STROKING MY GRANNY

I used to look at my granny's labia at the onset of my puberty

I would stroke her clitoris while I bathed her in those days
I did not think that she'd be lesbian or even knew foreplay in her time
But i still looked at her two sunken lips and docile extension
I guess it was the curiosity that gave me thoughts on physical manifestations
the physical manifestations of womanhood, corporeality and embodiment
I used to wonder if this vagina popped out all her ten children
then why was granny's labia and its relatives so inactive now?
I used to think it was old age that had caught up with her or the freaking diabetes
You know the other day my doc said Diabetes does reduce sexual activity ?
But I know Diabetic women who still stand on Oxford Street as sex workers
But again is Sex Workers an appropriate term for women having 'transactional sex'
Or just a term trying to fit women's bodies into late capitalism and neo-liberalism?



My granny's labia perhaps should never be a topic for engagement
Not only because she's dead now but because it is a taboo subject
I don't think many women even talk of their own pubic hair enough
to warrant a talk of some body part that is now part of an ancestral whole
But I want to talk about what I saw in the bathroom so many times
This body that just wants me to talk because it is perhaps part of the 'memory project'
The memory project on which my thoughts have always coiled themselves
memories that often obscure my imagination and take priviledge over creativity
Of course my granny had nothing peculiar in her bodily geography
She would never have qualified for Georges Cuvier's exhibitions
Of Black women with 'pathological' steatopygia and elongated labia minoras
She would never (well, may be...) have been taken on a freakshow or museum in Europe
But her labia still took away my onset-of-puberty excitement about my own body



I know I lie a lot and by now you know I am lying about caressing my granny
I never stroke my granny's clitoris or even thought she'd be aroused while I scrubbed
But I always had many questions about my own body that I needed to ask
About what it felt to have a drunken man touch your labia everyday
Especially after your church meetings and women fellowships where women spoke like virgins
What was it like to have sex with a man half of whose brain was left in Burma in 1945?
A man whose bolts had become so loose after fighting a war he didnt understand?
I wanted to know whether it was that 'unwanted' sex that had made my granny's labia that cold
Whether it was all the hogwash of Christian teaching which conflicted her desire for sex
Teachings that made sex look too sinful for present day discussions of women's bodies
That should never be seen as evidence of sexual activity but as tunnels for posterity?
I really should have stroked my granny's labia then!

Lest we forget

Black Child's Pledge

I pledge allegiance to my Black People.

I pledge to develop my mind and body to the greatest extent possible.

I will learn all that I can in order to give my best to my People in their struggle for liberation.

I will keep myself physically fit, building a strong body free from drugs and other substances which weaken me and make me less capable of protecting myself, my family and my Black brothers and sisters.

I will unselfishly share my knowledge and understanding with them in order to bring about change more quickly.

I will discipline myself to direct my energies thoughtfully and constructively rather than wasting them in idle hatred.

I will train myself never to hurt or allow others to harm my Black brothers and sisters for I recognize that we need every Black Man, Woman, and Child to be physically, mentally and psychologically strong.

These principles I pledge to practice daily and to teach them to others in order to unite my People.

The Black Panther, October 26, 1968

by Shirley Williams

The Ashtray

I have not been as lucky as my other sisters
Not lucky in the sense of having an easy life
I know not a Black woman that kinda lucky
For our lives are often not smooth stretches
Something always happens along the way

A racist and lazy Ma'am at the washing machine
A rude and chauvinistic brother in the banking hall
A disillusioned and delusional teenager at the spaza
A judgemental and self-deserving madala in the taxi
And a nagging and dismissive mother-in-law at home

Now you  tell me what is so smooth in our lives
When the sticker next to my taxi driver speaks to me
'I am tired of women sitting in the front' it reads
And my mind immediately registers Black women
For it is my Black sisters and I often in this same taxi

So with this sticker my day begins, off the taxi into the world
And mine is a journey perhaps not by many travelled
I'd love to think that this pain that I constantly have to endure
Had nothing to do with my Womanhood and Blackness
But no, my circumstances are slightly doctored by my biology

Some of my sisters do not have it as hard I heard
But while I fight all forces oppressing  me and mine
I will lift up my head and on their behalf intercede
And at the Caucus I will let the ancestors decide
The fate of my overflowing wooden ashtray

if god asks me

If She asks me why i chose to die this way

If She wants to know why i could live no more
If She asks me why i did not choose a better way
If She wants to know why i got frail and freaky
I will tell her, i will tell God why

I will tell God why I silently sat weak and shaking
I will tell God how fear became so overwhelming
I will tell God when attacks of seizure became me
I will tell God where the thought of death all began
For sure God will want to know

And as I pass past St. Peter of this popular myth
I will look him in the eye and excuse myself
For I want to only speak to God herself
And explain this feeling in uncensored words
Certainly God must give me a woman-to-woman minute
But while I impatiently await that moment
I will cross the road at the red traffic light
Hoping some drunk hates me as much as his hangover
And in a momemnt of pity looks at me without looking
and with his long and wide truck loaded with steel
Scatters my brain by the sidewalk and slowly drives off
And if God asks me why, i will tell her

