#nelson
The Destroyer of the division machine1
Had first to run on the Way of the Cross
To have souls over the long lived ruin.
Robben, Pollsmoor and Victor2 caused no loss
In the Staff Heritage of the Thembu3
Rulers, forever loved by their people,
From whom was learnt right fight ain’t to taboo.
Good farmers’ teeth run right through the apple;
Likely after the Hard Walk to Freedom4
The Son of Gadla and Nosekeni5,
When his Soul flies up to the Lord’s Kingdom,
Glass will keep his body, and not any
Stain will sully the Star of the Nation
Whose Light will shine for each generation.
1. The division machine: The Apartheid.
2. Robben, Pollsmoor and Victor: During twenty seven years Mandela was successively jailed at Robben Island, Pollsmoor and Victor Verster prisons.
3. Thembu: The tribe over which ruled Mandela’s ancestors.
4. Hard Walk to Freedom: In September 1953, Andrew Kunene, a co-militant of his, read out Mandela's "No Easy Walk to Freedom" speech at a Transvaal ANC meeting; the title was taken from a quote by Indian independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru, a seminal influence on Mandela's thought. The speech laid out a contingency plan for a scenario in which the ANC was banned.
5. Gadla (Henry Mphakanyiswa): Mandela’s father; Nosekeni ***** His mother.
Boniface
Jun 27, 2013
Jun 27, 2013 at 8:33 AM UTC
(1) Nelson Mandela:
Madiba's humility haunts
Haughty hooligans
Huddled inside hideous
Houses of mal-governance.
As Madiba celebrate
Decades of struggles,
Strident grateful voices
Singing songs of salute,
Rendered in sonorous voices
Reverbrated
And resurrected souls
Of subdued citizens.
As Madiba stood
To celebrate and unveil
Statues of struggles,
Erected in city centres
And in the minds
Of grateful humanity,
Nelson Mandela stood,
Grey haired Madiba stood,
wiped out by age and struggles.
(2)Fela:
Sounds of saxophone,
Drumbeats,
Stage walks,
The baritone.
Tongue lashing looters
Of the people's wealth.
Strange incense,
Smokes spiraled.
The shrine
Filled with worshippers,
The priest
Presided with afro beats.
Fela
Fanned the flame of truth
To free the people
From the pangs of timidity.
Persecutions.
New brass hats
Bursted onto the scene
And burrowed
Into the people's wealth.
Fela sang,
They struck,
Persecutions persisted.
Body infirmities,
Surrender,
Farewell,
Afro beats reverberate.
(3)Our Civilization Collapsed:
A new day
Without the sonorous
Songs of songbirds
And the bustle
Of busy humans and animals.
The sun struggled to rise,
Struggled to shine,
Weighed down
By the dark couds of July.
The clouds unleashed rain,
The rain drenched and drained
Our knapsack of knowledge.
The iron birds
Could no longer fly,
The medicine men,
The medicine women
No longer know
The cure for our illnesses,
Our civilization collapsed.
The rain
Rained in torrents
And drenched our earth
Devoid now
Of our knapsack of knowledge.
(4)Loud Murmurs In The Land:
The healers
Diagnosed the wrong ailment,
They applied the wrong medications,
They insist
On applying the wrong medications,
Their hailers hailed.
The patient relapsed into coma,
Loud murmurs in the land,
Silence,
Silence of the graveyard.
The healers strut,
Pretending to heal,
Their hailers hailed.
The loud murmurs prepare
To erupt into a revolt,
A ****** revolt,
A bloodbath.
The haughty healers
Strut
Pretending to heal,
The patient remains in coma,
Their hailers still hailing.
Dark clouds
Gather over our land
Like Damocle's sword,
Threatening to slay
The guilty and the innocent.
The healers still strut
Pretending to heal,
The patient remains in coma,
Their hailers are still healing.
(5)I Am Poet Of The Streets:
I am piqued
When I am profiled
A protegee of prominent poets.
I am pained
When I am pronounced
Just a poet.
I am poet of the streets.
I walk the streets
And sing
My strident songs of protest,
Giving succour
To the indigent indigenes
Of the streets,
Impoverished
By the scoundrels who rule over them.
Mother muse
Mills my inspiration more
When I straddle the podiums
And sing for the streets.
The scorn,
The sneer
Of the scoundrels
Give flip to my resolve
To sing
And sing for the streets,
I am poet of the streets.
