Mr. Leadership,

I see greed and silver coating your tribal hands, fiercely.

Why is it then that my palm awkwardly covers the shame and guilt on my face?

What is wrong with my face? What is right with your hands?
 

What is this poverty of which we speak?

When your feet are flooded with the water we drink?

Who is this victim to whom we refer xa eyakhw’ inzalo ixukuxa ngobisi?

 

Yintoni na isisele xa izidywili zimunguny' iqhosh’ elingenamngxunya?

Yinton’ iqhosha elingenamngxunya kwiintsana eziqhel’ ukuhlafun’ iimpukane?

Iyintoni yona inkolo kulowo ungenasono?

 

Take my damn hand, lead me on and bend me over.

The truth I hold will never unfold.

My wasted penis throbs at the sound of your monologues.

 

I could cite excitement, but I’m in pain.

I could correctly rape newness to restoration.

But, what is to come then when I could never clean what I could have in the shower?

 

Happy read!

Dear S’duko*,

I lost you months ago. But, no day will ever be sadder, epitomizes despair and confusion, than the one where I realised I had to submit to the loss and let go. For a while, I chose to turn a blind eye to you pulling away; taking with you all the memories, the life along with the company we both had.

 Sure, as evidence recited, I fucked up. And me, being my mama’s son, I owned up to an error you, for reasons I still don’t know, saw as a middle finger. But then again, you had your lover’s eyes while my views could have been swayed by my millions former lovers.

 Silly me for actually believing there’s such a thing as forgiveness.

 Had it not been for the man I had, at the time, I would have lost my mind. Most likely made a fool of myself. His view was and still is that I have wronged you a million times before. How I wish you could tell him he was wrong.

 Today, it has hit me: you left with all the silver while I remained with the soul. Your shadows glitter and your presence are echoed, as I continuously gain emotional stability and physical growth. Yes, I have become fat.

 The voices in my head are correct to think I still love you. But my mama is dead-on to guess that I never meant much to you to begin with.

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To the God(z)

Realness was redefined when you bumped me.

What I knew came to never be.

What was strange came to be.

Realness was redefined when you bumped me.

You found my eyes, and I found God.

You lived so I can know you to be real.

You gave so I could learn to receive.

The frame of mind, all around me, is new.

You call it fresh, I say it’s love.

That which you inserted in me.

The same you welcomed inside you.

Songs need not make sense anymore.

You became the fundamental lyric my lips serenaded.

My mere existence transformed your frown.

You gave me your hand, a job I reimbursed.

Realness was redefined when I gave you the time.

Vaguely, we may have created light. But we had a life.

Happy read!

16 Days of Activism against gender violence

In a classroom outside of Johannesburg, a teacher pressures a young student to have sex with him, telling her that she’ll fail the class if she does not.

 Not far away, in a living room late at night, a victim of domestic violence, afraid she’ll get beaten again, acquiesces to the drunken insistence of her husband and endures intercourse.

In a one-room house in Kwazulu Natal, a young man listens in confusion and anguish to the news that his sister has been raped. No one knows whether the rapist was HIV positive or not.

 

Original author: Dean Peacock, Men as partners: South African men respond to violence against women and HIV/AIDS.

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Lovers on the cross

I suspend myself and swing my arms all over the bed,

My back pressing the sheets, his eyeballs lust over my nipples,

That time, his testicles hang on a cross

A cross nailed by a man whose name rings the doorbells of the past

 

The roles have changed. I am the man he is

And, he has become me, but his presence has otherwise multiplied.

I am skinny, boy you’re so fat.

 

He approaches. There is middle ground.

He finds me. I see him, coming.

He mumbles words evidently of erotic nature. There is middle ground.

I find him. He sees me, coming.

 

Happy read!