MPHUTLANE WA BOFELO

# English must fall # The poetry is dead

dear mister English
sir black Wordsworth
since everyday
person to person
ordinary talk
drives you sick
with boredom
i’ll write this down
go right down with this
the grand idea frolicking
in your super star head
your words are beyond
the grasp of mortal brains
is the trick of the ego
hot air acting intelligence
courtesy of loquacious flair
lost & found self in the veneer of afro hair
dreadlocks to mask whitey wishes
behind hard-core African
blacker than all Blacks appearances
your fuck the world tantrum
is the cry of black man-child
for the boy-child he could not be
& for the soccer-boots
Father Christmas forgot
to deliver under the pillow
your countless monikers
are on account
of your earnest belief
Santa forgot your present
because he could not pronounce
your tongue-twisting name
do not worry son of man
i’m not going to play Sigmund
trying to explain
your grand illusion
but this much i think i know
when your bubble is burst
at the feral awakening
your phobia for black labia
hibernate to leafy suburbs
playboy of liberal conservative
madams kissing anything black
to appease their white guilt
i believe you will be pleased
to know that master Adrian’s fancy
to purge the ghosts of Vlakplaas
with a black dick up his rectum
may make it possible
for you to realise your fantasy
to do madam & the baas
in one day on one bed
just to prove a point
to whom it may interest
superman is you
the only nigger in the books.

# To be or to bleach

to be or to bleach
god is the media,
man is the image,
consumption is the way,
this is how much i know:
either you accumulate or you consume
either you have a credit card, or you die,
nothing in between.

# Ideology must fall

the center evolves,
around accumulation & speculation
the criterion is profit and consumption,
we have reached the end of history,
passed the modernity era,
philosophy is gone, ideology is dead,
the past and the present are of equal irrelevance,
tomorrow does not count anymore,
we are into the future of the future after the future! 
                               at the ntakunyisa place
i see my beloved people 
with faces that say
50 something years
& a witty lingo that shouts
born in ‘76\ born in ‘86
it is my comrades the ungovernables
the same funky & eloquent
classmates who unpacked 
the pros and cons of spontaneity and organization
& debated the choice between
reform and revolution
with a Luxembourgian acumen in standard 8 
fight for a quart of sorghum beer
with senior citizens 
when the intoxication
level rises and the effects
reach below the belt
the age difference disappears
an insidious incest occurs.
                               the shame in me
disallows me to look
this guerrilla comrade in the eye
blistered lips and sunken eyes
gray hair of desolation
this brother was a carefree hip boy
enjoying the life without
a toss about race and class
let alone the gender thing
until i polluted his mind
with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, bell hooks, and Van Sertima 
moving him to cross the border
to be a freedom fighter
“azobuya’ maguerrila”
the people sang
the ladies came back talking of
of strange training sessions
preparing them for the eventuality
of being raped
by the settlers & their dogs

kk is a wheelbarrow,
a multipurpose cart; a knife, rubbish-bin 
and many other things all in one
from sunrise to sunset, he is a donkey,
fetching water & firewood
chopping wood; carrying beer boxes & coal sacks 
sometimes it is marijuana in the sacks,
police cannot suspect a mule like him,
he is their rubbish-bin as well,
often, he is a punching bag,
for the ntakunyisa guys
wishing to remind all and sundry,
their blood is still male,
even a hobo like me
gets an ego-boost,
from sending kk
to buy a morning newspaper
rewarding him with a rand and one cent

#  State of no nation

flowers of no nation
our daughters the sushi containers
cutlery for the nation’s
fathers of innovation
trophy bodies on display
ego-boost for impotent
tycoon maniacs tucking in ominous fingers,
floppy pricks substituted,
with the black power fist
listen attentively to the cry,
for public ownership
of the means of production
read reproduction on perverts’ lips

# Ke December, Boss! 

There is also Comrade Bombastic
Popularly known as Professor Comrade
An uninvited guest of honour at every ceremony             
Often saving the day whenever the emcee
Or keynote speaker happens not to arrive,
Sometimes hired as a priest at funeral ceremonies,
Most important of all esteemed vocations
A resident psychologist come political economist
Organic historian at the people’s shebeen 
In his element he talks of the ontology & hermeneutics
Of the black theology of Sabelo Ntwasa the son of man
Frere’s pedagogy, Zinn’s history & Boal’s theatre of the oppressed
The rest of us give him a round of applause,
For the sound of the names, the magic of the words
the familiarity of the experiences
the feelings behind
“This man speaks in tongues & still talks our conditions as we know them.”
says sister Miriam, declaring beer is on the house,
With a mouthful of Carling Black Label
Bombastic reminds everyone,
in his peculiar Anglo-Xhosa Sotho 
he only drinks whisky & white wine
merely takes Black Label & Castle Lager
as an act of solidarity with the underclasses
and drinks umqombothi & pineapple
out of respect of people’s culture
on special days & traditional ceremonies 
the catch is these occasions are every day.
Everyone is in stiches and tears,
as our man recounts the epic story
of his sojourns from the east of the cape
to north of the Orange River south of the Vaal
from cattle-herding in Qunu
to burning midnight oil & matriculating at Lovedale,
imbibing morabulo at Fort-Hare & graduating cum laude
becoming a senior clerk in the Transkei
part of the movement’s mechanics
to operate within the belly of the beast
experiencing 100 days in detention in the Bantustan
emerging with a limping bounce & a running bladder
due to his prick being fiddled by electronic rods,
burning sticks up his arse
eloping to Lesotho upon his release
surviving the Maseru massacre 
resurfacing in the RSA as senior mechanic @ SASOL
laying the ground for the famous bombing.

