As we descent from the crest of winter
&
Spring is but a whiff away
There is a renewed zest
Albeit amidst an organic epitaph
Of human strive &
Loss.
Eco in the distance shall our beauty
Contradictions
& firmness
Heaved propped against an unseen monster
While art survives us.
© mmutle arthur kgokong, 2021
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.
21 September
© Mmutle Arthur Kgokong 2014
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
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.
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
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. 3rd 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
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
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
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
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
mmutle arthur kgokong