mxolisi dolla sapeta

violent seed  

 

i am from a violent seed ─ a legacy of vulgarity

a suitcase packed with stones and bullets 

across the railway line things may seem different

but on tv and in the neighbourhood temper is boiling

 

every night i dream of a violent childhood

an unfair love from both my parents

now deceased ─ left no money of course

my father casts a fearsome shadow behind all my mirages

his tongue still blocks my ears with a sharp trill                                                                   

my mother’s voice was soothing though she never smiled

 

I never mock the drunken anger in my neighbourhood

it’s the wine we drank on fridays that made us happy

the girls made us happy too

they also gave us children we never wanted or trusted

love was a mysterious nagging word we did not know

and i never managed to say

 

this is my house!

the heroic words my father used when he was drunk

there was always something suspicious about happy people

everybody’s weapon was a fierce temper

 

on new year’s day in the beachfront

people look poor but fat

and the colour of the grass is a bleached fawn

the whites are stubbornly holding onto their pompous standards

holding hands together ─ ice cream cones with hopeless hands

they are becoming redder than a yellow-white

their smiles have missing teeth and truths

their eyes are a glassy cold blue

like the unforgiving ocean shores

 

i could not even find a tiniest lime light from my girlfriend

she had long disappeared behind the screens of soap operas

and the makeshift beauty salon containers jammed in street corners

to ease the constant pain of being a black woman

in an unimportant township somewhere in africa

her only weapon was a borrowed beauty,

a sexy body, and the endless fashion trends from china