This waiting room is painted of pain,
featuring faces with mouths down-turned,
impatience taking up these empty seats,
of family members already lost,
we feel like the least loved
in the mighty grasps of almighty fate's
crushing hands,
we feel like the last patients
to be visited during the night shifts,
by nurses and doctors,
the times of day when the most dust
is swept back to the humble soil
by an unseen, yet not-so-invisible bashing broom.
the old fan - barely hanging -
is closing in full circle,
a whole life lived.
dull curtains, some unhooked and five minutes to falling,
alongside the walls' stripes
designed with a print of doctors' usual words,
"I'm so sorry for your loss."  

If life truly begins at forty,
then hers ended at the starting line.
this would be a misplaced and mixed metaphor
if it weren't for olympics silently running in the background on the tv
reminds me of my mute cries, surprised eyes bulging, gaping mouths with no sound.

It ought to be a preventative measure; just a routine operation
a possibly cancerous lump.
I am flipping aimlessly through these magazine pages,
each catching a tear-drop for the dog-ears
(whoever reads them next will turn the pages over better).
Some puzzled maze pieces fall out of a box,
my baby cousin tries to gather the cardboard paper of a family tree picture,
but the least important twigs are lost, and the last friendly branch found missing.
The many portraits that make up the landscape go away from time to time.
It was just a little, smallish lump.
these news are hard to swallow.
my eyes are peeling onions.
my throat is winter-hands dry.
mum says she saw her the most alive
a few odd minutes before time clocked aunt out.
Grandma's sister blames herself for suggesting, advising, and in retrospect putting "pressure".
neutral colours ***** the Scrubs' floors,
hypothermia lurking in the corridors,
but the coke from the vending machine is medicine lukewarm.

It was a game of musical chairs,
But when the seven trumpets sounded,
the stools remained still, they stood facing eastward in hexagonal formation.
An angel ascended, the remnants were six shadows now.
With a plot twist, it's less players each round.
Who dies first wins, I've tossed too much soil on dust, my hands are *****.
We wash our hands clean with this paraffin.
Open-casket, the last sight took my breath away - the whitened clay still one,
but with the breath of life taken away, by the One, who giveth and taketh.

It's also winter our hearts,
dips of grief, dabs of black clothing, grim-reaper the thief, we still loath him.
another weekend
another sad-a-day
another funeral.
And his life was a summary,
too brief a breath, as the contraction is.
No sympathy to bother saying
"I am".
Public or private hospitals, dark clouds gather above all.

Twenty-twelve was a scar,
for four years now we are still scooping our scabs, from the bottomless pits,
that fell from ever-fresh wounds picked at a tad too prematurely,
so very early.
Some of the things we will take to our graves
will take us to our graves, as we exhume our pre-mourning selves.
And hurt still drops in drips,
red-bottomed-sticky feet from the blood-washed tiles,
the pain and the paint in permanent.
Some matters you can only think about
when you are half-awake and half-asleep, because these nightmares
are too real to be dreams.

uThixo Ovayo unoNobantu, nabantu bakhe bonke ngamaxesha onke.

~ by New-Black-SoUl #NBS

He worked vigorously
Tired himself out
He began to forget
What true loyalty was about

He played even harder
Exhausted to the bone
He wandered aimlessly
With no where left to call home

He touched the sky
On more than one occasion
No matter how many people cared
He kept himself out of the equation

He reached rock bottom
A few too many times
Got himself stuck in a hole
That was too far down to climb

He laid on the ground and prayed
For his one true saving grace
She reached her hands down
And pulled him up, with a smile on her face

can we all hunker down
under the Magnolias
in the sand of the Plantation
driveway under
a confederate flag anymore?

draw our plans like Lee
would have, with a saber
a picture of lines
scribbled in the sand-
our carbine- loaded by our side
at the ready
our heritage the old war
or states rights
or slavery

when so much time and  lives
have passed
and people oughta know more
about peoples,
about history,
about struggling

which all races do.
It wasn't pretty then.
Not the least bit.
And cotton , high or otherwise,
needs no slavery,
and bigotry is
ancient as
sorghum and
horse meat.

And man is man, proven to depend on a
falsity or hate  to
defend his ancestry, his teachings,
instead of the question.

Here, with a stick
I scribble, while
down hunkering,
the least threatening position,
to ask of myself,
have I done what
I could. And the answer
of course,
the black man and the Mexican,
the Redman, the sensible ,
might answer, is
it will take time.
Do we have enough?

Some memories I give her
to drown in dark water,

like an old revolver
thrown into a river,

nights spent drinking
the moon under a table

made of maple and fables
we once believed true

love lost, found
and lost again together

where only the mountains
and seas last forever.

My impending fear,
With danger near,
Only increased until I began to see myself wondering how he left without shedding a single tear.
And happiness,
My biggest weakness,
Was on a constant downward spiral into something that made even myself wish to digress.
But suddenly,
Fairly abruptly,
I began to understand how his absence brought me a soft feeling of serenity.
My excuses,
Hidden bruises,
I was reluctant to push the blame onto anyone but myself even though I didn't choose this.
People asked me,
Quite literally,
If I was aware that I smiled brighter and laughed louder now that I've had this epiphany.
And finally,
Now I can see,
I allowed myself to be taken for granted just so I wouldn't have to be lonely.
And in the end,
I recommend,
Looking inside yourself and seeing the broken bonds you must mend.