J.R.R Tolkien, Terry Pratchett, Robert Jordan, Diana Wynne Jones, Robin Hobb, Nnedi Okorafor, H.P Lovecraft, N.K Jemisin, J.K Rowling, George R.R Martin… I could go on and on but the point I’m trying to make is every once in a while there comes around a writer who can barely be called that because the word […]
The Pride of Noonlay
My life’s a fucking mess and I don’t know how to fix it, I have the resolve yes but I truly don’t know where to start.
I saw my mother cry today and I watched her break in half before my eyes for the first time since my father died because of the situation her and I are in financially and how hopeless it feels and how it keeps deteriorating, I cried with her as I held her. Hell we almost lost our home this week is how bad it’s got. And you wanna know what the funny thing is, it’s that everyone we thought was family and everyone we helped when they were in a rut, well they’ve all turned their backs on us, heck my aunt who’s been mooching off us (whilst working a steady job might i add) for well over a year now packed her shit and left after we asked her for help and actually I’m not surprised… Here’s the rub, I’m not a person who’s good enough to say I’ve not now got something festering within me against them all because I do and I’ve sworn to whatever all powerful force that’s out there that I will put everything right with my own hands until callouses build on them, because I’ve realised there’s very few people that are real and true in my life, only three actually to be exact, two of them are the friends that actually were more than willing to help out so much so I didn’t need to ask. And I’m happy they’re there and I owe them a great debt and a tremendous amount of gratitude. The other is my mother. It also hit me that I don’t have family, it’s just me and my mother.
Thanks for taking the time to read my slight outbursting outpour.
I can’t tell you for sure how it happened, or chronicle dates and times but I remember how everything else happened. How on a chilly late afternoon sometime in June of 2014 (In Africa we have our winters in June, for those who are not aware of this), the location where this chapter of my life begins is Parktown, Johannesburg, the nice part of the central area of the Johannesburg region. I’d be lying if said was perfect to begin with, living in my uncle’s rental apartment with my mother and sister while I was delegated to sleeping on the floor of the living on a sponge half the length of my body, watching a television set that was probably older than me a skinny teenage boy of 18 years old. Earlier on, about a month before said day the rent had been two months overdue, the power had been cut, which means everyone took plenty of cold showers every morning, now add rapid food shortages, one meal a day sometimes no meals at all, plus the fact that my uncle and mom were butting heads and my uncle having a hot head had given us two days to clear out, oh and factor in the fact that the company that managed the building had given us a final warning to pay back the previously mentioned rent owed. Now that you have a general, tiny idea of what the surroundings were allow me to take on the journey of the rest of this story.
So, chilly day sometime June of 2014, I was anxiously awaiting my mother to walk through the front door with good news, something like “Hey Tsepo I won the lottery and we get to move to Sandton!” and me losing myself in absolute euphoria. But since this is the real world and fairytales exist only in movies and some kind of sports comeback victory that obviously didn’t happen, during the course of the day I had been instructed to pack all our clothes into this giant bag about half the length of a single bed, I had also packed my comicbooks, gaming magazines and other minor belongings of mine into a packback. I was ready to roll, but I was also deathly afraid, why was I afraid? Well because this just happened to be day two of the days we were given to clear out and I was scared my uncle would instead burst through the front door and drop the ancient TV on my head and call it a day, I was on high alert like a guard dog at a chew toy factory.
The front clicked and I literally held my breath, mentally repeating to myself “If it’s him go for the crotch” over and over. The door swung open and enter mom, moving like a hurricane she starts giving instructions, “Drag that bag outside, we’re leaving.” All I can do in this moment is nod and observe as my body begins dragging the big bag across the wooden floor and out into the hallway but my mind is trying to process what exactly is happening, the one clear thought I can remember being a constant in my mind was ‘this is how people become homeless, I’m sure of it’. As my mother and I haul the giant bag with all our stuff though the streets of Johannesburg with nightfall fast approaching my mother is also simultaneously on the phone with my sister giving her instructions for where to meet us, eventually just as it begins to get dark I finding myself looking at the bleak, grey building of a cheap hotel (for the life of me I don’t know the place’s name, heck I walk past it sometimes when I’m downtown), the check in process is a tiny of a blur all I can remember is the face of a nice looking old lady handing us the keys and pointing us toward the elevator, the room flood was covered with a shag carpet that looked like it was wondering how it survived through the 80s to this point, there was one positive that lifted the mood from our ‘we are now officially dead broke’ funk, and that was the fact that we were free of the tyranny of my uncle, that didn’t last long though.
