Category: Poetry

Posted in All, Poetry

STONE COLD, WARM SOUL

Posted on by Mpho Mathaba

I cannot read you stories, nor can I write stories about you; so I will write stories about what you could have been.

m.g.m.

First cramp and baby, I was ready;

Ready to hold you in arms,

To promise you my eternal love.

Ready to go through the temporary heart-wrenching next hours of pain,

Just to finally bring you into this world.

 First trickle down my legs

And my swords and shields were set,

Ready to protect my little girl from the big bad wolves.

My precious fighter baby,

Fighter from the day you were conceived;

But my baby, they said the carpet was stained…red.

Red.  Red.

You were warning me,

Waving red flags,

Shouting “Mama, save me”,

But mama went numb to your SOS;

Shocked up and shut down.

I woke up from that dream baby,

Woke up without you in my arms

Or anywhere in sight.

Woke up to shameful doctors

And to your daddy’s tearful eyes.

Whispered “where is my baby”

With the answer already clear in mind,

That was not a battle you could have won alone.

Woke up to hesitant extra careful we are very sorrys.

Where was my baby?

Give me my baby!

When I fought to see you,

It was not to try affirming their words,

It was to try another fight,

But I’m not God.

Not even my motherly caress on your cheek

Could breathe life back into you.

All I wished for was to kiss you goodnight

But my only kiss was saying goodbye;

Goodnight till forever, my baby.

When your skin met mine,

All emotions fled me,

All but adoration and a love so loud,

So loud it rang through every pore of my being.

A noisy love for your pale limp figure;

You,

My burning love in a body of ice.

Cradled you to my chest,

Held on to you for dear life because

My baby, with you,

Stone cold felt like a burning comfort.

Grief is a hard chain on me,

My baby, I’m drowning.

Tell God you need me,

I need you.

This melancholy never gets old,

My peace is never quite real.

I am in pain, baby.

It hurts.

Come back,

Mama is lost without you.

…

still birth

my soul drowns in grief

still birth

I am still in disbelief

still birth

my baby is gone

still birth

it’s all too much to bear

still birth

how does a mother mourn the life of her child who never lived

who never lived anywhere but inside of her?

.Mpho

Posted in All, Poetry

IF THEY COULD COME TO ME

Posted on by Mpho Mathaba
Unfreeze my alphabet….

If only they could move to my fingertips,

Then would I free my heart from the chains;

Would I release my soul from this jail in me.

If only these words could come to me.

If only could they fill the chambers of my brain,

Then would I fight off this sadness, my tormenter;

Would I manipulate them to get the happiness, my desire.

If only these words could come to me.

If only could they be part of my imagination,

Then would I get these songs and find these daily tunes that fill me up;

Would I put down the lyrics to my melody and make my symphony a reality.

If only these words could come to me.

If only could they make up a sensible part of my creativity,

Then would I move on from the past that haunts me;

Would I forgive the ones that pained me.

If only these words could come to me.

If only the right ones could be put down,

Would I make up a logic suit enough;

Then would I find the remedy to the illness in me that seems chronic.

If only these words could come to me.

If only could they form just one meaningful phrase,

Would I get rid of my fears;

So I would find my voice and speak up.

If only these words could come to me.

If only this pen could put it down as I wished,

Would you have received a thousand letters and more on your doorstep;

Waiting to be opened so you would uncover the truth.

If only these words could come to me.

If only this paper never flew away when it should not have,

Would I have unlocked all my pores and put my heart out for you;

Then would you know of the beats I keep producing just for you to hear.

 If only these words could come to me.

If only my hands could not shake as I wrote,

Would I make you realize how I am left incomplete;

Because maybe a part of me ran off into your eyes yet you never really realized.

If only these words could come to me.

If only they could come as off swiftly as I imagined,

Would I bring an end to the brutality brought by my own deeds;

Then gain forgiveness from the ones I have wronged.

If only these words could come to me.

