On Poverty

The true plight of the human

Poverty is dehumanizing. It creates an endless hunger in its victims. It renders you hopeless. Your brain slows down, it blinds you and kills you while you walk. You wander around, looking for sympathy. You exist for the next moment, live by default, by hope. 

Age gives you some dignity but you cry out for the bad in the world. Simple tasks become difficult. You think the world owes you a lot. And it does. It offers itself each morning but in your pain there’s comfort. Like a pig in shit, you do not know better. They robbed you off your ability to enjoy your labor. But they gone now, those beautiful thieves, yet you have been crying on that street corner, clutching onto what you had. You birthed your kids in that misery, they grew up to be bitter, fighting everyone but the thieves. When you breathe in poverty, there isn’t much to exhale. 

The whole world in you

She sat cross legged in her room.

The world’s burdens did not rest on her shoulder

She was trying to find a way to sit with the world in her womb

Braamfontein

This town has a stale smell of all the people I held clenched in my palms.
My palms are glummy with sweat from those I have struggled to release.

Response to seeing the sun

Well it moved me to write this:

Maybe our hearts must break entirely so we can learn to feel how real feels like.

To feel everything, no alcohol required.

Sometimes I feel the good, the good sinks in and my soul dances in response to the rays

It claps along to the chirp of the birds and this feels so good.

I drag my“feels so good” knowing there isn’t a better way to describe the simplicity,

Of watching the rain fall ,but even better

Seeing the sun after two whole weeks of showers.

Knowing you were wrong for thinking that the sun may not come out again

Of course you never shared this fear with anyone

But God knew

You hung your clothes up and it out it came

You had to learn to dance with the sun for the first time ever

It was a struggle but once you forgot yourself

It was easy, still is. 

You couldn’t see the rays but you moved in accordance to where they struck

Whether it was your bare shoulders or you’re your nose

The only places that ever show evidence of your long love affair with the sun

Joy was injected into your body.

Full of life you bounced like a new born baby.

God smiled. You giggled.