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

I see life in grey,
Where black does not stand alone without white,
Where the melanin of my skin does not factor as to how society sees me,
Where Mother’s language that rolls from my tongue is never labeled.


The only struggle I should face is between the relationships
I try to mount
...between pen and paper
…between my head and my heart.
Where common sense should trump any and every stereotype,
Where the only thing foreign is the knowledge I am yet to acquire,
Or the journeys I am yet to trudge upon.


Borne of the soil that bears some of the greatest fruits,
I am one of Her many blessings,
An Afrikan princess that is still rising to her majestic throne,
That seeks to reign over a land united
Behind the death of the rainbow;
The rebirth of decolonialism.
And casts all children of the corn of these chains,
Golden bronze bonds
That continue to enslave the people of true liberty, and prosperity.
The liberty that ascertains that no man shall ever be consumed
By their hunger for superiority.

For

I AM because WE ARE!

Till you can’t walk
Till you are sore,
Yet still smiling
from the thrilling experience,
Till you are sweating pleasure
from every pore.
Till your breath murmurs
my first name with every inhale
Till my voice is the only sound
your ears need to hear.

i would
rest my head on your breast
and listen
Enjoy the sweet tunes composed by
every noted word you harmonize

Tales of your life stories before they became entwined with mine
Narratives about your dreams
About who breaks your glassy heart
And what tickles your eye-ducts
into opening a flood of tears.

an inner world of wishes
she deserves beautiful things,
The Nubian Queen,
Sunflower Child.

~ New-Black-SoUl #NBS