Lockdown: Just maybe…(Day #8)

Eight days into lockdown, Baba is home every night ,he shares meals and childhood adventures with us. The fire is his eyes is reignited; lighting up his face. There is no reek of alcohol in his breath, no anger in his voice; and there is no disgust or fear in Mama’s. The void of silence and thick tension that use to consume us, is now filled with laughter ,and proximity.

It’s in the way he looks at Mama, with that stuporless glare of adoration and remorse. Contemplating and regreting his past actions. It’s in the way he humours my little sister’s million questions ,and the energy with which he feeds her curiousity, as if he is just discovering Fatherhood for the first time in his sobriety.

Maybe there is good to come off this lockdown, just maybe this will mark the end of absence, and emotional deadbeats will understand the impact of mere presence. Mhlambe this —enforced time with family and all those that matter—will provide rehabilitation, and we won’t have to lose anymore siblings and role models to the abuse of substances.

Maybe Baba will again feel more at home in this one room slum with us, than at the tavern pits with moral-less scavengers .

Maybe beyond this ,the good will outweigh the bad. And time spent caressed by the energy of those that value us , will help us gain a little bit of humanity, and we’ll look at responsibilty as another way of cultivating empathy .

Just maybe…. ©

Pit Toilet.

Nothing demands your endurance like a pit toilet,you have to hold on to get relieved. To avoid an excrement splash plunge,you have to hold on tightly to the walls so you don’t cave in with the equally dilapidated seat. While keeping your ears trained as antennas ,for privacy is never guaranteed .

You have to be physically fit for a pit toilet,in there you half crouch and half sit.
You have to be prepared to endure the smell of mixed,soupy faeces…clogging your nostrils; making your stomach churn with rippling nausea. The tickling agitation of thick ,green flies using your skin as egg dumpsites or…mating platforms.You can’t even breathe through your mouth for the fear of what you might swallow .

In a pit toilet. You never get completely relieved. You rush in there to get rid of a stomach bug, and come out a host of an even more lethal bacteria.

Broody Hen [A Narrative]

Negligent…

“How they planned to keep that leaking relationship afloat beats me!”

With her guttural , resounding voice she begins .
In between long tokes of tobacco.

“Now that its submerging,they’re using the children as oars to row away on their single boats in spite of each other.”
©

Mwandishi (Misconception Of Masculinity)

He is a libertine who lost his character in acts of a self proclaimed master of polygamy,
He changes maidens with assorted boxes of delicacy, blowing wealth intended to be a legacy,
While he whisper sweet nothings to his mistresses under these trees in the orchards in illegimate amatory, home is where he carries his physical brutality,
Haunted by the conscience of his infidelity,
….he rupture bones, puncture ribs,
Strangle his wife while his daughter watch to emphasise his supremacy
“I am the head of this house!!” he addresses aggressively,with the boot of his treachery he tramples her dignity.
Submissively,she bows before his misconception of masculinity
She hugs her daughter firmly and whispers
“Excuse his corroding humanity, love is strength and ability. A heart that forgives suffer the less misery.” her voice tremors with agony,
Mwandishi weeps for her Mother with sympathy,
Seven years after her birth, witnessing first the side of marriage that drips with cruelty,she made an internal promise to forever despise the knots of matrimony.

Broody Hen (A Narrative)

Mwandishi Trilogy.

© Copyrights reserved 2018

Acoustic.

Gogo will sit on her plastic matt,the sound of friction as her worn out marrows rub.She folds her bipedal limbs…

 Her wrinkled slender fingers will beat at the chords,in a slow slow hypnotic tune,her blood will pulsate at the very vivid connection with the rhythm…

Drawing a breeze,her diaphragm will heave..as if the molecules of her oxygen were bonded with musical notes… 
The Acoustic.