instead of making them feel at home
we are telling them to go back home
have we got no shame calling our brothers and sisters foreigners in their own motherland?

what happened to Ubuntu?
umntu ngu mntu ngabantu?
has the long walk to freedom not been walk for us?

there will be no freedom in Africa if we still believe in brutality rather than humanity
there will be no freedom in Africa if  don't understand the meaning of struggle, poverty

yesterday we were crying for freedom
praising and promoting the spirit of togetherness,today we stone the same African brother who held our hands in the years of apartheid and gave us hope!

why do we have to be so cruel not so fucken cool!
Nelson Mandela did not die for this!
Walter sisulu did not die for this!
our black brothers and sisters in sharpville did not die for this!

where did it all go wrong?

we claim to be the land of peace yet we do not know the meaning of forgiveness
we claim to be the land of great leaders and born dreamers yet we do not know   the meaning of Ubuntu!

I am not proud of what this land has become....

Use all the combinations of consonants,
Blends, short and long i's;
Try intonation or diphthongs;
Resort to linguists;
Spell in Welsh.
You can't approximate
The muted sound
Of a breaking heart.

You breathe my name into
your chest, letting me settle
like dust into your bones.

Tethering me to this moment,
eyes fierce, burning as vibrant
as tiger lilies in a vengeful sun.

Your fingers burning holes in
our sheets, leaving remnants
of their disgust in my scars.

Even to this day I cannot stay
up for the sunrise, I find your
taste infused on my tongue.

And I'm still left to wonder if it
was Lucifer I saw in your eyes
or the gods that condemned me.

Sudden gasps.
Deep breaths for air.
A question.
Do they really care?

The thump.
Hammering in my chest.
A question.
Who knows of me best?

A shine.
Glistening in my eye.
A question.
Can they make me cry?

A smile.
Widening on my face.
A question.
Is it out of place?

A question.
Should I dare ask?
The happiness.
Was it a mask?

Everything,
Stopping
Gasping
Thumping
Shining
Smiling

A stop.
Preventing me of breath.
A question,

This summer was missing school, feeling it ache in your chest,
and feeling like a nerd
but also sad.
It was staying up late, your face lit by your phone screen, blue.
It was skype calls at 11, hearing things you know you would never hear in daylight.
It was a bolt of lightning curling down your spine at the notification noise
hoping it's
someone
in
particular.
It's not getting texted back.
It was your mom's friend yelling at you,
when you ran from the playground,
bare feet on the dusty road,
after a cop car pulled in.
It was bubble tea and fuzzy navels at the local fair,
pulling hair and carving our names into the ferris wheel seat
with the broken end of my glasses.
It's sleeping on the floor for a few minutes, but then
crawling into bed with your friend and giving up there.
It's long showers when I sing the way I wish I could
out from under the water.
It was walking down my road, so paranoid
I think a car is a giant man,
to the starbucks, and then the movie theatre,
and then the curb, where I wait in the warm dark.
It was jumping into brown water, screaming.
It's the hum of my computer.
It was feeling the bass of a song ricochet through your feet,
vibrating the floor,
and traveling down the street.
It's downing a cup of hot sauce.
It was Portland, Maine,
walking to record stores in your lunch break,
a bagel sandwich cooling in your backpack.
Seeing a girl hold another girl's head to the ground, and screaming at a man with dreadlocks,
"That's the father of my ******* baby,"
while a woman with a cat on her shoulder
films it.
It's sitting in the library in ripped pantyhose reading comics for an hour
while your dad's at work.
It was Ben and Jerry's, and Chinese food,
walking in between dumpsters to get there.
It was waking up at noon and missing church.
It was eating cereal at 12 am,
6 pm,
11 pm.
It was blinding, white-hot sadness,
blinking and confused,
wondering why I felt so rainy inside,
while outside was sunshine filtering through green leaves.
This summer was
long, and lonely, and sometimes rainy,
and dark,
and sunny, and loud, and hazy.
This summer
is almost
over
and I think I'm okay with that.

When youth was my friend, confidence was not.
Nor, was it my enemy.
I just never ever thought.
The confidence would catch me.
Now I'm well and truly caught.
Embroiled in frilly, dark or silly words.
Spat out like pips by passing birds.
From the seeds grow ideas.
Sometimes classical, others plain weird.
Mood affecting.
Love rejecting.
Now I'm getting older, I guess I just forgot that confidence was discovered.
Never, would I have stood upon the velvet stage.
Edged with bravado, painted stars, upstarts noisily with vibrant edges.
A plethora of strange, sometimes pretty flowers.
Often paper ones.
Now I play the strangest words.
Usually minutes.
Sometimes hours.
Showers of words.
Wordsworth not, wordsmith yes.
All flight of one aged flightless bird.
Flights of fancy, Nancy.
(c)Livvi

There are parts of me that
lay unrested - they are ghosts
in hallways, they are smoke
suffocating in locked rooms.

Sometimes I can feel
myself fading and it takes
all I have to pull myself
back from the abyss.

I'm walking on ice, yet
to find a stable foothold in
life seems unprecedented.

I still haven't learnt when
my hands began writing
rather than shaking.

paint me with all those messy colors and broken brushes.
paint me with your rough hands and scrappy fingertips.
paint me with all your love and your regrets.
paint me in a dark room with uneven breath.
paint me with dried out lips and the tip of your tongue
paint me all night till you're halted by the sun.