Grandmother hearth

looked at her face

And i was confronted by engraved tributaries

Spidying in trickles trinkets in a thousand cracks impressions

 

Hair bleached

By the wink and dosing suns

That peer, skip and dunked away during her lifetime

Silvered not by artificial means, nay-nay

But a grey of knowledge

 

Her magnetic eyes

Washed out as if by thousands and thousandth of life’s film reels

Year in year out as her moon galloped onwards

Her faded fiery orbs giving in to complain as they hold the world with a soft gaze

Dazed and weaned of their potency at everything life has strewn before them in a swoosh

 

Ears sagged

Like heavy puffy bags that held over the years all and all of all noises, sayings, stories

Fabled sagged and suckled

And the potency of listening itself

An art that a few master in their circle of life

Movement obscured by retardation of all miles walked

All grounds conveyed beneath

Her scuffles

Sole screech

Pause

A look here, a look there. Aloft. Brittle.

But cherished as a prime leaf in free fall;

Standing on an extra leg

Squeaky woodenly leg

Indexing the unreliable heavens

 

And as you’re young ‘ones sway in the harsh wind slap blow

Reckon that time claims everything

Somber warm tears shimmer

Meshed with selfish gladness and burrowing sorrow

Oh dear, we’re sated in every seconds of your sageful breath taken with us

And in your spring we’re quelled quenched, nkokoa’rona.

 

• This Poem is dedicated to the matriarch my grandmother Evelyn Kgokong affectionately known as Mmane Baba (8 December 1922 – 8 January 2020). May your commune with the primordial be blissful eternally.

21 September

© Mmutle Arthur Kgokong 2014

Köln 25.09.2006@1515 arrival

the grey sky was as grey grey as a sage’ beard’s mind

whose time fashioned garnished thoughts

like bleached contemplation in the fathoming forests of

grey matter grey brainscape

in harness for one pointedness.

 

toggle-togy-goggle

rolled the wheels of the iron python.

 

aerodynamically vertically

as the iron python curved and darted at intervals of slight side jerks

& front forward pulls

slicing through the last slices of distances

b’ tween berlin ostbanhof and köln ostbanhof

via hannover bielefeld hamm hagen wuppertal

 

beggle-boggle

the mechanical python the distance traversed belched

 

overacross periodically pregnant rhein river

yes that locality that embossed

the effects of Versailles

diggle-drangled-ingled-engled-ingled

we bridged into köln.

au de cologne

ach so!

Water from köln

 

where the roman empire once cobwebbed itself and

where the deutchman hints in reminder hint

and surely reminds you

forthcoming of word colony

cologne ach so!

thee I paced when I had just turned to p/age thirty.

 

© Mmutle Arthur Kgokong wa Makgosa 2006

Love As a Secret Devotion

Aphorism1. Some loves are best tucked neatly away in the shadows of our secret chests; their secretion into the turbulent open may overwhelm those they center around. How rewarding it is though, to the devotee of such a silent love, when it is known outright without much work on their part.

a purple carpet spreads

if our eyes should meet and hold

you should know that I am unbound and free

like a reflection of a dispersing cloud

on the skin of the reserve bank building on a busy summer day

amidst the bustling cocktail of focus and confused mob down below

rectangled by church vermeulen du tuit and prinsloo

shifting and shuffling; askiesing and shoeshing each other

while privately weaving and projecting constructs of ideals

yearns and appeals

to attain; embrace; bracket contain within their talons.

 

but alas! like sand, all attained in this mortal life slip through

know that on an early morning in the infant of spring

i pace the arcadian streest un-assaulted by class nor race;

a purple carpet spread from the sweet jacaranda’ droppings to bid my entry

those droppings that flip-plop-pop-pup underneath the shoeless one

or a soiled dove, the wasted and the invigorated young men and the senior in age

 

right then I shall let it be known to you

that I do my laundry in the tear trickles of a free flowing river

ancient

i wash my vessel in the apies

and towel dry by nature along its banks

between a sidewalk paving and the river itself i lie

 

unwavering before the future like a rock

for an understanding of my own has settled in;

security is a feature of the mind

it’s an adjustment of freewill

 

this I shall let be known to you

as you stare at me the vagabond.

