Poems Rethabile Likes

December by Sihle Ntuli | Poems Rethabile Likes December by Sihle Ntuli as if the sunshine could not burn hot enough. the flame, the name summer itself so unassuming. today I woke with rays, sharp edges pointed, towards me threatening harm. I dream of ice cold on the tongue, silencing the thirst, smothering the conundrums of half-full- half-empty, a glass I once shattered only my mouth left open, gathering rain, neck as a waterfall. the mirages of December have come. there is no more water here, only beer now. all the years I turn down temptation soften my resolve. ...

Anguish Longer Than Sorrow by Keorapetse Kgositsile | Poems Rethabile Likes Anguish Longer Than Sorrow by Keorapetse Kgositsile If destroying all the maps known would erase all the boundaries from the face of this earth I would say let us make a bonfire to reclaim and sing the human person Refugee is an ominous load even for a child to carry for some children words like home could not carry any possible meaning but displaced border refugee must carry dimensions of brutality and terror past the most hideous nightmare anyone could experience or imagine ...

The Bay by Fiona Zerbst | Poems Rethabile Likes The Bay by Fiona Zerbst I There, on the shore, those broken rocks fragment the light and shade. I see you on the sand, waving faintly from that other side, where life seems a mirage in dimming green – your face now clear, not seen-unseen, because I am awake. The sea offers up waves in which you wade until you’re almost solid again, alive within the poems you made. II You loved that bay. It glitters, of course, with grey-tailed fish in swilling green, a foaminess that brews in the sun above a wave that runs without breaking. ...

Words Against the Clouds by Breyten Breytenbach | Poems Rethabile Likes Words Against the Clouds by Breyten Breytenbach —‘shoe’ ‘desert rose’ ‘mud’— (luck wanted that I could today pick up a few words for you to be able to describe that one doesn’t only walk and think about nothing on the ground, but also about words in their meaning be seen, between toilet rolls, images, fossilised fish (don’t step on the wrong words! ‘laying the terror of mines,’ you once said ‘is in the delayed action; plant your bomb and one day, much later, someone who you don’t know is blown sky high’...

Dig by Vonani Bila | Poems Rethabile Likes Dig by Vonani Bila Do not dig your own grave, The dark clouds shall soon clear. A man never sleeps Where he shits. Grab this fragile heart, Wrap it in a fresh-pack. Squeeze love’s sweetest juice In silence. Dig harder & deeper For you refuse to dream higher & louder. The halitosis hits you in the nose And you stand on the cusp of a cataclysm. Please do not dig too deep, Chongo, Do not even use sharp hoes & picks. Just dig deep enough To cover your feet. Dig, but love is a deep hole ...

If This Life Is All We Have by Dennis Brutus | Poems Rethabile Likes If This Life Is All We Have by Dennis Brutus if in fact it is all we shall know as indeed may be most probable and if, as is reasonably certain we shall have no more on earth then it is wrong to lament — wrong to wish for the end of life wrong to feel one must drag somehow through and surely one must do whatever one can fill each day with as much as can be done while we live, we must fill each day with living and do each day as much as we can of what seems to us worthwhile; all that is good, as we understand it all that stirs us with a sense o...

Courage – It Takes More by Phillippa Yaa de Villiers | Poems Rethabile Likes Courage – It Takes More by Phillippa Yaa de Villiers It takes more than breath to be alive more than blood to find your line more than a hand to throw a stone; it takes a heart, a heart beaten into bricks and built into a house a house where humanity finds a home. The house is in the street and the street lies on the land, a land of corpses and speeches, a land of lies. The lies we tell to keep the best for our own – family country god whatever we imagine is our home. The best of us are rivers who give themselves to oceans, rivers who ...