Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Me thinks Love

When time passes me by, I stare into space and faces haunt me like ghosts dead and back for revenge, I remember a time when I was everyone and everyone was me - the world was mine and I was property of the world. It’s hard belonging to myself for once. I am emotional, for some reason I live for these days when I don’t feel special, I await the moment of waking, a screaming in me can’t let me live like this. These days prove how strong I am and how much the dream, no, the hope grows in me. They all say that hope is dangerous – it never tells you when to stop, but what happens when hope has stopped and you need it to continue, because hope is what keeps us alive. How long will it be till the dream is real, how long will it be till I feel my heart at rest? Time will pass by even before we can utter each other’s names. Searching through my recent memories faces escape me, feeling remains and a brief smell your cologne – nauseating. Love making me dizzy, filling the empty spaces I live with, I fall off the merry go round… this dream may be too happy for who I am. I walk away, no run away… I don’t want you to make me happy, I want to hope for a better me. What happens when the dream happens, then what ? I don’t want to live after the dream; I want to live the dream. Hoping, keep hope alive, I hope it’s here, I hope he is here.

Love where are you?

Monday, April 12, 2010

How dare you love my blackness

And so they suffered through times of hardship and endured bruises on their dark unsightly skin. For years they worked on fields and looked forward to a lynching or two. Hey they even got kicked out of their own land and were treated like animals! Oh yes, but they fought until they cried blood and sweat tears. What do they have to show? They gained freedom! But who arr they? Aah yes, they are those beautiful black men that we love. Lets not forget the women that fought just as hard if not more. Yet this is not about that struggle. No its about the way you love my blackness. A woman I am - your love is a strange struggle that tears me down to my soul. Remember yesterday I was the flower that poped out of your eyes yet today I am everything you never want. Is it because the bruises u left on my body are unsightly. Or is it because my nappy hair and dark skin do not suite your life. Maybe it is the spirit that burns in my eye and gives life to the dead. You love my blackness because you think you understand... Black man black man... Why do u treat us so? Love me entirely - my soul has no colour.

Face off… Photoshop on… me off… them on…


Before you get offended, which I bet you will be by the time I am done, at least listen to what I have to say. Just the other day, I was listening to a song, by a guy or guys and for the life of me I cannot remember their names – I have this problem. However, besides my dementia I do remember what they said in the song (SA musos by the way). One of the rappers said something to the tune of – girl your face looks so good on Face Book and well, continued to say (in my words) you don’t look like that picture for real. It got me thinking, a lot of people pose and take professional pictures and ask their art director friends to work their pictures so that they can have the perfect face for Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, gmail or whatever else needs a still picture on the web. I am not saying we all do it, but If you are anything like me and end up looking like a monkey in it’s habitat, then I suggest you Photoshop, I am the only person who has the guts to live free like that. It just becomes a bit of a problem when you actually have to meet the people that think you look like Cleopatra Queen of Egypt’s facial reincarnation – can’t Photoshop real life now. There is an episode of Boondocks in season two when Grandad (Jebedia Freeman) starts internet dating and boy does he run into the nastiest women… funny, but it happens. What was interesting about that episode was the hot chick, it felt like her personality compared to her internet personality were not the same person.

Aaaah introduction done let’s get to the jist of what I really want to talk about. Besides the song by people I don’t know, there was a particular Monday when I stumbled on a radio station that, should be off the air (the one with the boring Indian guy in the morning). Well, upon stumbling on this radio station, I heard a lady who was on the 9’oclock slot complain about how real people on FB were and how people on twitter were fake and always trying to be smart. For a moment I was baffled, because if anyone has read my tweets they are far from smart, in fact it is an expose of how juvenile and idiotic I am. But, as usual there I was making it about me.

I picked up the phone and asked a friend he said: “You idiot. You can’t tell me that you don’t know that the people on twitter lie about who they are? In fact most people are doing it, there are very few people that are themselves there. Very few in reality.” Now I was concerned, I mean there had to be a feasible explanation. I decided that he can’t be right, because he is just a moron. So, I asked a girl, she said: “Twitter is full of Narcissistic attention seekers that will lie about anything to feel like they are part of something” (I was offended at this point, yes I like attention, but I don’t lie to get it. I am narcissistic.) She continued to say: “Some people are real though.” I pondered and pondered about this and then I read through my timeline and all of a sudden, it didn’t feel the same. I saw couch revolutionaries, same opinion groups, it started to seem like everyone was following one big tweeting god(dess) and saying what he/she said.

Ok let’s go back a bit, when I got onto twitter, I ignored it for months – then when I was broken, lonely, homeless and at life’s edge, I began to tweet. The people I saw on Twitter gave me hope for some reason. It made me feel like there was a bigger plan that I could not see yet, but somehow it was there. I cannot begin to tell you how twitter healed me. The only friend I had as a couch surfer and the only place where I could be me and not the broken couch surfer girl. Tweeting from my elcheapo phone I would buy R5 airtime and get my tweet on. I felt normal for once. That is how my relationship with twitter started – hence I am so concerned when I find out I am talking to characters rather than people.

