Love Poetry For Couple

My father was born the same year as Vonani�s, and died a few years after his: old age? Diabetes? The weight of a heart swollen from atrocities. Their blackness is the skin of an encyclop�dia to the continent. They speak about us when the sky throws boulders in our path, and we duck and seek a means of cracking those impenitent stones. Our mothers live there with them, even as they remain here breastfeeding the unfortunate of the world, the luckless who populate the streets of history. How to be men is how to love. The day I read Vonani�s book of longer poems under my breath as I staggered home was a day of miracles. I put its pages in front of me and went from La D�fense to Porte Maillot without an accident, without some driver swerving to avoid me and yelling fils de pute! to the cold shoulder of my ears. I flew from Paris to Polokwane that evening, aware of the scent of home, aware this was my chance at cutting the long goodbye, and was whisked off, when I land...

the name descended when you came so I would be able to give it to you with all the lives in you, without knowing what poems your head knows by name, or namesake, or nickname, above a rise of the churchyard where I will utter your name. You are the one on whose head that name will hang, a name in which I am well pleased. I know it won't be the same as what the locket on your neck contains, far from eyes but dangling near the heart beyond any number of doubts that are in this place. Because in mystery it comes, you see, one length of time that separates and then nothing, a meal that arrives with all the grains of its salt in place, hours before the first light born to dawn. Its sound gnaws me today, this which will not be a word by which you are designated, but instead the sweat of love placed in you, and more: the joy of naming you. One wants to say: this will hurt, beware� yet it must be done: I must excavate you to find you. It will not be like pulling a dove out of a hat to pleas...

The kingdom is packed, and there is no more room for doubt. And so you go, you pick yourself up like a hoe and walk the few blocks to the booth to try and look after your crops; and come out. When you do, after the holy duty has been done, you sit outside a bit with the smile of a high moon curving up your face, a feeling you will keep in one of the pockets of your depth where the mind designs the future of children, one that none can know, like a lucky penny they will one day find as they turn old clothes inside out to see if they're worth keeping, whether they need to be washed, ironed and starched, or thrown onto the big heap of history with the rest. You are giddy, warm inside, during this midst of the harshest winter of time. Nothing will move you from that season you are holding, for it is your summer of 69. You have carried your child, clinging to you, with long strides, to the nearest clinic, the way you will bear today�s deed for the rest of time. A ballot means so much mo...

You can't run away from yourself �Bob Marley What she is singing I don't know, on a street so long, so daft, like a passage with tall walls�no one knows what her song means, and we show no interest in it� yet with her small voice of children she sings the song of a hymn. Why are you singing this? I ask. She looks at me and sings about my clothes, the look on my face and the climate that is getting ready to crash upon us, and goes on about my vehicle and the house I live in; when I look up, the answer from the sky is tears of the kind she has been singing about, and so we run everywhere, every woman, child and man, run away, like one enormous bang, from the sound of her song. At the Chat Noir Photo by Sabine Dundure

The line is long; in it people have been here waiting behind an old man who arrived before everyone, his sponge mattress still flattened near the door— a door like no other. Nothing is new, a snake is long, as when South Africa queued to quell itself those many years ago, waited to cut its own head off with a panga for the first time after years and years of venom, not knowing that its head will sprout back each time more determined than ever. Though it is cold out here at this time of the year you do not care at all� and maybe it is all the better because no one will go to no beach, to no picnic in the park, but will be here standing in unison with their bredren before this entr�e, which is like no other, with their minds all made about which part of the snake to cut and remove. On this day in 1806, a line extended from this booth to every other end of town, and Lincoln was elected. Do you feel like an extension of those four hundred and twelve score years and four...

In the afternoon I gather fruit that drops from our tree; the peach I pick for dad breaks in my hand and bleeds over my fingers because it�s ripe and sallow, like bushman skin under the sun of Taung. I pluck one for mum from a low-hanging branch, and put it in a different basket, for it�s still firm. I�ll put it in a bowl on the kitchen table and watch as it ripens. Siblings fall from other trees that a breeze stirs: this weekend we�re having a reunion. Cousins too, their apricots and prunes and marete-a-makula touch and kiss as I carry the heavy baskets to the house, after which I proceed to shave and shower, put on a clean shirt. There are friends already in the house, from Ha-T�iu outside town, and from as far as Bloemfontein. I knot my tie, fix my hair with a �fro comb dad never let us use. The mirror smiles. I rub my eyes, dad is staring back at me. Mum & Dad Poem from ' Letter to country ' Canopic Publishing, 2016

They inhabit dreams, at night always and on into day, have severed their cord with earth, the need for people, preferring to drift alone. Sunlight avoids their faces. Something deep-intense hangs above their heads to stir their senses, but there�s no reaction when their knees are knocked; they wander in themselves; walk where the rush goes that drives their lives; and they have broken the record of age like old timers under a village tree. Outside is nature, forested, sap-ful, black in its posture. Horny fish swim up a brook as kids in water, here, outside; the walls are painted with fornication, which is the religion, our eyeful is not yet blas�, wind flies lovebirds from bush to bush. Inside� no craft: they prefer the life the coloniser made, and left. They, dead inside, are the motherfuckers of the world. Rethabile Masilo�s poetry wanders across continents from Lesotho in southern Africa to America to Europe to elsewhere. It is restless, seeking the meaning of his ties to kin and ho...

