1. Tonight
Tonight there will be no poets in no café
To speak the blood to green from red
With sweet words and turbaned hair 
To amuse and wipe out the news you heard
Me, I quit that poetry thing
Two lines ago, one love before
These days I sing 



2. The art of listening

The man on the balcony of the company’s sixth floor
Says he knows the secret to life
Everyone laughs
Teething vultures biting at the wind
Tie askew
Everyone wishing they knew
What had freed him from the shackles they still clung to
He leaps
Back arched
Perfect stance
Arms wide
Phones flash
The earth shakes
The wind rises knowing there is nothing
Not a thing but it to break his fall
No one laughs 
Not one
Not anymore



3. dreams

Dreams are evil
I prefer nightmares 
They show you what goes on in here
Reflects what goes on out there

Dreams lie
They lead you down a path
Where white chocolate flows undammed 
And mulberries fall unshaken from the trees

Nothing is less faithful
Less real
Or more untrue than a dream

And does every waking moment have to be so hard
I am tired of spending sleepless nights
Chasing hesitant tomorrows biding my time
Just to spend it mending broken things 
That have no wish to be fixed

I will not spin and spin inside this skin
I will not mourn a future I never had
I refuse to bleed myself
For an almost reality rooted in the distant echoes
Of a once familiar voice
Chanting I know I can, I know I can
Because I know I can
Be the girl I am right now
Live the life I have right now
Choose to be the dream I am in right now

Maybe then it won’t be so hard 
Just to dream right now



4. STREET VENDOR MELODY

Ssshh listen to her
But no one does and like you
I thought I saw her in art exhibition once
All black and white grayscale shots that hid the hunger in her eye behind the cameras reflection
And I thought, I thought she must be beautiful
As though that were all there ever was
A pretty smile not a hungry mouth
A small waist never an empty belly
Belle of the ball even Sade must not have met this queen because she too is worthy of her own lullaby
Own bittersweet number one hit
Except there’s no room here for sorrow 
We just go on same as before
Because someone
We can’t quite remember who but someone
Promised salvation is near
And we’ve been told God gave us these ears so we could hear
That salvation is near
She never says this out loud

Never says this load is not mine to carry
This load is too heavy to carry

Instead she gets up, wakes the dawn
And bathes reflection of self
Dark eyed light of her mother’s life
Cradles young one on back and walks out back straight
To her little corner of hell
She’s raising her young one sweet at a time
Living from hand to mouth were a thebe literally means life
She’s been married to poverty for what feels like forever
Been so long since anything felt right, pure, clean, easy
That she can’t even remember ever
She’s been eighteen for ten years and still counting
Innocence lost two babies ago
Like it can be found,
Reclaimed within the ice barely keeping cool her chosen produce for the day
And not in her children’s eyes
It’s seeped into her skin, brown murky reality has 
It’s in the way she no longer desires what’s not hers 

She no longer says this load is not mine to carry
This load is too heavy to carry

Street vendor sings sweet, sweet melody
Periodically life bends her through its own bittersweet melody

In her world your reality is a joke, love a yoke that chokes
Till she forgets to laugh
So she barters with her God daily
No diamonds on this wish list
Some choices are easier to make than others
Like bread and milk, bread for milk, bread or milk 
That comes with no fist because on her street the women still gather and meet
To count calories to feed their young ones empty bellies
With sun baked promises fulfilled on backstreets and hidden alleys
Not for fame or fortune
These women have never met either
Not for glory neither
They simply sell what they have and when there is nothing left they sell who and what they are 
So today there will be no Sky Blue, CNN endorsement of this beat
Only this poetry from Africa’s streets
There are no timekeepers here
No hi I’m home dear
Just life
One heartbeat at a time
sssh
If you listen carefully you just might hear this nightingale speak
Might dare to hear the streets weep sweep this vendor’s melody
As life continues to bend her through its own bittersweet broken melody, me lody, me lo dy



5. Seven o’clock news: FREE BONDAGE

Dear Africa I write to you from what used to be the safety of my bedroom
I am looking for my husband Patrick 
Last seen boarding a bus in Harare for Joburg
To carry back our son Farai who lived and worked amongst some people
For some time doing something somewhere in the south
If you have any information any information at all
Please, please come forward
 
This poem is not political
I repeat, this poem is not political 
But fact prevails were sanity fails
Because 400 years ago there were those who died 
For having dared to dream that they could read and eat and breathe and be like you
Yet 400 hours ago there are those who died for having dared to be
On the earth they were
Spoke the tongues they did
Birthed the sons they hid
Beneath fallen breasts sucked dry 
Of blood and oil and rock and milk
I did not mean that this poem was not real
Just that it must not sound social or sexual, political or emotional
Personal let alone human
In turn my words have no complexion
I repeat my words have no complexion
Yet they are just real
And for you that leaves but one question
Have you ever seen God on CNN?
I’ve only ever seen someone else’s definition of Him
Yet I’ve seen Yahweh, Jehovah, Modimo, Mwali, God, Allah in the eyes of Iraqi Somali, Zimbabwean Malawian mothers wrapping black, brown, yellow gold precious babies in afghans seeped in the red of the siblings before them
Africa in this century we move, we move from earth to mars
Change Universal laws and say what once was no longer is
Still we move from breaking backs to breaking silent bonds
Written before we were born
Humanity is sacred I tell you
 I come sent to remind you
Humanity is you and you, its me, it’s beyond boundaries, and colours and yesterdays worries
Over rent and pride, stars and stripes, twenties and tens 
Mounds of earth moved to dig deep to build stadiums built in the shape of a coil
for something as crudely consumable as oil
Not a seen from the eyes of those in free bondage 
They scream
This is the age of bonds and credit, cards and cash to finance your dash of personal slavery
Watch while I dance to the music of broken chains
Listen we moved sssshh we moved from chains on hands and feet
To imprisoning our hearts and minds
I ask you now is this it
Is this the freedom for which so many valiantly fought and others thought humanity no longer sought
Humanity is sacred because it is you and I, 
Humanity is sacred because it is you and I, 
Humanity is sacred because humanity is sacred, 
And the next time you look to your CNN, SABC, DS M or B TV look for the God and the good in you and me
Because humanity is still searching, searching for my husband Patrick
We are silently searching for any remnants of peace, peace, peace, please



6. Just because

Because I know you are going to ask
Where the flowers are 
I have picked roses red and sweet
Left them by the wayside for the birds to eat

Because I know you are going to ask
Where the sweets are
I have made you halwa these hands
Stirred and then spilt what was yours

Because I know you are going to ask
Where I am
I have long left the place I was
To walk slow between the trees 

Where your greedy eye cannot reach me