, peter, velma, winston�with appreciation. One day the stripe approached me, speaking creole, a scar scrawled across its face like the pain of a cotton field, on this island anchored by the weight of lives. We spoke with eyes, voices, song, too, and a sense of mirth, mirth that� colourful as we are, ate by razorblades of cane leaves, the dark of our parents' skins brought rage here from Africa in hurricane and storm boats, which makes us even�even though the sun is yellow again and this tavern at the edge of our overhanging coastline smiles at the world, the old as well as the new, the weighty, the light, the forgotten dead; though Bolt be running wild. Who knew we would meet among trees this island planted tight, its mangroves relaxing in the village shade like Africans at a gathering in Africa? Ziggy is not as tall as his dad, but the voc...

Throughout winter we looked forward to spring, and planned how we would enjoy it once it finally came round, till those men slaughtered the boy, which set us back more than a season, at least. They took what they could from what remained of his heart and split�just like that� though not before they had lifted their leg on the way out, and pissed like a dog on the inner walls of his heart, in both the atria and the ventricles, and stopped one eventual time at the door to spit on his ancestral name. �This poem is from Letter to country , Canopic Publishing , 2016 Motlatsi and mom in Qoaling in 1981

�for Phil Rice, 29 August 2012 It is certain earth is now sloping away from its magnetic angle� Oh, I know how this type of thought can restrain hope, hope that... off the asphalt a bird may fly away... fly again through air, and rejoice in such ability to move, nobly move again. A man of your age back from his trip� but I mean a man, not the boy, the one who grew up in you, a sudden gasp on top of his girl� the quick spill� what they thought to be love stamped on their foreheads, nothing is less sure you can�t again fly� fly again really high off this asphalt into those skies. This poem was the second time my friendship with Phil had 'handed' me a poem. The first time was when ' Janice's poem ' got written. Most of the time when I write a poem it's to confront a gnawing, a knowing of something I've always been aware of, but needed to experience again. And as Walcott said, "If you know what you are going to write when you're writing a poem, it's...

Jurassic memories found in an archeological dig I dug you up I dug you up I found a fracture of a jaw bone, the very keystone to the past and the future, I dug you up The clouds that cleared to show the moon looked like Africa the stars behind it represented all the capitol cities I�m pretty sure Lesotho shined brightest. Why wouldn�t it? It�s wrapped up so securely. Surrounded by it�s mother�s love Lesotho, my love, come nestle for a while Mother Africa will love you and dig you up. � http://liarliarlies.livejournal.com/33255.html The above link is where I originally got this poem. I don't know who wrote it. I wish I did. Please let me know who did, if you happen to know, so that I may credit the poet and beg them to let me keep it up, posted, here on Po�frika. Lesothosaurus footprints

Fresh from a forehead is flesh that feeds the assegai of nationhood; he will die by these arms we bear, that bit of foreignness next door; I will kill his tongue which has acquired the favour of our jobs. This lekoerekoere , this boy, this migrant who must die. Our impi at dawn puts a blaze on them to disable the movement of their thought. The ground under our feet holds us up and does nothing to stop us. The glass buildings of Johannesburg stare without a word. The boy looks at me, but I forgot all pity at home.The hole on his head is like it has been scooped out with a watermelon baller; blood dribbles down his face, leaves h�moglobin in his mouth with an aftertaste of iron. South Africans who fled apartheid into our countries and went home when it was finished are the bright green stuff found on copper that has started to corrode. The copper is their country. All afternoon we hacked, and put tyre necklaces on some and lit them with Lion safety matches. (18 April 2015)

When face-to-face we met in the backyard where mother used to work, washing your panties, I placed my left hand on your waist, the right one on your breast, felt you fighting not to say from the bottom of your throat as we kissed, Ek is lief vir jou, kaffir! The zebra is a fine beast. And this is not for nor against the moon which is really a stone of significance to no one. I was talking about the folly that governs hearts of men. And this is not about sex. God knows I�ve desired you for more than tits, more than the way you just lose it in broad daylight when I touch them, and you call me names but still open like a sugar-bush in flames. Pindrop Press, 2012

Reading at Lamontville High School in Durban in 2016

When time arrives, and life's alive, after toil has poured glycerine all over my black face, and I'm pocket-happier after weekend pay, with braaivleis that gives off incense, I wonder what to do with thoughts that bloom in me from love�s innocence. At night, when I walk down Kingsway's life of men, smelling of soap, the same blood that again and again boils, questions the hope of my name, because centuries have loved us hardest, the moon-cool and calm-eyed poise that claims the best in things. My inner sense is in total control of me. Street lamps hang fuchsia heads and I hear in that rhythm always others denying instinct, I hear it in the church�s roar, inside its deep, purple core; I hear in my head its brittle voice asking me to stay away from others, but never extinguishing my spark, this eagerness of body. I hear it on mouths of folks on the way to and from work, and on park benches at lunch when the sun bears down on us its power, and we drink warm water and laugh at ...