�after Albert Goldbarth This sex shop enjoys visits to Bangkok in Thailand / This sex shop is successful because it has licked all the competition / This sex shop sells crotch-less chastity belts / Everyone comes here / This sex shop goes through a lot of mops / If you come upon anyone you know here you should wipe �em off / They sell a gun-shaped dildo here dubbed �The Sex Pistol� / This sex shop hates every ��ism�, except �jism� / This sex shop grows its own rubber trees / This sex shop pierces women�s lips and men�s heads / This sex shop showed the Goldbergs how to make whoopee / This sex shop isn�t in The Encyclop�dia of Sex; the Encyclop�dia of Sex is in this sex shop / This sex shop isn�t right up anyone�s alley. It�s up yours / The red carpet leading to this sex shop is a tongue / The Kama Sutra is dedicated to this sex shop / This sex shop has a salesman named Rocco / I saw Adam and Eve browsing in this sex shop / This sex shop does not have a single die-hard customer / This se...

1. Each time I listen to your music I can�t help wondering if you�re at the cutting edge of your own style, or if your music does subscribe to a specific genre with which I�m not (yet) very familiar. Can you say something about that? I subscribe to different genres of music and the spoken word and each one has an impact on my music and pieces. I create my music based on the timelessness of the message, the harmony that bonds it to the melody that speaks directly to the conscience. What to call that fusion is also beyond my grasp at the moment. 2. How do you compose a song? Is the experience different every time, or is there a well-honed, well-oiled procedure? I never really set out to compose a song or a poem for that matter. There always has to be an occurrence that sparks the need to put pen to paper. This usually happens when I find myself emotionally attached to the event so much that I am rendered speechless, save to write it down. 3. Your tunes, Eseng ka rona and Set�oana, have a...

I am a black woman with straight hair trying, I am my brother�s sister with a fist up. He is my brother with his fro down; the only ones in this room of the world with regret? I will not forget how our mother pulled a heated iron comb through her hair, taking out the kinks that used to adorn heads of queens and kings, with the hope of ironing out her life. I am a sister with straight hair trying to survive. My father ran the hundred meters and was first, he picked the shotput of his life in his hands, like a pumpkin, and lifted it to his shoulder, all the while saying nothing. That night we would eat. I�m a black woman with straight hair trying. He never said anything when the Englishman looked down on him on the street or at work, he would type letters, write articles for the office and classify them in the right places, as all the time he swallowed his bile to place later at the bottom of the stack but in a separate file. My siblings have kinks in their hair, hard...

�after e.e. cummings I like four-five like he is nobody, it isn't quite new a thing; like as in why the way his necktie hangs; O half-mast in a pair of pants at the memorial of a soldier, and to a world that is of girls, world of boys, small-hand trick to shock unspeakable face addressing the when of our world with a what in the lumps of his duds� the unbelievable warts of it all, of slow horror coming from the sea, photo of despair showing who you know, the oddity of tweeted speeches even as his base comes over in the flesh chanting: four, maybe more. I like four-five. I like his hows. And, possibly, I like the thought of y'all collectively with friends against why under him so very few.

1866. Who can't like the way Courbet painted women? Jo on the bed with her head thrown back, as Gustave fiddles with brush and palette. That is how it ought to be, for heaven told us to call the sun when in trouble, call the wind, raise rivers off their floors. But is this iron lung mine? Plastic heart mine? My face can no longer be stretched. Am I wearing plastic boobs or a rubber crotch? High over mountains, above a hawk that stares with beady eye, above the stratosphere and beyond, no distinct air can breathe. The ozone layer has even fashioned a funnel to shoo shit out; for the world is its own prosthesis. Otherwise breathe under an arm the aromatics of life's smell�for Courbet's painting is on the wall of my room, inside a frame carved from the bark of a tree. This poem is from the book Waslap (2015). It is hardly fair that we have just this month discovered the real name of the lady whom Gustave Courbet painted in 1866. I don't care... I called her Jo because wo...

solitude was not what I aspired to, living a chemical life just the two of us, or with one-and-a-half children as Sunday parents, our staff having left lunch ready on the table, spoons, forks, knives, to go to their lives. I walk on marble, and wear thick fur, not knowing any more what it's all for. Pindrop Press 2012

