There’s secrets we hide under this skin.
Swallowed tears and oceans. Chants and earthquakes.

Yet, the secrets I often find are in between breaths and prayer.
Alchemised in our folklore and decoded in our beads - transcended into patterned clothe - spread through our beliefs.

We are spells

carrying keys beneath these tongues that could unlock time and serenade the gates of heaven. Songs that make us meet the avatars that linger in our bones - wishing to dance their way into the days that we now breathe.

Our, history, lives in us. Heaving in the vernacular we almost forgot.

Our history, is being reborn in Shamanic spirits coloured in Indigos, browns and blues. We are Prophets and Holy Souls. Dreamers and See’ers. Amens and Ase O’s.

It finds us through our mothers’ hymns and fathers’ laughter. Hides in our grandmother’s bedtime stories. Is reborn in the waves that lick the shore.

We are the eclipse.
We are the shadow.
We, are the black hole.

I was first born a solar system.

Living in a realm where I wheezed stars and suns. My eyes, black holes to a new universe.
It was a time where planets burst from my belly and latched onto my ******* - no longer hiding in my vortex of a womb.

The world swung around my neck heavily. Steadily, I adorned my fate gracefully...

...because I was born second a mountain.
My hips creating hills and heaps while my tears birthed oceans. I carried the crescent moon in my left eye - Venus in my right.

And often times, I’d shape shift and kneel to the ground, grabbing the soil of the earth.
Its mud, dancing under my nails and knuckles. Its dust, smouldering the creases between my palms.
Sand, caressing and matching the tones of my skin. Accenting hues from the palette of eternal life.

My mouth, birthing spirits and spells. Souls - mining from my ribs.
My womb, carrying ancestors and avatars - Coloured girls glowing in browns, blacks, purples and blues.
Their nebula personifying secrets from Zion as they break through the realm between my legs.

As I continue to carry my message in the wind; breathing life into lifelessness;
narrating stories of hope in times of hopelessness; morphing my magic across the abyss.

I was born third a Nubian.
A Maasai, I am the one they call MAKEBA.

Walking these townships streets as though diamonds lay at my feet.
Gliding on gravel from the ghetto to Greece. Leaving behind a fragrance so sweet.

Blessing the unblessed even when left distressed. Honoring the feminine power that flows within me. The roaring lioness! Smell the audacity of my celestial essence. I am the first to bleed, but last to fall – the S forever embroidered on my breast.

For I am you and you are her and we are She! MAKEBA!

Inkosazana. The melanated fruit that you seek. You stare in disbelief at these words that I conceive.

Sheba!

Ke mang a tshwara thipa ka bogaleng? Ke mang afang botho mo batho ba hlokang motho? Ngubani le mbogodo elingabambeki?

Beka!

My eyes, carrying alchemy.
My smile, a treasury. My skin, reflecting the origin of humanity.

I am, MAKEBA

I want my love back.

I want my ghosts to possess my lungs - resuscitate my ancestors while I breath in laughter.

For the ball inside my throat to hurl fire - to make love to the sun
scare shadows
intimidate death and
offend darkworkers.

A love where God’s water breastfeeds me at the bottom of the ocean - baptising my blood and transforming my saliva into gold.

Love me. Want me. Find me.

Give, it, back.

I want my love back

A love where God’s water breastfeeds me at the bottom of the ocean - baptising my blood.

Transforming my saliva into gold.

A chaos has been birthed inside of me.

It’s Ghosts, playing hopscotch.
My Heart, fighting against lung.
The Blood, making out with startdust.

A destiny wishing to reform itself
trying to recognise its name
smile at its reflection.
A natural disaster beginning its annual cycle inside of me.

Inside of you.

Like how Summer recognises Autumn’s leaves,
it’s twiggy branches letting go of its maroon mascara.
Stripping itself bare of past fantasies and love.

An internal hazard that dances for the Gods inside of you.
The ones yet to be discovered.
The ones yet to be explored.

So, retract
unclip your wings and reopen your cave of comforting darkness so as to rediscover the light again.

Soon...
It’s soon...
You’re soon.

Soon, my love.

Your shadows clock in for their shift at 12 o’clock... at night

Hanging it’s cloak on your happiness and lying luxuriously on your chest. Their hours stealing your dreams and numbing them into painful memories.