 

that your mere presence before me is a gray area

i can slip mould it to death – goei pound thwart!

for by merely acknowledging you; by rewarding you with a stare

greeting you; begging from you, I am god with a small g blown to a bigger G

for I breathe life into your existence

i am your breath – your sustenance.

With my presence you are

A Memoir of a bench

to the ignorant men who brood atop of me

to the merry tot tiny who mount up

and splatter down splot thud gravity beneath them feet them!

to the youthful who cultivate sinful acts

resting atop of me

humhumm

 

to the greying ones with tributaries of wisdom mapping their solemn-ed moon face tottering around three legged

lamenting for their in-audible plea pledges

for the withered youthful ears turned blind

 

i hear yea

i intimate yea

contemplate yea i.

i experience and

after all experience is time and time an experience.

encouragement read seventh line to ten viz. 3^rd stanza

and pick up fifth stanza to further

chase

these

letters

of

a

remarkable

bench’s memoir.

 

to the narc pusher whose hand devil act animate drug addiction

and the sophisticated ms/miss/mrs who deals

with the shipment of flesh pleasure.

school goer you who dodge school

mochina number picker who try in vain to balloon his earnings

defensive in dream number prediction

i help flock yea people as yea brain pick one another;

and dream scan yea yonder nights for the elusive numeric

 

to the evangelical who preaches heaven and hell

to the ordinary who rest for meditation

and issue juggling

to the trickster

to the honest

silence

shuh

for yea shall become as wool for my tapestry weave i

as rags for my quilting quilt memoir in a public park of remembrance and reminisces

Brotherman/le rock – the rock

i hack my past to once more commune with you like an ^*internaut.

i hack my heart to retrieve your essence

so that I can invoke our bygone moments

as time fashion my heart to accept your fleeting moment

i tiptoe through the labyrinths of my mind to re-enact your clean deeds me brethren

so that i can once more reawaken your philosophies,

to bring them into utility.

like an illusive serpent the presence rolls onward.

 

My first pair of tekkies you bought I man

& i blended with my peers who had ‘’em ‘ready

guiding me concerning youthful things

& as it dawned for me

& as it dawned later in me livity

to also cope with manhood

affirmed in the townshipscape of quarrelsome end – phelindaba.

ashmoreville-atteridgeville

wa mfroestana?

 

u lent me your staff of knowledge

u learned me the stuff of life

you schooled I man

 

to stir the remnants of our memories to animation i hack the past

and as your potent teachings echo I remember brother man your fullness

And I rejoice in the moment of your presence in me life

Me idren.

 

 

Dedicated to Tseko Man Dicksy Nkosi (1966 – 2004)

* see Virilio, P. 2005. The Information Bomb. Verso books

 

© Mmutle Arthur Kgokong 2014

18 June

nkuke’ lost in translation but worshipped in memory

Nkuke

Dumela wena ngwana wa mangole a bo mangolejana

Leitibulo la bokone bophirima

Ko metsing a loleya

kgaetsadi a bo thuso le bo phemelo.

 

Moedi o osaleng o nkoka

O osaleng o timola lenyora mo mometsong wa

Mowa wa mogakanegi.

 

Ke mogaka

Ke kgaetsadi’a gago

 

E tlare fa lo wela lotsatsi la tsenolo ya me lo wena

Nako e efitileng re sa bonane

Ya nna ekete e ne e le motsotswana fela

Gonne re le ngatana ‘ngwe

 

Fa esale

Go ya go ile,

Nkuke

 

*

Nkuke

Greetings the seed of mangole

The northern western firstborn

It is where you spring from; Where the springs are clear

Another poet may utter – that you are like crystal. Nonsense, the specification is clichéd.