This good story is spoiled by the arrival of mister Ndaba,
an old friend and former colleague of Comrade Bombastic
insisting that the comrade was already limping,
when he arrived at Madala hostel looking for a job
telling people, he was running away,
from the police or the comrades
depending on to whom he was talking. 

The epic receives another blow,
from good Old John from Ginsberg
he claims he was in primary with Comrade Bombastic 
that the comrade never saw the inside of a lecture room
but taught at a rural school in Eastern Cape
courtesy of forged JC papers 
and left without a ceremony but a bleeding arse,
after the farmer’s wife gave birth
to a proudly Black baby boy
According to good Old John
the limp and the regular visits to the loo
are on account to the farmer,
chaining Comrade Bombastic to a tree
giving his dick as a cow’s breast to a thirsty calf
while electric rods ruminated in his arse
 
i care no rat ass which version is correct,
i know the anguish of such an ordeal,
the excruciating pain is my heart, 
unlike him I will never have the guts to re-live the horror
even in the guise of freedom-struggle movie 
all i can tell is the vivid memory,
of the revulsion in Mama’s voice at hearing     
my experience of hell in the torture room:
“The church lied to us. Satan is in Cape Town. His initials are PW”.

Her words came back to me ,
listening to ntate Tladi
telling the story of the blessed
dream in which God Almighty
appeared to him as a Black gorgeous,
woman from Winterveld
when he narrated the holy vision
to dear Father Mathias
the man of God retorted:
“It must have been the devil’s wife!”

We Hear You, You Fela!  

We hear you Fela, we hear you !
You say music is the weapon!
For the war is in the head
The skull is packed with alien ideas,
Our jurists read expired books,
To pass verdicts on current affairs
We hear you, Fela, we hear you!
You say music is the weapon!
For the propaganda is in hymns
Psalms on emotional tongues
Come from broken hearts,
Black folks sing of white angels,
See the devil in a black skin.
 
We hear you, Fela, we hear you!
You say music is the weapon!
The pub must be the place of learning,
For the nonsense is in the classroom
The text can’t relate to the language at home,

The substance on the street and the matters on the shop floor
We hear you Fela, we hear you!
You say the Zombie is in suits, wearing glasses,
Spotting the academic look
Sitting on the throne of power
Mister parliament passes laws,
That don’t relate to the facts on the ground,
We see you, Fela, we see you! 
You break free from the prison of clothes,
For the garments in Lagos clothing shops
Are fashioned in the image of some guy in London,
We hear you, Fela, we hear you!
You say our language,
Must not mind the institutions,
For the social institutions
Don’t mind our language,
You say our kind of jazz,
Must be the boom-bang that smash the standards,
For the big fight is the scuffle over perspective
You say our speech must be raw,
Straight from our broken hearts
You say the stuff in heads of intellectuals,
Can’t match the substance on the ground,
The real war begins in messed-up heads.

This Blues Thing is Us: Ke Kgale Re Tshwenyeha (For Nchipi Phillip Tabane)  

before your planned action
our feet constructed pathways,
we’ve been moving here before
do not harm the free
motion of our bodies 
with arranged movement
your prepared melody
with its calculated harmony
is in disharmony with the spontaneous
tinkling of the birds in the air 
echoed in the unpretentious refrain
of our swift response to the holler
of the cane grooving to the puff of the wind

before you kill our swing
with your stuck-up structure & order  
show us any order and timing,
in the wild rush of the waves
and the calm sigh of the sea  
we have been here,
long enough to know,
how the sight of the
rage of the marching waves
quietens storms in troubled hearts. 
how it takes anguished hearts
to know that without song
the spirit cannot ascend,
that it takes trampled minds & wretched souls
to blow the horns & beat the drum,
for the sake of getting the spirit
listen….
the blues is how we live!
this jazz is how we speak!
there is life in this swing!
we have suffered long,
enough to know for sure
this getting happy
is not a simple stuff.