Sep 15, 2025
Sep 15, 2025 at 11:28 AM UTC
In life’s rearview
Rosa refused to stand
Nelson paid the price for his land
King’s dream was shattered by a bullet
which birthed more bullets for the chocolate man
Until we said NO MORE!
Jul 12, 2020
Jul 12, 2020 at 11:05 PM UTC
sharks in
Trafalgar Square
throw hats
of Danbury
yet antebellum
in London
is a
column yet
the public
cityscape in
her democracy
yet anarchy
in a
high sea
stake of
Latin Tribe
is now
Jun 27, 2020
Jun 27, 2020 at 12:09 PM UTC
Songs are threads that reach beyond
mortal matter of the planet’s bond
springing often unexpected
like diamonds angel-selected.
Sounds from spirit spun in sky
half's and quarters low and high
enter our waiting souls
and linger there to make us whole.
Music soars beyond the flesh
reforms the old into fresh
hearing tones the artist composes
is breathing in a rally of roses.
Listening to music involves,
prepares, changes and evolves
it makes our humanity better
it is a sweet ethereal eternal treasure.
Written 7-23-18
Jul 23, 2018
Jul 23, 2018 at 12:17 PM UTC
We worship the net
We understand the reason why google starts with 'go..'
We give the 'd' while praying in our inboxes,
The only place we think under, these boxes.
I was blinded by the Jozi city lights,
Chasing false fortunes,
Got lost in people's comments and complements.
Last time I closed my eyes I was somewhere in South Africa.
Today am somewhere on google map,
Planting trigo-station every time I get high.
If you find me standing before the burning bridges,
Show me a path leading to the South Africa Mandela was talking about.
Mar 2, 2018
Mar 2, 2018 at 3:32 AM UTC
Human Kind
Stand up for your rights
Pete sang
Nelson served time
The world carried on
Humanity celebrated
Peace on earth to all
Gods and godless unite
To fill our world of love
For all those living on planet earth
kindness rules to save humankind
Dec 10, 2016
Dec 10, 2016 at 4:40 AM UTC
I sit inside my window
he sits outside my heart
he passed upon the cement
a heart that did not start
They could not bring him back
It seems he never was
there for me some how
but what I had, Twas
sometime ago he left
pain of windowpanes
call out beyond the glass
resonance that feigns
Tribute to his ignorance
mine, just the same
Do recall his beauty
though never gained much fame
It snapped shuttered darkness
left more dead inside
Some may wonder what becomes
of wishes we abandon, and hide
falling from the window
another sees his flight
marks a man forever
consequence so slight
superbly executed fall
and there lie all the parts
mangled broken ******
not one, but two hearts
I see it so plainly
still to very day
my love on pavement
It doesn’t go away
pain of windowpanes
makes no sense to me
cannot grieve today
bones and flesh I see
Please don’t give pity
it is not for what I ask
Just look upon this city
and all its broken glass
Apr 27, 2016
Apr 27, 2016 at 2:26 PM UTC
"There are monsters on the building," she said in the sad song of a West Texas drawl. She sounded like she did when she talked in her sleep. We had paused there to examine the doorway the way people do when they know something frightening and important will happen to them on the other side.
Somehow the banality of the details seemed at odds with the profundity of the situation: A hot breeze taunted us with the smell of garbage. Pigeons did their stupid strut and pecked and **** on the sidewalk. Manhattan pedestrians slogged past through the May heat wave in a sweaty river of hurried lives, each stranger a subtle hint that perhaps our pain wasn't so profound after all. My own rivers of perspiration seemed to drive the point home.
Molly had more than once accused me of being attracted to the dramatic, and she was right. In response to this weakness, this juvenile habit of seeing myself as a hero in the story of my life rather than just another person in the world, the God I still half believed in seemed to be punishing me with mundane aggravation as we prepared to defy him: crowded subways, humidity that pressed in from all sides, growing stains in my armpits. Now that we had reached the building the half-believed God added a master stroke of lewdness. Squatting on the threshold of our destination were a pair of gargoyles [cement artistic tradition combined with superstition] that peered down at us with obscene toothy grins.
Molly tugged on my damp fingers, and asked again, "Greg, why are there monster's on the building?" Her eyes seemed both accusatory and desperate for affection, but her voice was sleepy, like she was trying to pretend it was all just a dream.
"I don't know," I said. "It doesn't matter."
It was true. It didn't matter accept as a symbol in a story that somewhere deep in my mind I was shamefully conscious I would someday write. Disgusting but unavoidable for the boy I was at 19, a boy who wanted to be important someday, wanted to be important by being "a writer," and didn't see how he could ever be anything else.