If only I could find the perfect arrangement of these syllables,

Would I put an end to my ignorance;

And seek answers to the questions I always wanted to ask.

If only these words could come to me.

If only I had words understood by the entire universe,

Would I look up to the clouds and gain knowledge;

Get to know if they could ever really understand the connection I feel,

Or maybe it’s all in my head.

If only these words could come to me.

If only these words could reach every end of my fibres,

Get into my head so I could feel them pulsing through my veins,

Pool up every cell of my imagination,

The centre of my creativity;

Cloud my vision like tears,

Stay like wax in my ears,

Become the saliva on my tongue,

The air I take in and out of my nose;

If only these words could come to me,

Because they look like the way out,

A path that leads to a better destiny,

A cure to my aches,

A method to overcome my fears,

The aid to my struggle,

The meaning to my tuneless tunes;

If only these words could come to me,

For they are the bread I am hungry for,

The liquor to quench my thirst,

The fulfilment to my cravings;

If only these word could come to me,

For they are the only road to your heart,

My love,

The only ones to clear this confusion and replace it with clear vision;

If only these words could come to me,

Maybe they could turn me into something better;

Not the shy one who can never build up enough courage to stand,

Not the invisible one who can never grasp attention,

Not the child who is taunted by scary images of abuse,

Not the student who is expected to be perfect when she is far from it,

Not the hopeless romantic who has not only fallen for love but for humans too,

Not the sad kid who is forever unwell,

Not the crazy and dramatic one,

Not the one who is killed by the same hope that has to keep her alive,

Not the one who gets the taste of only survival and never life,

Not some picture-perfect little human;

A writer could do;

Not “the great writer”, just a writer,

Because that I could live with,

If only these words could come to me…

.Mpho

Dated: 15/01/2020

Posted in All, Poetry

COAL

Posted on by Mpho Mathaba
Identity crisis: A state of nothingness, of worthlessness of disregard;
of “COALNESS”

Black and dirty,

Extracted with no sparkle,

A discovery not worth appraisal,

Carbon creation but no diamond,

I’d rather be you.

To flee this mere existence

Of nothing but persistent numbness,

This constant survival

As a not special creation,

Much more of an abomination.

You who lives among gems but never could be,

Packaged neatly only to burn to ash,

To leave soot as dirt

And end up just like trash,

Existing as you probably is better.

Better than this undefined character

Which has been designed to be I,

This ball of flesh which remains  undescribed,

Too excessive of everything to fit an adjective,

Leaving me a useless puzzle with several missing pieces.

Ripped off your safest haven,

Grabbed by the cold hands of humans

Who care not about what you have but more about what you can create,

Torn into shreds,

After all, your demise brings forth their warmth.

I’d still choose your life

Over this constant force that keeps me breathing.

The same breath keeps on cutting though,

Sign that even the oxygen does not deem me worthy enough of its consumption,

This universe has in all possible ways rejected me.

Been constantly snatched  from darling mother ground

To be lit and forced to birth flames,

To parent the fire that tears you apart,

That tortures and kills you silently,

As they take in the warmth and sip their wines,

While remorselessly listening to your cackles in the background.

I still prefer to starr in your melancholic story,

The suffering is at least something,

Not this emptiness,

This shallow hollowness that makes me up,

This reminder that I mean nothing.

Letting products of your reaction to destroy you,

These flames of your creation,

Burn you, scald you,

It’s a cycle of your lifetime,

This cruel norm whose clutches you’ve succumbed to.

Everytime these scars reflect back into my eyes,

Flashes of painful prison days,

Of a life spent behind jail bars,

A punishment enforced by own mind,

One I had to fully-serve,

I’d keep choosing your life outline.

Having been born into this mediocrity,

I do not blame you for repeatedly allowing yourself to be ensnared into such a trap,

Giving yourself wholly up for the benefit of those you know not of,

Yet after all this, they find you as nothing but a mass of darkness,

Of soot and ashes that’s oh so unworthy.

