SERAME ICEBOUND MAKHELE

Born in the 80’s

Six years beyond ‘76,
Welcomed growth a bit,
With the flow,
To the rhythm on my heartbeat.
Raised my clenched fist amid the haze,
fuming during my birth-age.
Vivid to them - the world deceivers.
Like them, 
my peers,
So shall I be,
fall into mental cage.

Common mechanisms of thinking, 
acting along the cliché.
Then join the voyage inside the slave-boat,
destined for moral disgrace.
Deception, decadence, 
squalor accepted - a complete damage,
brain-washed by anti-Christ, 
anti-Selassie, anti-Garvey, anti-Biko.
They call it “The New Age.”
 
Then the Creator whispered deep into my soul:
“Icebound, 
flip between both pages of the Bible.
Do not hesitate, my son.
Send them this message.
Tell them in your generation,
tell them in your generation,
That it is Jehovah -
The God of Selassie, Garvey and Biko -
Who led you through this terrain.”
Born in the 80’s.

Writers’ Prayer

We humble ourselves
Through our forever trembling lips
Before your ever-shining light
Whose eternal gleam
Supersedes any form of gloom
Over and under

The Creator of Verses in Unison
Give us this day, our daily bread
Forgive us in return
of forgiving those who trespass 
Through the laws of grammar
oh mother, 
forgive us again for contravening the laws of punctuation
And for the misplaced rhymes, sometimes.

Protect us from any form of writers’ block
Or plot, for sometimes,
Even the exhausted vocal cords
Attempt to represent us at courts 
Set up to demolish any move towards a just course 
 
And just because, father
A poet has been granted a poetic license 
Cannot guarantee any form of sense

One Azania, One Nation

Hardnosed voices released,
from automatic noses of guns,
cursing Azanian masses with evil verses-
shattering eardrums.
Black Azanian masses throwing stones
against the colonisers’ cornerstone.
With this milestone, faces rose,
threatening apartheid’s throne.
I passed through smoke clad roads
tear gas clouds, 
grenades that choke.
Rifles, pistols,
clenched fists raised,
banners glimmered,

tyrants dazed.

I chanted with passion:

One Azania, One Nation.

From classroom, to confronation,
Black Solidarity, 
our obligation.

The Poet’s Protest

Born to flames,
Conceived in between rows
Reared to spark riots
And fled the norm
Circumvented paths of super-stars
This royal son, 
A societal black-ship
That causes riots
Even during this season
When status-quo questioning 
Is labelled as chaos
A non-patriot
That treads harshly on red-carpets
Even at times at gala-sermons
Where imbibing venom
Is a vivid norm 
A random pick-up on few issues
Now Check’it…

Unemployment, inequality and poverty 
And countless other foreign concepts
Injected forcefully into the mind-sets
And thinking-tendencies of my peers
I’d like to launch a protest
Against cultural ignorance 
Of today’s writers and the so-called poets
Who see but refuse to speak
About what the eye receives

My awareness campaign to you poet
Social ills are fast approaching peak
Today’s peace, means war
April 27 ’94, has come and gone
So they say, you reap what you’ve sown
Biko, Hani, Sobukwe,
Never planted seeds 
That should bear these rotten crops. 

When missiles growl

Into the outskirts of comfort 
The link between to and fro 
Between forgiveness and remorse 
Deeds not of their own orchestration
Haunt them towards coffin hovels

Snarls of violent clatters
Nightmares between half awake and fast asleep 
No hell worst as this
Shall persist beyond nor beneath

Pulse of punishment
Since infancy towards impotency
Rifles remain pregnant 
Set to conceive
A buckshot of eternal lifespan

Envy for soil
Killing is toil
Harvest of oil