"Write what you know" they say, but I was just an upper middle class white kid, nothing important had ever happened to me. This was important. This was life and death. Most of me lived it but part of me watched from outside.
We went inside and found the elevator, then the waiting room. I held her left hand while she filled out the forms with her right. I told her I loved her, trying to say it like a transcendent spiritual truth that could make all the facts of our situation irrelevant and sweep them off somewhere they didn't matter.
Then a nurse came and took her away.
It offended me that despite the life and death business conducted behind the wall, the waiting room looked just like any other. Maybe worse. Worn out office furniture in generic shades of brown. Stacks of magazines that looked like they had been procured second hand from some cleaner pricier office where happier people sit and smile about life while they fill out forms and wait.
I glanced around the room, careful to avoid eye contact. There were two other men, one white one black, both looking sad and dejected, staring into space, thinking of the women in that other room I just like me I figured, wishing there was something they could do.
I selected a magazine with half its cover missing. Celebrities at a party. Celebrities at the beach. I put the magazine down.
I should be feeling more than this, I thought, and that thought seemed shameful too.
It was still a question about me. The pathetic existential question that has always gnawed my television generation: Why can't I just be real? The question brought more shame. Why are you asking these questions? This inner monologue ... they are killing your son in there! They are ripping him out of the girl you love. Shut up and just feel! Or don't feel, and just shut up.
Searching myself for sadness I found again a numb disgust for being outside myself and looking in.
I thought of praying but an image came to me of Jesus struggling to carry his cross up a hill. He was being chased by His Father who took the form of the God of old paintings, a long white beard, muscled body, the eyes of a tyrant. God was leading an angry mob, scaring Jesus up the hill to his death, screaming at Him: "This is what my son was meant for! You don't have any other choice!" It was not the sort of image I hoped prayer would inspire.
Finally I arrived at the thought I was avoiding: Molly crying on a cold table, machines inside her, everything happening too fast. I had asked if I could go with her and hold her hand.
"No," the nurse had said with a touch of scorn, like the question was not just dumb, but an insult to women everywhere. Why would she let the guilty party make things worse?
A few yards away there were doctors working machines inside the womb of the only girl I had ever loved, taking the life of a child I would never know. But even if I had wanted to stop them, which I didn't, it was too late now.
It was the first life and death decision either of us would make, and even though I would try to console her with the idea that we had chosen life, our own lives, our own futures, right or wrong, I knew we had also chosen death for our first child. Death always brings sadness, and despite whatever happiness we might still enjoy in the years to come, this sadness would would linger with us, in some form, forever, unless we came together to conceive another child and raise it. This is not what Jesus told me. This is what I told him. He listened but he didn't seem to care. He had no time for ********
Molly appeared in the doorway to the back rooms where I had not been allowed to go with her. I would have liked to go with her back there. I would have held her hand, made her know that we were doing it together, that I was equally if not more culpable in this death than her, and if that were not possible, and it probably was not, at least I could have held her hand.
But I was not allowed back there. She went through it alone with strangers all around her speaking in professionally sensitive tones.
I put down the magazine and went to her. Her face was blotchy, and there was still dampness in her eyes. She had been crying for awhile and she was crying still. A nurse's hand was on her shoulder.
"She was very brave," the nurse said, like Molly was a four year old who had just made it through her first hair cut without squirming.
"Will she be okay?"
"Yes, but now you need to take her home so she can rest."
The nurse disappeared. I held Molly, and kissed her forehead, and told her how much I loved her and always would. She did not speak and her body felt lifeless in my arms. I led her back to the elevator and then out into the Manhattan bustle. The humid heat had reached its most brutal hour, and I began to sweat immediately as we walked towards the subway.
We passed a deli. I asked if she was hungry and she nodded. I went inside and used the little money I had to buy a sandwich and two bottles of juice and we found a bench in the shade and sat there to eat. She ate a little and drank some of her juice and then finally
spoke.
"It was a spot."
"What?"
"It was a spot. They showed me. It was a little black spot on a screen."
"It's okay, Molly It's going to be okay," I lied.
"It was my little girl, but she was just a spot. They showed me and then they took her away forever."
"I love you. I love you so much." It was true and all I could think to say and it didn't help much.
I brought her downtown to the financial district where I was staying that Summer in an NYU dorm with a friend from High School. We were there to take film classes together. Our parent's had allowed us to spend extra on the best housing, and the dorm we stayed in was actually an apartment on the 14th floor of a building with a doorman across from South Street Seaport. It had a kitchen, high ceilings, and huge windows with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge, and even a
separate bedroom. Fortunately Rick had allowed me the private room so he could have the larger one with the view and the television, so there was a place for Molly and I to go behind a locked door and lay down.