Semen on Seventh

While in the chill of Joburg's winter you now daily coil
cuddling in the imaginary arms of the partner only in your mind
Melville's 7 De Laan refuses to sleep with the rest of you
And in the thick of the night in the midst of half-closed eyes
Penises go on a voyage shedding off their usual ugliness
Standing erect competiting only with the straightness of the equator

And while you sit there hot water bottle on ur back
coffee mug in ur arm while the other caresses your thermo pillow
Listening to late night news which now sound the same since the last FIFA official left
While the newsreader tells us the price of crude oil like we care to think of its refined other
and monotonously emphasizes the strength of the rand against the Euro
Someone on Seventh is being deeply sexed

Well at some point sex tires of masquerading as love
Or else tell me how hungry people can make love on a pavement in winter
By now I know a homeless man's semen in the cracks by the pavement
Next time you see me just ask me how

Craig David and the time of my life

"Sometimes you feel the fight is over...." Today I woke up with exactly that feeling of giving up. Devastation. I am defeated. I am awfully depressed and although I may walk through every day as a winner, i am only human. I still can't stop listening to myself repeatedly sing Craig David's Rise and Fall. It's not the kind of singing that would make one come to terms with their situation or rise out of it, but singing all the same.

Today is one of those days where death looks easier than life. I hope that todayI get hit by a truck and wake up to nothingness tomorrow. I do not want to live anymore and I am sure the universe will forgive me if I die without having accomplished my life's purpose.

In my next life, I will remember to check my "To do List" from this life.

Curses, Madness and Other obsessions

Hello and Happy-No-Longer-New Year!!!

With my busy life on Facebook, I often forget to blog and just write those 420 charater-status updates on Fb as part of my random rumbling and grumpling. Today i will give this a try!

I want to do something I have not done before- at least not to strangers- like you and them. You must be wondering what's up with her now. No, don't run away with your mouth (that's the lastest phrase I have acquired from my Shona friend). This is not a resolution; I didnt make any this year- I'm still working on the ones I made in 1999 at the turn of the millenium and the year I sat for my O-levels.

So, yea, today i will talk about love. Strange ne? I know I know.

You see I find love -or is it  loving- quite strange! At the end of last year my very good brother and friend, Raphael, who happens to be Italian but loves his dagga and Black Label diet,  asked me to submit poems for a collection/anthology on Love and Romance. Your guess is as good as mine, I didn't and still haven't. I am not sure that I will (I promised him for the umpteenth time that I will when we met in Newtown last Saturday). Ok, where was I? Yes, writing about love is not something I do...well,  I am not sure if I love either.

That not withsatnding, I have decided to write about love today. I hope that no one reads this blog post!

Anyway, so by now you all know I practically do not have a love (aka sex) life. This is due to numerous, and I mean numerous, reasons that I still havent prepared myself to disclose (should I say yet?). So last night was quite something else (direct translation, I cant remember from which of my many languages).

 I left campus at around six in the evening and on the way decided to pass by my friend who has been ailing for a few days now. Between the two of us we can chat endlessly so I am sure that you don't expect me to remember what we were talking about before we found ourselves talking about my last ex-boyfriend ( I have had numerous boyfriends who luckily have all acquired a prefix: EX). Ok, now out of the many boyfriends, this is one oke I will never admit to having ever had dated. No, no, no! I have manged to convince myself that I never did and I will forever work towards convincing everyone else. Hell no!!

Anyway, after that chat we both agreed that my ex (let's call him W for the sake of characterization) is mad. To just put you in the picture, W is turning 30 this year but he has been carrying this self-importance for such a long time that you'd imagine he was in school with Kwame Nkrumah! He looks old and acts old (minus the wisdom part).

 Ok, I'd rather stop giving you this profile because even the thought of him makes my stomach turn! Did I tell you he's very ugly as well- ok, my granny said pple aint ugly; some of them just have interesting features- iiiiiii mar this one? (Sorry that was a 'native' subconscious moment)!  So, yea W has been completely obsessed with me for almost three years now and can't imagine me with anyone else. But yesterday, I mentioned to my friend that my once-upon-a-time-darling-ugly W told me that for as long as he lives I will never be with anyone else. He has kept his word. I have not been able to be with anyone else and even when I try things don't work out. My latest potential boyfriend just told me that he's gay! Well, not really my fault; he just happens to love other men which is completely perfect with me if only he could stop treating me like a stranger!

My friend's theory therefore is that W cursed me. W literally LOCKED me! LOL apparently there has been some serious 'African Science' going on in his life and I need to go see him for unloocking my potential (ok, this is from an advert)! So, now here I am thinking about Witchcraft, madness and love and cant tell the difference!

By the way, i just happen not to believe in witchcraft but this theory is quite fun. Will explain to you how it works once I am off FB!

Love n peace