Written by: Admin_SheEvo
I am the sting in your strong coffee,
I burn habitual liars’ tongues.
They don’t even feel good between the thighs anyway.
This poem is a melody of praise
for men who mend the ruins of childbirth
and storms,
for women who have experienced
the actual ruptures of soul and spirit.
These words are butter for your cracking skin
during howling winds.
May I love you for absolutely free,
in all the parts they’ve left unloved.
I love you out of the pit of anxiety,
bipolar, or distress.
Where I come from, men were fed before hungry kids,
but I love you until you’re full
of yourself.
This love will drag you out of places
you don’t want to,
out of women who chant love spells
in silent hours of the night,
out of men who think you’ll never call it quits.
I love you before you fish for healing
in crack cocaine,
before you lose control,
even before the migraines.
Look, it might rain,
but I stand still.
If you get ill, I will lick it off your skin.
If someday you decide to kill,
go on, judge me.
We are already wrong.
I have seen tears and mucus of young girls and boys
meet below their chins.
What could be wrong?
When politicians crack families wide open
while selling dreams of a united nation,
what’s sad?
Men who took mining to heart,
that when the mine shut down,
they drilled through their marriages,
I’m hoping to find something, anything,
but there’s nothing.
The outside and streets are so empty.
What’s scary is men who perform rituals
to destroy futures,
it’s causing ripples in actual nature.
What’s finished?
Setho?
Kindness towards humanity.
What’s forgotten?
Love.
I am here
to love you back into yourself.
Come, come into me.
Setswara ke ntsha pedi gase thata,
say it when you’re wrong.
Go down on your knees,
God is real.
You find him in children
who are learning to speak.
Crocodiles are smiling,
Deliwe’s voice is medicine,
I’m healed.
So take it.
Pack this love
because you will need it
when friends walk out,
when you mess up,
and you can feel
the bubbles of emptiness move down your intestines.
Take it
for long rides out of town
to bury friends, we helped dig graves.
Take this love back home,
where our most giant demons were birthed.
Plant it.
See what will be earthed.
I am a giver of love,
tonight, I am all for free.
If you ever need me after tonight,
light a fire;
I am in the core.
Drink tea,
you will find me in the brown.
Call me,
I will answer inside of you.
Click, click your tongue,
I bathe underneath it.
Blink, open your eyes.
If I am your current reality,
you must know I am everywhere.
My old man admires
my decency,
tenacity for those who don’t understand me.
I am a bomb.
I come in explosions of imagination,
I am created in the images
of a thousand Khoi gods and Tswana goddesses.
My mother’s childhood home holds
homes of the rested.
My feet have stomped hard
at playgrounds
above graves of men, women, and children
who refuse to be forgotten.
My feet have dragged me
from door to door
in a hospital,
awaiting a magic compared to none.
When they opened to give the earth a wonder,
my daughter’s name is Lewatle.
Yes!!
Oceans have gushed out
of the meeting of my thighs.
My spine held it together,
not a single crack.
I am hardcore.
I went to sleep
to lullabies in hurls of insults.
No word could ever crack me open.
I am black,
the only darkness allowed
through the gates of heaven.
Oh Freyja,
what more could I ever beg for?
Written by: Kago Bakang Kgosimore