We got in the little bed together and curled into a combined fetal position. I kissed the back of her neck and she took my hand and placed it on her pelvis where I could feel the bandage rustling under her sweatpants.
"Can you feel it?"
"Everything will be all right," I almost said, but it felt like garbage on the tip of my tongue and I had not yet grown used to lying except to myself.
I hadn't known there would be a bandage.
"Yes. I can feel it," I said. This, at least, I knew was true.
I lay there with her like that with my hand where our child had
grown for a few weeks and we fell asleep.
When I awoke, the room was gray with dusk, and Molly was snoring peacefully. I got out of the bed carefully without disturbing her, sat at my desk, and opened my favorite drawer. There was my small purple glass pipe, and a little baggy stuffed with the high quality marijuana that in my experience, you can only find in New York City, the Pacific Northwest and American Colleges. I filled the pipe, lit it, and pulled hard, holding it in as long as I could and then coughing intentionally on the exhale for the fullest effect. I repeated the process until the bag was nearly empty, lit a cigarette, and sat at the desk with my feet up, looking back and forth from the
high rise across the street to the young woman in my bed, contemplating life and love and God and the future.
In that moment, high as I was on the drug and the city and the relief of having made it through the day, it truly did seem that everything would be all right.
I had taken to writing poetry a few months before, and I found a
piece of paper and began to write another:
God sat in the abortion clinic waiting room
while they killed his only son.
"My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
"I don't know. It seemed like the right thing to do."
I thought I had the beginnings of a very good poem. I hoped maybe, someday, somehow my poetry might change the way people thought about things. I was young and stupid and ****** and my mind was about to crack open completely and let forth a torrent of strangeness.
I was very sad.
-2001
fightingcopsnaked.blogspot.com
brickdumbsublime.blogspot.com
Mar 27, 2015
Mar 27, 2015 at 4:36 PM UTC
Forever i will hold you
Forever i will love you
Forever i will kiss you
Forever I will need you
Forever I am yours
Forever you are mine
Forever and ever until after time
Forever locked inside our eternal bliss
Forever knowing true loves kiss
Feb 16, 2015
Feb 16, 2015 at 12:08 AM UTC
you were just one man.
jailed for infinity.
you never bent.
stronger than steel.
oppressed from day one.
segregated by your skin.
you were never broken.
stronger than steel.
the odds were against you.
against your entire race.
your faith never wavered.
stronger than steel.
i walked where you laid.
where you eat, where you ran.
your land gave me strength.
stronger than steel.
your love was so unending.
your hate, no where to be found.
you saved a who nation.
stronger than steel.
Madiba. Madiba.
Nelson Mandela
the original superman.
Stronger then Steel.
Oct 30, 2014
Oct 30, 2014 at 1:06 AM UTC
This is the last time I write about ships; the mighty seafarer, clasping in the deep. The last time the esoteric tides capriciously change their erratic minds, left torn between rousing up to fight and solemnly crawling into the shapeless night. I’ll haul, I’ll haul. Outward bound, I’ll haul away from the safety of the buoy, through a thousand spiralling knots, batten aground and set anchor upon the recondite bay. I’ll avast the journeys where the compass takes an unprompted turn, where celestial proves consort to nautical woes, awoke awash amidst the darkened shallows.
This is the last time I go back and fill vast depths, bearing right, then left, across the beating breadth. This is the last ring of brash audacity resonating in chime with the gull’s hooded pride, the last of the salt and sway commandeering the longitude of each tumultuous ride. I’ll roll, I’ll roll. Hanging on behind, I’ll roll with the salted souls of Nelson and Hook as they furl and collide, hand over fist, drawing the curtains from their chariot’s majestic height. I’ll gybe and set back to sail, quarrel with the rushing sands, and grace every fractured notion that tooth and nail can siege the devil’s rest and forge currents capable of hustling both vessel and man.
This is the last of the gallant endeavours, set adrift from buccaneer’s voyage to a solitary pulse at the end of storm’s tether. This is the last stern embrace of Poseidon’s harrowing howls, the last of the rapturous applause mordant as it rises and swirls, the last time I wrestle away from his scaly hold. This is the last time I change tack and set course into the path of the sound, where finally, the tides settled
I’ll release control of the helm.
Aug 4, 2014
Aug 4, 2014 at 8:26 PM UTC