Vitamins On My Face

By Solomon Nkadimang

When the Moon is Nearer

Wind-driven land cries
on lunar prints of a quiet night
say I must return to my roots.
To which roots do I return
when your landscape
is foreign flora?
The sun is older
and the moon is nearer
but the trader’s ways
are gentle nowadays;
his handshakes could catch
a whale if they were bait-
He flies luggage and your baggage
and the new slave
at a wink of a wave.
That’s why your blood
Is driven by rhythm and doubt
on sub-Saharan desert lands;
the only battlegrounds
You can see from the moon.
-Solly-Case Nkadimang

Poems include Eyes on the face of change; Joe Morolong: ILO-tonic canals; John Taolo Gaetsewe; and The Lioness of Tlapeng: Dr. Ruth Segomotsi Mompati.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Solomon Nkadimang
• Release date: Aug 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005573812

Book preview

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Rre Bushy Maape, one of the greatest progressive thinkers of our time, and other volunteers who nurtured the seeds of liberation planted by Kgosi Galeshewe, Kgosi Luka Jantjie, Kgosi Toto, John Taolo Gaetsewe, Dr. Ruth Mompati and Joe Morolong in the desert patch of Kgalagadi.

My gratitude goes to the John Taolo Gaetsewe Developmental Trust for their continued support towards all initiatives that honour the memory of our s/heroes.

Table of Contents

Dedication

1. My Forehead

2. Fugitive Words

3. Memory loss in the skies

4. Khoe and San Flutes

5. Afro-amnesia

6. Alien Weeds

7. River of memories

8. When the moon is nearer

9. The Equator of our Verse:

Unsung heroes

10. The Crossing:

To bleed or return

11. Seasons of Exile:

Morogoro

12. Dr. Nelson Mandela:

Synonyms anonymous

13. Joe Morolong:

Eyes on the face of change

14. The Lioness of Tlapeng:

Dr. Ruth Segomotsi Mompati

15. John Taolo Gaetsewe:

ILO-tonic canals

16. Tshekiso Funga Nkadimang:

Gentle boots

17. Kgosi Daniel Nkadimang:

The volume of injustice

18. The Forgotten Artwork

19. No Plant of Fun

20. Dennis Mpale:

Your bills

21. Beki Mseleku:

Dancing fingers

22. Lesedi High:

A fireplace of our own

23. Nerves in chains

24. Trains and winds

25. Abigail in Africa

26. Mothers and migrants

27. Vitamins on My Face

28. Diola-melora

29. Braids and Eyes

30. Tear Drops on Sand Dunes

About the Author

01

My Forehead

This foreword is the forehead of my body of works.

I pen a sense of wrong in places

where cockroaches starve, I cry in assonance

when mothers raise generations alone

and children weep with the babies

they raise.

In story-telling verse I recall mineworkers

who cough money back to capital in tuberculosis blues,

silicosis and asbestosis in the dust of endless elegies.

If my writings were paintings, I would dip my brush

in palettes of modern slaves who wear smiles,

women who kiss reality with swollen lips and brush

their children with scars. Society is missing in action,

I write about what I miss.

My words carry the mood of

child soldiers trimming elephant grass

in Sub-Sahara and the ghetto child who misses

all trains, busses and cabs.

My ink is from a hidden place

of our public pain; for economies of equal eyes,

I write. There is a lot to save and a lot to lose,

my poems walk in my shoes but their toes

burn on the road, hence they choose to live in books.

My poems are emotions that drift like spores

on sub-Saharan nightfall, they are memories

on a paper that died as a tree for my words

to find no rest on a branch before they fly.

My poems are simple emotions that deserve

no sudden death. They are like curlews hoping to fly

when their wings can tell how far.

They drift over sweat-drenched fields of corn

and muffled