We become a bath of obsession and depression
Our tears spelling out the words that our throats cannot read
We are an ocean of misled, overthought fantasies
A nation of unspoken miseries .

Our bones, rubbing against each other

Getting lost in the darkness of our humane cast
Trying to find themselves.
Itself.
Trying, to, rediscover the stories that make you one
Trying to align your purpose
But...
The shadows have won.

So you create a new self. A version that breathes in the heavy smoke that is your emotions.
A hemisphere where your shadows are your friends.
Buddies that allow for the dark half of your minds to dance in the abyss
Play in the dark
And whimper about the stories folded in your heart.

Sleep, my child.
Rest, my love.
Crumble, darling.
Be reborn, sweetheart.
Sleep,
Sleep.

I will whisper stories into your ear so potent with love, that you can taste them.

The same way you taste the colours that dance in the sky.

The same way you taste your dreams during your high.

The same way you ******* lips.
The lips that whisper stories in your ear...

I lay my scalp to rest.
The cushions below it comforting my thoughts and caressing my dreams.
The mattress allowing my guardians and demons to sweep away the dust between my ribs
the webs under my skin.

Home, is where my spirit sleeps.

Where my thoughts become a whimsical fantasy
Where my reality is engulfed within the galaxies

Home, is a place that I cannot see.

A foreign land that feels like my great grandmother's hugs and my mother's cries.
The sphere where my screams match the symphonies that echo through the thick breath of the unknown.
A place where my tears match the rumbles of Kwamata's abode.

A realm where I touch God,
where he kisses my cheeks and reorganises my destiny
through every snooze
every snore.

Home, is where I humbly die and rise.
Home, is where my colourful insides fly.
Home, is the sanctuary between my eyes.

We planted seeds today
Pulps filled with different ridges dusted with the earth's breath,
were planted.

Each earthy fetus protected by the palms of their alpha tripped off their fingertips and glided their way into the dimension that lies under our feet.
A dimension where our ancestors whisper in sacred tongues and where the other half of our trees play in the mud.

This, is where our spirits are born.
This, is where your training begins
little one
earthy one
mystic one
This, is where you begin.

Where the trees' veins inquisitively tap on your shell
poke at your lifeless liveliness
Where the ancestors rattle your cage with their hums
Guiding you to taste your own rhythm

This, is where your spirit buds.
...
We planted seeds today.

The pulps resting in the dimension below your skin,
below your heart.
A dimension where your thoughts gossip and where your ancestors sleep.

This, is where IT begins
This, is where it breathes
where it sees
gracious one
fleshy one
cosmic one
This, is where we bleed.

...

We planted seeds today.
We, planted OUR seeds today
OUR seeds were planted today
we...
WE, were planted...
Today.

I sip on my green tea
wishing for it to cleanse me.
Wishing for it, to cleanse out the oils and the misery I consume.
Wishing for it to break down my toxins.
Wishing for it ... to cleanse the sections of myself that even I cannot reach.

Green Tea

A substance that supposedly detoxes the belly, but not strong enough to detox the soul

Not strong enough to take away my shadows, my doubt, my ego or my woes.
A drink, not strong enough to hug my spirit at its loneliest hours.
Yet, I sip
.. praying the wet herbs that tickle my tongue shall unlock the gateway, or the path, or the door... to my soul.

So I sip...
And sip...
And sip...

Swallowing it’s brew...and my tears.

My heart is a dormant volcano
locking its luscious lava under hills and droplets of rock.

My heart is a dormant volcano

Wishing to cry out its passion down its temples
Unleash its fiery tone
Ooze out its love, wonder and adventure.

My heart...
A potion made with stardust, honey, magic and lilies
Creating a Utopia so sacred.. that it remains sealed until the right
...
fire, bubbles my molten caves to an unknown ecstasy.

My heart ... is a dormant volcano
Burying its crystals in a core SO deep, that the energy they possess makes people’s skin creep.
The anger in my veins, compressing my elements into jewels.
Stardust
Honey,
Magic
and Lilies too.

My heart is a dormant volcano
Chanting a call for my lost loves to find the fire ...
To bubble my concoction
And let me drip --
Pour, my love into your battlefield and protect your scars.

But...
My heart is a dormant volcano.
Wishing to find its...

Fire.