When his voice spoke out we knew it and shared it quietly in our homes, it sent birds off into a liberty we'd sought, shook us and made more sense than any bullet could. A shipment of Negroes left the shore into the world, its face the Sirige masks of far cotton fields. From floor to roof his tap root fills my room. Bush lines crease its face, Xhosa hair dots its head. The first time I thought it was a mistake� this ideal he was prepared to die for, but it was there in his voice, joined by others on the island a stone's throw from The Cape of Good Hope. At night when the wind is still you can still hear the island whisper in nomine Patris et Fillii et Spiritus Sancti. Until it quiets down and we go back to work in the morning and return to our shacks in the evening. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

I have asked my siblings to help me shift the furniture against the walls into an arena, to make more room, her madonna heart is within that room, but there is not only her in there, sitting with that long smile. An angel flies in on one wing: now there's a mockery of life, for there is no uncertainty in the way we acknowledge a loss. She knows the truth behind the world, the surprises it peddles in darkness. In my own room I put my belongings together, for I must be on my way in order to be back. She's in there, now, while night touches itself, its fingers slow and lingering. She waits until her boy comes in and floats to her in that pernicious room, on the morning of which she'll pick her things and pack, in order to come back another day, and wait for night that starts to arrive when she leaves, and the boy flies away. The Onslaught Press 2015

Silences fill the air. The silence of a jobless face. That of wings as a bird flies off with a darner in its beak, and in the mind's eye the darner flees. Things that are silent require colour, to feel and be seen again; the sound an artist sees with her hands. On this tarred road that feeds the city of Gary, Indiana, only burnt-out cars remain of the riot for freedoms (that are now coming). A silence holds the street with an afro and its white teeth of dissidence or innocence, depending on which side one is. A woman hurries home with colours of a hoopoe in a bag. Red and dark green stalks sticking in the heat. Sacks of potatoes and carrots at our feet. We dance, never knowing what it is they seek who, every time we gather, come to disperse us, the grand silence being of course the first time any body was able to walk in reverse. �from "Things that are silent", Pindrop Press , 2012 Michael Jackson

We are alone again tonight (she said) , despite how people stand with us or stand together apart. There is no sense we seek to make of old events. Things are what they are. Life was careless with our condition. Though sleep sends old men up the stairs in a storm to their room & they fall, flail, feel the devil on their legs, I am happy that for now, under our shelter, you are with me�even if your voice gets lost among stars in the galaxy outside. Can you hear me now? (he said). Tokoloho is in dad's arms. Mbera (nickname) is in the black-arm, red-front sweater

Suddenly I realised That my phone was more Than a calling tool All my lifetime memories were in there My beloved earphones That secured every beat of my life The clinging sound of the rands and nairas Echoed in my head Thinking if I could make it home tonight But I lost my major key The one that opens closed doors Then it struck me that my lipstick Enlightened and brightened my lips A spark and some moisture Enough to give someone a kiss My heart sank when I only Found one piece of my favourite shades Realising that I could no longer flex And that I lost all my fleek The damp pages of my visa Made me feel so helpless How would I reach my destinations? Without my passport? Bonolo �Bonita� Makhooane is a 15-year-old originally from Khubetsoana in Maseru, Lesotho. She is currently a student at Morija Girls� High School. Bonolo enjoys playing basketball, dancing and listening to music. She hopes to one day work as a professional lawyer. Bonolo Makhooane

If only I had known The bracelet was her last Word to me If only I had known That it spoke Of joy and forgiveness The letter seemed normal I didn�t know that those words Were coming from deep Within her heart Her picture showed a true Reflection of life A song came into my mind A song was expressed as A sacrifice unto God A scripture that said �The Lord is my shepherd� Kept her going It gave her strength And when I saw her rising up It was then that I knew God gives strength To the weak When I saw her tears And when I saw her smile I remembered the life We used to live If only I had known I would have been heard when I said She is a legend to me Eketsang �Hakelar� T�oaeli is a 15-year-old originally from Quthing, Lesotho. She is currently studying at Morija Girls� High School. Eketsang enjoys writing stories and poems, telling jokes and getting involved in community work. She hopes to pursue her poetry and to work as a doctor. Eketsang T�oaeli

I have to tell you, the voice of God, if you really want to know, is Aretha Franklin . � Marianne Faithfull The power that lives in her voice has driven our freedom, power made with sound, with a resonance getting closer but never completely overwhelming, apart from the awareness of how it is able to, like the deep-throated purr of a veldt cat pawing at something near the centre, the way the pour of rain hits tin roofs of houses near the bitter end of town, and, grows as it approaches, held at bay by an invisible baton of physics while the master conductor of a god spares us the unknown. A choir, though robed in the colours of loss, lifts everybody and with lilting tone keeps them there. Aretha sang to the world like a chorale throughout, from season to season, from childhood to the edges of reason, till abruptly from that source one day came no more warmth, of the kind a soothing sound copies from nature; what a baby hears for nine months until in birth it has to come and face the wor...