During one of my recent internet travels,
I came across a picture of a “minor”,
posing with tinted lips
and exposed *******.
What got my eyes
pinned were the thousand number of likes
by virtually hooting “boys”
and comments by other group of “gentlemen”
telling her how to dress.

HUMILITY: I have been asked to repeat the word
too many times to recall what it means:
the man on the subway cat-called
and accused me of showing too much skin
but instead of fighting back, I smiled
because girls ought to be nice.
I have been taught to survive
by using my body as a swiss army knife,
and I convince myself that
there is protection in being polite.

H-U-M-I-I am forgetting the rest.

The smoke curled up from between his fingers
and he blew out toxic, blurring my vision.
I gasped and wheezed
but I held my sneeze,
I cannot slap him across his face. HUMILITY.
So, I just pretended to cough, hoping he’ll feel ashamed.

I have been trained to flutter my eyelash,
clench my jaw at a whiplash
and business school boys,
who manifest success by refusing to take “NO” for an answer.
And for every time his prying eyes
scan down by body,
as if rating my inexperienced assets on a scale of one to five,
and every time his touch trails a chill down my spine,
I wonder:
Male kindness is so alien to us; we confuse it with seduction every time.

HUMILITY: the quality of having a low view of one’s importance
but, I fail to understand
when did it become synonymous to diffidence;
there is a subtle difference between
papercuts and shattered integrity,
holding hands and chaining souls,
building houses and creating homes,
humiliation rotting down to bones and humility.
HUMILITY, have you spelled it too many times to know what it looks like?

Should I be gone tomorrow if my being has run its course -
A mind confined to caged in skin and basking in remorse
Should self hatred and pity take its toll on empty hearts
I fear what ever fault I am is prepared to embark
On a journey through the pain and bliss I allowed to control
Every broken primal movement taken hostage by my soul
I won’t be missed, only dismissed as love that I might take
It burns through me to think it, but no worthy heart would break

You are the wings on my feet that take me your way
You are the drugs in my mouth to lead me astray.
Your are the bruise on my heart, painful and blue
You are the lead on my legs, drowning me too.
You are the tears on my cheeks running down now
You are the hope in their drops that I shouldn’t allow.
You are the corpse on my back, the skull in my hand
You are the wind to my sails, the flag to my land.
I cannot give up and so I will lose
All I have dear and willfully choose
To give up pride and be beaten down
Sacrificing the safety of my crown.

I still write about life's tragedy
and its circulations
the things that call for celebrations
and the ones that cause damnations

Am not good with goodbyes
i  never was
when things grew tough
i walked away

I've never felt a thing
i escaped attachments
i stayed away
and embraced solitude

I know most of us don't
understand my poems
my character is not that out
standing
i dodged bullets
and my heart grew solid

By the passing of the clock...
Time taketh away your youth
In return gives experience....

In the August of 2013, my therapist taught me how to feel pain.

She sat me down on her couch, put her hands around her knees,
And said that I was ready to learn about the juxtaposition of love and self-degeneration.
She recited to me as I was perfectly amended, and wrote down a scripture on the walls
As I watched from her susceptible whole-draining couch.

I began to litter my mind with an effervescence as she talked,
I pleaded and broke my solar plexus to let it shine within me as she spoke fluently about where I will be in times of darker days.
I listened, and let cognizant dissonance transform into regular dissonance,
As we feuded over some emotions that she claimed to know better than I did.
When the dissension was destroyed with my evenly wild dismantled separation from depersonalization and reality,
She stopped scribbling in her book and looked me straight in the eye.

She asked me how I felt and I told her that I did not.
I told her that I am a vessel for the supremacy of a mind that looks at prominent self-worth
the same way it looks at the particles underneath a shoe or the water at the bottom of an under-gated puddle. I told her that I have never opened my eyes since my father figure transformed into the door I used to hide away the tears of the woman who raised me up. I told her that I am a conundrum with a voice that is shadowed by the memories I witness and replay over and over again but have never actually ...really...experienced.
She looked at me like she expected to hear every word that came out of my mouth.
She was more a carnivore in my eyes, and by the time I realized how much an allure surrounded my depositing of impressions into this woman's central nervous system,
I was already telling myself that I have never really needed sanity.

She professed that the boundaries of my life were created by an inner turmoil,
And I would notice its symptoms and prognosis if I would just open my eyes to its horrifying truth.
By the time the room was filled with lies, I had already told enough truths to let her believe that assistance and recovery were the things I came into the room for.
She told me that I was a functional disorder, and I told her that that was patronization.
At the end of the session, we both seemed to feel equal over the fate of a sequel to a previous encounter with our regular conversational dissonance...
She gave me a piece of paper.
And it became a burden.
With a despondency I created out of her bickering and my dejected submission,
She ended the session and let the emotion run free from the tone of voice she used to impractically aid me.
I picked up the paper and picked up my serenity and created more demons out of the gracefulness inside of me,
"Open your eyes, Mzwandile."
I casted hope upon my pocket, crumpled it up until it meant as much as it usually did,
and exited the room with a prescription for a new life.

Words
Are
Real

Allies
Not
Defeated

Public
Elated
And
Children
E­mbrace