Now at this point in my life I should be in that tertiary education phase and I was for like two days until I realised I had to become a semi-dropout because we couldn’t afford to pay any fees, let alone keep ourselves afloat in this cheap hotel that suddenly after a week started to feel pretty freaking expensive. After barely scrapping by, nearly being booted out a few times we’re in trouble again, we’re short on the room cost cash and mom was out trying to hustle the money to pay up, my sister and I anxiously await her. Now you’d be surprised at how quickly a teenage boy can grow dark and angry even and that was me at the time, barely speaking, always sitting on a bed that was temporarily mine, writing angry poetry and raps, I had no clue what was going to happen in the next hour of every day, let alone beginning to guess what could possibly in a week. I was conflicted with so many thoughts, one of them being that I blamed God for what was happening, being raised in a Christian family one learns stuff like, ‘God watches over us’ , ‘God gives us food and air and life’ , ‘Pray to God when things get tough, he listens.’ Well though tities because if he was there and listening, he must have had me put on voicemail, I can’t even recall how many times I shed a tear after having a one sided screaming match with God.
[To be continued]
You are now a thousand winds that blow, the diamond glints on rain and snow, you are the sun on ripened grain And the gentle summer rain. When you awaken in the morning’s hush in the Fields of Asphodel, be swift in to send an uplifting rush and the quiet birds in circled flight to ease the hearts and tears of your loved ones. For you will light the soft stars that shine at night.
Being a foreign national from anywhere in the world and going to a country where you know almost the entire population will judge and persecute you is never easy. You see my entire life I’ve had to hide my identity from just about everyone I’ve known, save for those I’ve grown to trust. I am a Sotho born Zimbabwean man living in South Africa.
And for a time I never understood why my mother and other many folk I’ve met from my birth homeland cowered so much in the face of a country that’s just as black as they are, with a people who’s language you could learn to understand camouflaging their own dialect just to be in the shadows, a place where a man who would beat and burn you simply because you got a job interview and got the job because you were willing to scrape off the grime he wasn’t willing to because you know in your heart you have no choice if you’re to better yourself.
They hold you a long arm’s length and yet still pretend they actually want you around. Hey I get it there’s the lucky ones who have things go well for them in the transition and that’s great I do hope you are enjoying your life.
And I swear it’s the same for every other form of demographic that does the same, Pakistani people moving to other countries are treated the same, so are the Mexican people who migrate to America and many other demographics I have not mentioned. Believe me I don’t pretend to know what or how a situation changes in order for one to be forced to leave their land of birth that they love to seek the meer chance of an opportunity for a better existence I was never given such a choice, but I do know that part of it is done because of words spoken by shitty politicians promising opportunity knowing for those who are willing and yet the willing arrive bright eyed with hope only to be stomped on.
Here’s a little bit of insight from my perspective, you see in South Africa quite a few of the original inhabitants expect some form of mana to rain from the heavens without any work needing to be done. And as soon as a large number of their own either quits from pure laziness or decide they are too good for it they resort to violence in an attempt to purge and instill fear and during those xenophobic times you’ll see the news covering it, a president calling for calm but nothing being done until the instigators decide they are done.
I’m not the most articulate person and my words sound like an angry rant with no direction and they very well may be but there is truth in those words.
Sincerely, an angry black kid from Africa, in a country that doesn’t really want him
I’m not a poet
But I write what my mind screams about inside,
put feelings to paper minus the intricacies I see in others.
So what am I?
Honestly I have no idea, but I have been soul searching like a traveller on an unknown land with a backpack and a broken compass.
[laughs]. Dear reader do you know your life purpose? That one thing that calls to you even if you plugged your ears?
Because I do but It feels as though I’ll be walking aimlessly for a long time with my broken compass until I reach wherever it sits, without rest but with all these bubbling and uncontrollable emotions raging.
So what am I?
Many humans believe the key to finding one’s self lies in the confines of religion. Now don’t get me wrong dear reader, I do not judge them instead envy their conviction and belief, they seem complete.
For you see dear reader, I did try for the longest time to find myself in a God. Through many priests and different sects of belief, went through it all and baptism…… And dear reader I found….