I wish I’d be deluded as you are ,

Believe I’m beautiful but how could I,

When the very same one who’d worshipped such a trait of mine lied?

Be convinced I’m full of greatness,

But what even in my life could fall under such criteria?

Know the truth as me being good,

But I shall not deceive myself, I shall not.

Existed as never close to even second option,

You are no material for jewelry,

Nothing that shimmers and glistens,

But in a mixture of you and diamonds,

I’d shamelessly go for you.

Or maybe not.

Maybe despite being so desperate to belong,

Though you so much complement me,

I’d rather stop this game we both got into,

Of running back to fire despite the burns.

I’d rather live in my own invisible shell,

Unnoticed even by the ones who used to notice

My identity’d rather be defined by this nothingness

Than to be something but regarded so valueless.

.Mpho

Posted in Poetry

Nights like this

Posted on by Mpho Mathaba
Calm nights disturb my own calmness.

On nights like this;

I toss and I turn,

I sweat and I shiver,

I let out screams I held back in yesterday night and before.

I scream and shake walls

Like a natural disaster with no forewarning.

On nights like this, there’s an earthquake shaking things up in my room.

On nights like this;

I don’t just cry, I howl

So loud, it threatens a wolf pack somewhere up North,

For not even their Alpha howls the way I do.

On nights like this, my melancholy cuts way too deep to be ignored.

On nights like this;

I relive the trauma and it all feels like a new event over again,

I’ll call it retraumatization.

On nights like this, I open up a new chapter of anguish without closing the old similar one.

On nights like this,

I am too tired to fight the demons,

Too tired to ‘visit my happy place’…a place which does exist but in my imagination.

On nights like this, I let the pain win because there’s really no point to keep fight a losing battle.

On nights like this;

I am the reciprocation of the monsters in my head,

Wild and angry.

On nights like this, my soul is dark and my heart heavy.

On nights like this,

My wretchedness is too clear to see

Even in the dark.

.Mpho

Posted in All, Poetry

Golden Hour

Posted on by Mpho Mathaba
Calm. Beautiful. Golden.

It’s a normal day

After work hours

The city is starting to get noisier

The chatter of streets quite too deafening

I throw on my grey sweater

And get out of the house

Begin my walk away from civilisation

The children are chasing each other

Shrieking loudly

A tired driver is yelling at one of the infants

They really should stay away from the roads

I keep walking…

I pass by the old spaza in my hood

The guys are gathering there in their usual huge glitch

Trying to take in some herbs secretly

They holler at me as I pass

I just shake my head, laugh

Pulls out a peace and passes

Making a turn into another street

Things are busier here

Workers use this route on their way home

The firm employees are complaining about not getting their wages for the second month

It’s heartbreaking

They don’t feel my empathy though because

One of them pushes me off the sidewalk

Making a comment about me being “one of the rich city kids who act as though they own the roads”

That’s okay though

I just pass them with my head held down

Then I make the final turn

My favourite turn

I smile to myself as I take on the dirt road

Up the hill I go

Putting everything behind me

The little argument with my mother

The mess I always have on my back

All behind

I climb up as just some girl

On this rocky creation,

I’m just another normal piece of nature

The top is beautiful

I navigate through the overgrown path to my usual spot

My hood is off

I feel light

Free

I sit on the usual rock

Listen to the birds chirping

The summer breeze whizzing

The soft wash of the lake below

The water looks almost still

If you look more intently though

There are small ripples of waves causing motion

I keep looking up towards sky

West side

It’s not fully there yet

But it’s coming, soon

So I keep waiting

Till it finally happens

The moment feels ever so surreal

I whip my head to the sky again

And this time,

The rays come down washing on my face

Igniting warmth on my skin

The colour reflecting off me

And suddenly everything quitens

Or maybe it’s just me

But the birds stop chirping

The breeze stops whizzing

The water and the plants stop moving

The sounds in the distance no longer heard

The planet stills

Clouds wrap around the sun

A scarily beautiful pattern

All is calm

Golden.

.Mpho