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Nov 2017
"There’s a beautiful Buddhist temple in West Lake, which is an entire fresco of greens. I’m still trying to figure out if I’m trying to write quiet colourless poems or thick, heavy raps so sometimes I sit still, say nothing and write a few sweet nonsensicals, and sometimes I tap my feet, bop my head up and down, and convert my whispers into scratchy line breaks. This is a false dichotomy. I know. I can do both. Somehow. We wander into a room filled with hundreds of heavy-bellied figures, stony-faced, in a criss-cross maze. Another room has warriors towering thick as trees-- some are dark-skinned, fearsome; I look at my hands to see if the colours match-- and they snarl and smile with swords and spears in hand. And then there’s an entire wall carved and filled with hundreds of dancing bodies that I cannot name, coloured in endless golds and browns stacked up in a massive Creation. I try not to think of the Sistine Chapel ceiling painting, which I have not seen, but for once the West cannot compare, and in this room, finally, I don’t even bother looking to see if my fingers match the statues’ colours."
Also edited out, snip snip snip.
Tawanda Mulalu
Written by
Tawanda Mulalu  Gaborone, Botswana
(Gaborone, Botswana)   
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