Zulu Blues (For Shiyani Ngcobo)

what music is this? 
a mass choir,                                                              
spellbinding band
out of a single guitar & a lonely voice
one man carrying
a people’s cries and hopes,
on his breast

what kind of sorcery is this?
the whole nation’s pulse,
the call of all the land’s
mountains & the songs
of all rivers of the world
in the breath of one man 

what sort of magic is this?
all the songs & poems
my heart longed to compose,
in just one guitar string

The avant-garde song (For Amiri Baraka)

From now on we shall shit in colours
colour the shades of our moods,
in various tenors and baritones of blue
go beyond black & white,
to sketch myriad shades of reality
boundless possibilities beyond
the cliché and the trend

There shall be no notes and lyrics,
except the natural rhythm
of the throb of the hearts
the breath of the lungs booming in the bleating
of the horn…
the rage of the storm
pumping in the blow of the trumpet
the groove of the earth
dancing to the pounding
echoing the shout of thunder
we come marching with granddaddy Burning Spear
towards the revolutionary
turn
with Cabral to the source & Césaire to the native land, to our critical self we
return
ours is not a nostalgic escape to some idyllist utopia,
it is a straight look at the mirror to face the vile self,
we the brutes you spawned to exterminate one another in the post-modern bush

we are here to deracinate the surface,
dig up the garbage beneath the red carpet,  
rescue babies thrown down the gutter, 

in reality all is nothing
we sing & dance for nothing!
we kill & die for nothing!                                                             
we smile for nothing!
we school for nothing!
we work for nothing!
we vote for nothing!
we strike for nothing! 
our pockets have nothing!
our books have nothing!
our cupboards have nothing!
our freezers have nothing!
our hearts have nothing!
we have become nothing!

Blues for jazz rappers

ladies and gentlemen!
No protocol observed,
to me hierarchy is the foundation of tyranny
pat me not on the shoulders,
no ovations for me
i have no regard for your orders,
my regards are on the shopfloor
the pavement is my altar,
to the masses i bow
that is the only god i know
the underground is my heaven,
rebellion is my religion,
the mainstream is the hell i refrain from
sorry mister corporate and missus government
keep your podiums,
high tables, circus stables
red carpets for puppets
blood in the wallets
they slaughter literature,
googled beats & pirated melodies for the ambience
the gullible are in trance,
perhaps it is time for a séance,
summon the ghost of Césaire,
call the presence of Count Basie
invite the Mahlathini roar,
bring on Mahotela Queens, Dark City Sisters, Nina Simone
an orchestra of voices
from the under-belly
we come howling bluesqanga
with Bafo-Bafo on a water-pipe hum 
no histrionic choruses
it is the dance of Amadlozi,
raging against killing of life
a return to the verbal
conscious music a freedom-weapon lethal
we rap the blues,
from the ground
thunder, the wind, & the ocean
play our kind of jazz……
in one word
we call it,
                blues! 

Prayer

first the tinkle of the cymbal
mocking the blasphemous blabbers
who mention its name,
in the same sentence with empty noise
then the boo of the reed flute
to non-discerning ears
to whom the shout of the gods
in its ding rings no bell
then the riot of the drum
against blue, white lies
that the rock & roll
of its beats can be anything
other than the cry of the South
for the spirit of its gods caged
in European museums and art-galleries
 
first the hymn of the wind
humming an Azanian lullaby
then the ocean’s song
booming the mantra
of I and I
disappear the you and me
i am what you are
you are what i am
we are Baraka’s
blues people
of Big Mama Thornton
Lil Harden Armstrong
Nina Simone
Billy Holiday
Lena Horne
Sophie Tucker
Sathima Bea Benjamin
Dorothy Masuku
Dolly Rathebe
Margaret Mcingana
and the song continues,
I and I
disappear the you and me
I am what you are,
you are what i am,
we are the blues people of
Sun Ra
Mingus
Coltrane
Cole
Davis
Monk
Ngozi
Moeketsi
Mseleku
Masheane
Davashe
Ngcukana
Pukwana
one holy attribute in manifold beautiful names
Thandi Klaasen
Eugene Skeef
Nchipi Tabane
compound tongues pronouncing
one holy element
music the pure love in all that jazz
love the only name in all the blues!

Leila and Majnun in Azania  

sometimes i think,
Coltrane and Miles stole,
their compositions
from the jazz
of a black big
female body
she smiled and said:
“i don’t think so,
i know that heaven,
was made from the
hearts of black men
who love their women,
huge or tiny, short, or tall
dark or light-skinned
he smiled back and said:
“because of the power of your voice
the clarity of your mind
and the boldness of your moves
i now know it is a truism,
jazz and the blues
come from the soul,
of black women
bold
beautiful
big!”
she smiled and said:
“if i were to tell you,
all things big and wonderful
small and beautiful
made from the fire-passion,
of black man
super cool and jalapeno hot
i’ll never finish,
from fela to the heron
by the time i arrive
at Tosh and Madingoane
i’ll be dead.”
he burst out in laughter:
“don’t get me started,
on Sibongile Khumalo, Aretha Franklin
Queen Latifa, Dolly Rathebe and Joan Amatrading
i’ll drop dead,
before i come near Maya Angelou, Billie Holiday, and Zola Neale Hurston.”