ABC,s

"It takes just 26 letters to create a universe
The world is dismantled and then reassembled
Through the lens of a pen and verse

I have lost myself in books
And then found myself in words
Living in a world without imagination
I can think of no fate that is worse.

I’ve walked through the lives of individuals
Whose eyes I’ve never known
I’ve been to cities and villages and country sides
Whose skies, to me, have never been shown.

It was in this solitary cell
That my greatest strength was honed
I saw that my mind was just a shell
And it’s abyss simply a hole

And the hell of a heaving heavy heart
Is still my friend
Every story has its place
And history never ends

The writer is an architect God child at play
On a canvass of memories
She lies naked between the covers
Her own lover
Her own worst enemy

Navigating between extremes
She is both the judge and the judged
The vile despised and attacked
The unashamedly beloved

The unassuming friend who’ll tell your business
When you’re not in sight
She pulls commotion out of stillness
In the cavern of the night

And South Africa is a fractured mirror
A paradox of schizophrenic selves
Who don’t talk to one another
Who fear each other

Who revere each other
Who loathe
And pretend
And try to blend in
With each other
And this is the time when you can become
The greatest substance of your dreams
Unless you live in a shack
And don’t speak English
And don’t know what this poem means

Tell me how it’s possible for people
Who walk on gold to not know how to read
Tell me how publishers who’ll never taste their tongues
Can comprehend the words that these people need
Because they’ve never been scared of stories

The ones who uttered the very first
The ones who’ll hand them to their children
Calling out the rivers of their self worth
The ones who’ll write a narrative in the ear
But who won’t call the ear a page

The ones who’ll rhyme without pens
And perform without a stage
I don’t have all the answers
I’m just a colonized African

Who breaks down the Queen’s English
Until Sesotho understands it
Still I’m compelled by those
Who may never inhabit my language

I wonder if trials and translations
Could help them to traverse my landscape
South Africa is an old fashioned mutt
Who knows how to sing

And knows even better how to cuss
Who knows how to piece together prayers
When she’s about to run out of luck
Who knows how to laugh real hard

When the tears have run her into a rut
Who knows that race is a farce
Because when the light’s are off

Every body’s fucked
And when the welts and wounds
Demand healing salve
Words are just enough"

Lebo Mashile♏