So, I went on and un-followed the ones that made me feel that they were unreal and followed rather the more knowledgeable, funny and less pretentious tweeters – the ones that will have that moment of weakness and say: Yes, I feel like crap or yes I am glad Terreblanche is dead, Or those that admit to be big dreamers, but know that they and the world around them is not perfect. Those that love animals, love children, love life, writing, dancing, living, singing, being and are not afraid to leave the web and come by to say hi. I feel quality in those that I follow – they are people I am grateful to twitter know, because every day, I learn something new and I learn to be a better person.

Now the real questions come: Are these people real? Are these people really being who they say they are? It’s twitter, it doesn’t matter, what matters is how they make me feel and I feel grateful.

Awake

A blur in the window

An awakening of the mind

The people upstairs are awake

And I live at the top floor

The people upstairs

Upstairs in my body

I meant brain

They speak so loudly when they wake up

There is nowhere to run

The people upstairs

They make

Make me

Make me do

Me do

I do things

They tell me

Darn it

I can’t remember

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

The Irony of happiness

In loving memory of Oarible Sebapo

I have not spoken to Oarabile in at least three months, so when a thought of him crossed my mind on Friday night I paid no mind to it. I was mad at him, not any fault of his or mine, but he was guilty by association. I told myself that I was better off without him and his boyfriend. I was sure of this. No-one cuts off people like I do. I have a 90% success rate at that. I never thought it would lead here.

When I received the dreaded call I was sitting in the beer garden at the Rugby at St Johns, having a fat conversation about Terreblanche and his death and how we think it was planned. As, soon as the phone rang my heart stopped, I have no idea why. It was Kabelo, we spoke on Thursday, I wonder what she wants. We had light conversation for at least a minute then she said

“I have really bad news, but I can tell you later.”

“No, tell me now!” was my reply. I believe in ripping off the band aid, I want to deal with it then and there.

“Oarabile drowned in Moz this weekend.”

“He did what?”

“He drowned.”

“How is Tshego? Where is he? Thanks for telling me – see you later”

I sat at the beer garden and jumped back into conversation with my friends, I blocked the tragedy out. I sat there caught between world and it began to rain, I decided to go home ( Ok my sister forced me to go home).

When I got home, I thought to myself, the last time I saw Oarabile he was crossing the street, I wouldn’t say hi because he and his boyfriend made me mad. I decided to cook so I wouldn’t have to think about him, I was not hungry I was just cooking, then it came to me. I started singing somewhere over the rainbow to stop the tears, and they began to flow like the Nile considering that hours before I was in denial and not the river in Egypt. I had forgotten what it felt like to really hurt and at that moment, I was hurting like my heart had been dead for years. Oarabile is dead, Oarabile is dead, Oarabile is dead!!!!

I stood in the kitchen, crying, singing, cooking and thought revived itself. I remembered a day, they day I asked him how he knew he was gay (what a straight question right?). He said that he had always known, he just never accepted or knew how to deal with it. He told me he had tried everything to rid himself of it before and the more he could not accept his gayness the sadder his life was. He told me of his many suicide attempts. I remember the one story he told me - he said “ I drank so many pills Chumi neh, and I told my flatmate, I did not even go to the doctor, we went drinking after that and I am alive – clearly God is keeping me alive because he has a purpose for me.”I was with him on that, I mean God preserved him through all the misery that he suffered.

He carried on to say that ever since he accepted his sexual orientation he was happier and less angry at the world. He had also fallen in love, his world was finally coming together. The sadness was gone, the thought of dying a memory… yet in the peak of his joy, on a Holiday, when he was finally happy to be alive, God took him. He was finally happy, then he was gone.

RIP Oarabile Sebapo, I will always love you.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Kgomotso



She walks around with a vacant confidence
She is alone but she moves through the crowds
She makes friends with everyone she passes even if it’s for a second
Her voice is loud and proud
her posture pushed forward
She stands tall
Façade
A Façade
She knows this
She puts on her confident bold façade
Day by day with her make up
She dresses herself in a bold scent
No not her
You cannot get her down
She fits in with the different cliques
Her new friends
Not the ones from yesterday or the day before
Her friends are new
They don’t know her tears
They have no idea what her struggles are
She is bold, confident… a new kgomtso
They hang out, she fits in
Glass after glass of red wine
Bottle after bottle
Then…
The broken kgomotso emerges
The night has been long
Her make up is wearing out
Her bold scent is withering away with the winds of comfort
She speaks
She talks about him
She hums his name
She breaks her façade
She cries
Closes her eyes
Opens them again
Her new friends are gone
Tomorrow she will have new ones
They don’t know
They will never know
Ki mang Kgomotso