Black Poetry : Township exile...a bit of africa in here...

mkhaya lo'

Well-Known Member
REGISTERED MEMBER
Dec 1, 2001
428
6
Rand Park Ridge, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Occupation
Journalist
It’s the smell of an early Sunday township morning..
A chilly breeze mixed with smoke emissions from
Coal stoves blows against my face-awakening me to the
Sounds outsides..

Church bells are ringing and young girls rush to the corner
Vegetable vender to buy carrots and pumpkin and potatoes
For a Sunday lunch they may only see again in seven days time..

Women in red and white, purple and white, black and white
Green and white church regalia and shiny shoes carefully tread the dusty
Streets with hymn books tightly clutched under their arms..making their way
To the buildings of redemption where they’ll pray for the sins of the week and afterwards take off their Chaste images and once again start the long list of next
Weeks transgressions for which they maybe shall repent..

And my mind races back and forth to those images of late afternoons
With brook Benton, the temptations Gladys knight, Roberta flack, bill withers
Hugh masekela, Miriam makeba-outside on freshly cut grass girls sit and play crazy 8
And plait each other’s hair..boys walk past and lust after the thickness of those thighs and legs and buttocks shifting from side to side….. hmmmm I’m smellin’ ghetto loving…

But nowadays I’m awakened by the **** neighbours dog once again threatening to bite the domestic worker and the garden cleaner as they come in to pay for their meager wages..impilo yasemakishini
The quietness and so-called serenity of the leafy suburbs has seen a never ending exodus of the educated, miseducated the enwhitened, the coporate, the monied, the envious, all calibers and types of people moving away from the matchbox maze to the big broad streets and lovely pool areas and top security and who cares who lives next door its everyman for himself and besides, sesipucukile my brotha get with the programme..

I too am one of them…a township exile….my life lives in a memory, my future lives in this townhouse, my past lives in that moment, on that early Sunday township morning..
 

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