Cells along my gullet dance to James Brown, gulp the whisky I pour on them and fornicate. They�ve grown angrier with me over the weeks. And though I resist, they know my life is done. I�m bound by a power they have over me, it is their secret, the one ace up their sleeve. I get upset with them sometimes, and go: "I know you�re in there" . But they crank up their R&B and fornicate even more, though they are my cells and I am their kingdom. I live in spaces they fail to occupy. Needless to say, I�m also their tomb, poised at the edge of a life where time emerges and then dies. �Rethabile Masilo

People come with spades to the gathering, often another chapter in the life of someone; anything which gazes east-west is a rock to tell us of the peace of silence. There�s much magic in desiring peace (and obtaining it), as much as there is with love-making, the magic of dressing up, and dressing down, using toys or just kissing with the wild tongue or both. Even against poverty a head rears up, even against the promise of a broken life; it stands like a stretched arm holding a 10-pound stone saying good luck at daunting me next time; saying... come, I want to tell you about my little country, our kingdom. It started with the magnet used by our fore-parents to pull us out of rotting days which in secret they put here� touches his heart � under our name, like corpses in a churchyard beneath the centuries-old soil of our people. Bushels and bushels of blood-splashed bodies waiting to be stuffed into the waiting earth: you will just have to accept that this country is a tomb. But come, t...

     �for my brother, Khotsofalang Memory lifts its veil, everybody calls you, but no appearance. Once again I recall walking nights with you, touching walls toward a light of home�s distance lit for those still outside, till that night became another day. I remember ten childhood commandments, how absent loves have to be watered and fed with half the force of touch and light and tongue, and half with a winter of wild surmise. Today still the quiet night brings images of walking toward that hill of home, using darkness as a guide there. Then one morning you were gone, on one day that took you away, your stature, the quiet non-form of your build�for all was you� none of us knew what was coming despite what you embody today. What we had not realised was that there was no ram tied to our Abraham shrub. Thou shalt not awake after dying, thou shalt be willing to refuse refuge in the arms of their Lord. You left Lesotho the year of your eighteen years and we closed ou...

Souls are squeezed from moss-free rock, and men from souls. You (to whom I wish a turquoise sky That beguiles some who die Onto a cloud to lay their head) Are not made of chalk. So what if the boy takes this room The way he does, wearing your poise Like a model on a dais? We will have lived fast and strong You & I, from our past so long, Into this grave goodbye. Pindrop Press , 2012

They�ve covered miles of terrain between Selma and Montgomery, walking in an exodus from fire that burns us. It is like there will be no other chance for them to walk again, bear down on the doors of town hall positioned between phallic pillars, as the heat of the sun fails to deliver what suns are meant to share, behind the back of the march, now out of Alabama and onward unto Tennessee and beyond to the Carolinas�a whole world walks with them, bundled in wishes and demands they carry on their shoulders, till at last they climb the stairs and drop their concerns at the door. For dogs and boots have no way of stopping that kind of gift, the diversity in their one face, not hoses and not even knuckles or spit can change anything. And since that door is locked, they make a gate into the next century. The rest of the story is what would finally unfold. Canopic Publishing, 2016

As evening settles its dark wing on us we lie inside another night till even that night has nothing to say to us, till the crickets are quiet outside and bats are out, piercing night with their radar. Till there is no sound other than that of hooves as the devil goes by, on an evening stroll with his family. This happens night after night in these suburbs where evil likes to walk. I live in Qoaling. It is my home. One night the devil and his family didn't clop by as usual, but smashed our door down and trotted in, pierced Motlatsi�s lung with a horn, ransacked the whole house looking for Ben, and finally left without him. In the morning the smell of sulphur still hung everywhere in the air, inside the rooms. Anybody can raise hell, where's the one who can also raise the dead? �from " Waslap ", The Onslaught Press , 2015 Motlatsi and his grandmother, our mother Tebello