(8 poems)
by Zeenit Jacobs
Bright Lights
A boy with a pointed finger exults:
“Look at the stars falling fast!”
Collective awe as fifty become one
hundred; bright lights from East and
West illuminate the night sky.
O’er tribal lands and clans; around
a campfire are sounds of clicks and
laughter as father and son look to
the heavens and make a wish.
Turning fast; missiles with tails and
trails of white smoke – from Torre to
Little Brogel, but deaf are they to the
wailing of the night…
Craters in the soil shape into mouths
with fiery breaths from Men who scorch
the Earth. But they hang their heads now
and go to sleep; from Brüchel to Volkel,
with palms-pressed, they sleep.
Rest ye easy, oh simple ones, under
seven glorious firmaments and her
many lamps as the sky falls East
and West.
The Kissing Game
She is the mud between blood
and blood; under his fingernails,
in the crevices of his ring…
Pendulous bulbs buzzing in
a shabby room; the Man
purposely keeps a light on…
Drawing dewy-eyes under
a black cape, behind the
curtain and the closet…
His hands and fingers begin
to speak, and a trembling moth spins
softly around a capricious lamp…
Mahikeng, A Forgotten Place
Have you seen Mahikeng?
A place between rocks and filth;
streets with littered debris are the empty words
regurgitated from the foul lips of an office bearer
crashing like dense hailstones…
the stench of transparent oaths
looming heavy over heads riddled
with holes …
But the streets are hungry too
with holes on their bellies…
burning pangs like the children of Montshiwa
under flickering lights amidst
live wire and festering ponds…
still they drink from the dry river beds
of the Molopo River, under the
glistening eyes of Baralong…
Yes, come and see our forgotten place!
Highbrows with protruding bellies,
pockets of trickery and loot deeper than Wondergat…
she has always been a dumping ground for casualties –
Wars, Sieges and Political Games…
a place of stones, stones we must now
hurl at Ministers who reside in Glass Castles;
those who eat from the fat
of the toiling servants of Bafokeng,
but point to ghosts of the past…
The Man
Stone under weathered
boots, a Man climbs
the heel of a Man…
Foot to calf, and
thigh to trunk,
A Man climbs up the
shoulder of a Giant…
Eating with its eyes,
he listens with its ears,
drinks from its mouth…
Clouds on the head of
a mountain, mountains
on the shoulders of
Men; the Man looks up
and over the Mountain…
Untitled
My heart is an adorned palace.
You have lived here for quite some time,
But you roam its lofty corridors,
Peering into room after room, looking
For somebody else.
Your restless footsteps are like a beating heart,
But this tender organ grows tired and weak,
A palace neither alive nor dead. And yet,
Stay a little while longer my sweet –
One day you will come knocking at my room.
Respond in Kind
A flower for flowers
A dove for doves
A knife for knives…
You
There were two of you,
But I adored the first…
I saw two faces,
heard two tongues,
concealed in one heart…
In two minds you were,
wrestling under cool satin sheets at witching hour
as my silhouette dances across your bedroom wall.
Dusty Hearts
Tender,
lonely, tame and voiceless with
chapped and bleeding lips…
A hand reaches for the sun as she
lies bruised on the battleground…
A place where fools come to die
A star spilling over ashy fingers,
fractures like an X-Ray…
She lies in this prison,
refusing to be helped…
It is the sun she seeks, it is the delirium
that keeps her at bay…
Branded by an old flame,
hot poker on soft naked skin,
she clings to the filth under her nails
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