Nothing….. only emptiness, and so I am now labelled heathen.
So what am I?
Until such a time when I find my soul, I suppose I will continue to be a traveller with a backpack and a broken compass.
I’ve been meaning to write to you, I promise
I’ve just been lost in my head, searching for an inkling of good thoughts
sifting through thousands of figurative boxes filled with
memories, thoughts, dreams, hopes, broken promises.
I even found an brightly colored piece of my heart, I chuckled to myself as I tried to fit it back
it fit of course but it felt warmer than the bits I already have within
oh how I’ve missed this my old friend,
the feeling of throwing phrases into the air and having them somehow make sense
what a strange and fulfilling concept it is to write something like this
you see the past few nights I’ve waiting patiently by my apartment bedroom window
looking up at the sky anticipating the moment you would float over the building across mine and shine your light on me
I’ve wanted to say so much to you but haven’t known where to begin.
moon, my oldest friend, I feel trapped in my own body, won’t you let float up and live with you in the mystic
I am afraid of the voices in my head,
Yes you read right, voices in my head
Now you’re probably thinking to yourself he must be losing his mind
I assure you I am fully in control
But I still fear them, once they were mere whispers in the shadows and now they scream and shout
And whisper louder than before
I lay in my bed and speak with each one as though it were a real person
Clever little buggers they are, they only come in my moments of weakness
When the sadness, the loneliness and the depression take hold
“why do you hang on?” says one in a sultry soothing voice like a parent singing a gentle lullaby
But the words are twisted, laced with a darker intent.
The scary thing is I find reason in what they say. Is it just my mind manifesting thoughts in a different form?
Am slowly losing control of my own psychosis?
Unlike the rest of the world I do not turn to a god/God for answers or ask questions
Because that is futile, speaking to what I consider non-existent shadows in the dark will help me with nothing.
Oh these clever voices they a take it a step further, invading the cinema inside my head and playing horror movies woven from my memories
What do I do? Medicate, get drunk, sleep? All these are temporary in matter of hours as my brain resurfaces from any one of those clouds they’ll be there waiting.
So who’s to blame for the voices named Insecurity, Anger, Pain, Regret and Hopelessness being created?
Is it the people who’ve come and gone leaving scars that cannot be seen like markings on a wall covered up with a shiny wallpaper?
Perhaps, maybe a little, they’ve contributed sure however I say I’m the one to blame, for being a fool that falls for the same traps every single time.
Making twisted enough to create these voices like some demented puppeteer who doesn’t have control of the strings because he infused his own personal demons into them
Who’s to be feared, the voices or their creator……..
how often do you do it
just sit and ponder and wonder
to the point where your mind
feels like its floating in a liquid incubator
and if so what do you think about?
your life? the world around you? how messed up relationships are?
wait I’m sorry, I’m actually infringing my thoughts into this conversation when actually i should be hearing what you think about?
in this one sided silent conversation where I’m doing all the talking…
i just took a huge sigh, you probably didnt hear it but it happened.
as people what are our capabilities and limitations
we all have potential but what can we really do about it
if the world’s expenses hold you down
if your dreams are too big for to reach, that’s how i feel sometimes man
but hey don’t get me wrong I’m not giving up or anything
but sometimes there are days when im fine
but there are says when im depressed as hell or is it bipolar never really went to it but shit happens.
thanks for reading this vent, its probably had a lot of errors but you pulled through
i am depressed, wait that’s nothing new
but for those of you in the same hole i am you can understand
when i say some days, weeks and nights are worse than others
i crave to medicate, get high and blur everything around me
make it all go away for a few hours
or swim to the bottom of a few bottles, because one is never enough
in the book “13 Reasons Why”
there’s bit that reads
‘if you hear a song that makes you cry and you don’t want to cry anymore, you dont listen to that song anymore. But you can’t get away from yourself. You can’t decide not to see yourself anymore, you can’t turn off the noise in your head.’
I guess the song in my head is addicted to an encore.
God! Is it me!!! Am i so toxic that everything and everyone burns when i touch!!!?
Or is everyone else the cancer, spreading and killing me slowly!?
I can’t even recall the last time I smiled a smile that wasn’t 98% forced
I can’t remember what it feels like to be happy
I see it around me, in friends, family, strangers .
Stay positive they say, but how can I if i can’t remember what it feels like?
Shy Ones 