At the empty rivers

Sibling to thuso and phemelo.

the abode

 

The river that doctored me

Thirst quenched my throat that quacked dry

Through the sips of elixir; thee the she-hero

 

I am a warrior

Brethren of yours

And when the sun dips its nose for a nod

For the time passed meyou not seeing each other

missed time awfully implodes into a minute

That moans into a memory

Meyou we will flow

Into an echo of oneness,

Nkuke

 

*Dedicated to Nkuke Tumelo Kgomotso Mangole

© Mmutle Arthur Kgokong 2014

18 May

 

A Ballad To The Taximan

click clock

wriggle out of the smother before the nose of the golden disc peeps out

warming up the sixteen sitter loaf

 

click clickity clock

that in twenty four seven

dusk to dawn roaring rearing trough the arteries of Tshwane

or pitoli

or whatever one wishes to call this territory

 

clock clickity click clack

feeding the city with labor

and nurturing the flatlands and suburbs with house keep

 

clang clack clickity click clock

and meanwhile you nurse u-r pendulumous moods

as your patrons impose themselves on –u

 

you smile when it rains

sweat when it is summer dry

 

swell

and burst when we outsmart you

lickity split I will trust in you to deliver

me at the appointed

places o’clock

 

© Mmutle Arthur Kgokong 2014

09 May

the girl of makaunyane

It was on Sunday midsummer morning

As I took her hands in my own

Tiny as they were they were filled with innocence

Their softness propelled unknown sensational of currents,

Liken to water quenching one’s thirst.

 

The one from Maukaunyana

Child of mother earth as cliché as this poem may read.

 

The north westerner took me in her arms,

Like the mother I never had

And with delight I WAS overwhelmed as I travelled her WORLD.

 

UNLIKE my troubled childhood

Her childhood was an opposite reflection of my own childhood

All the things I wished a home hearth should have

Like the never lying mirror which always tell

Of the things that are there outside us

I saw what we could be

And what I could have

 

But then because I goddessed her image

And thought her of lagging in fault falter

When her dark side dawned I scurried away emotionally

When she flipped like all the others before her

I forgot to hold on

To the comfortable memory I had of her

 

And my lego house unsnapped

And crumbled like crumbs from a dried bread

On a poor man’s hot summers’ brunch

As he is pushed towards the edge of fear and despair

Should he gobble away the last nimbly morsel

Whisked fall from his delightful empire

Like a dodgy whiskered umpire

With wind fluttering his whiskers

 

Only to land hard thud

Into the pool of how things are.

That loving someone

Sooner or later gets flipped

And we are flipped too

To see if we can survive the bitter desert

& skip the dessert side of the maiden one

Once claim to love to the gates of Lucifer

To the holy grounds of saintful ones

 

To the heavens of the one in charge

 

If only the dark could be withstood

And the laser chunk rain drops could be waited to pierce the heavy greyed darkened blackened clouds

So that it should rain

Sunshine should return, it would return

Nay it must return.

The opposite always insinuate itself

 

It was on one pitch dark cold night

I remembered the one from makaunyane

The girl

A fleeting charm

A ruff beauty

Her warm embraceful arms wrapped around me like a cotton soft protective shawl

Shield of armour

Shield of companion

Shield of hope

Shelter of love

Home of the simple and just.

 

© Mmutle Arthur Kgokong 2014

10 March

 

The Ring, the Boxer & the Dove

the gloves are off
following the tingly-tingly-tang-dong- of the end of the penultimate round
even before the gong of the bell
reality simply gave me a gentle slap
to lure me back into the matter as it stand in this fight
that i have lost before i flexed me muscles.
me warmed me uppercut
me twisted me head
to unscrew and screw me neck
and charged forward me don it
to duel-duet with the impossible
by our societies standards.

but, a knock out punch
is far much better than letting go
of a dame you’ve worship covertly
& loved overtly for sometime.
minus her lovely presence you have death.
but it is an honorable thing to do for man if he is aware of her dignity & his own dignity for crying silently into a whimper.
for her peace of mind
her freedom to live
for to love someone is to bless them with infallibility.
the boxer will settle for the crumbs now
not the grand prize
the crumbs
those moments when he will see or bump into her by surprise
he will settle for less.
the sniff whiff of her flowery smell
and her form gracefully negotiating movement
as she goes about her life

this questionable cowardice.
is the gent’s love for her.
so the dove is set free.

to splutter into the cloudless heavens unbounded as she blossoms & magnify beyond explanation and ‘the’ exclamation mark!
flap-flep-flip-flap-phew
is the sound of her freely caressing the bosom of the heavens.

 

© Mmutle Arthur Kgokong 2014