Khulile Nxumalo

 


Unveiled Surface

Lonely level
Dingy road
Seemed there was none
Leading to us intelligent ways
To seek out for paradise

For real rainmakers
Ones we've really asked for
Draped in a cape
Not one

Overgrown reeds

We have asked,
No, that was not the route
We asked for,

We are both shaken people
We have the oddest needs

You have seen me punitive
I have seen you, sitting down, naked

You saw me take a thin, trite fire
Stretch it outside, as timeless as light
You heard me say then, the power
Has been distributed.

I did not want to belong
In your sole possessions

You saw me plait a plot
Far flung, ready to store
Make more

You saw I was like a wave
I shined and glorified,
All my lovers.

You came close, more than the most, so close
Your tongue could bend
You head, ever revolves

In the echoes of your eye
Extended so high the landmarks

To you
I was shown all the way —

Through a dark tunnel
Explosions, menaces, quizzical quests,
Applauses,

I could never minimise
Why some were busy, taking over the whole world
Chewing, chewing
On it,

Could not completely, guzzle
All of us, walking on it.

We saw mainly, how a rasped regard
Was just a hailing, of a rougher surface,

How mighty is this, pulling down our panties,

A test, planked to the walls of my memory
How we both come, to a complete rest
In just one day.


i amend this dream

expanded, clanging chinks,
stranger and stronger jingles, bugle

and i understand more and more,
why we shop for need
in convoluted jungles,

with our moving minds
unanchored,

with our aggressive desire
to be a conquering vessel
a plump-headed, conquering vessel,

we are far from our dreams
aborted at the end, when alarms
squelch us to awake,

some wake up with a fear
they will never revolt,
nor will we see, the new night
charged with extra-coarse pliable
shadow shapes

thick love, caring dark as the air
it comes leaping
out roars towards you

just squeezes your heart
you can't keep pretending you are brave
any longer,

no even as
eternally
it takes longer
to count

how fair is our town's
piping that supplies
us with water,

it is the shabby attires, my dream remembers
everything else, very little of,

roused in an independent sector, this dream's song,
turned plague, makes my sojourn
lost, in the darkness, standing outside —

time and neglect
a feast of havoc
hurtling winds

a fate devoid of dates, for all those dreaming years.

 


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