Down the Street

You walk the street for the first time
There has been an uncovered empty hole for years
You just did not know where it was
Until you fall into the hole
Its emptiness becoming yours

You walk the street once again
There has been an uncovered empty hole for years
You know where it has been and still is
Again you fall into the hole
Its emptiness doubling yours

You walk the street again and again
There has been an uncovered empty hole for years
You know the depth of its emptiness
Again deeper you fall into the hole
Its emptiness hurting yours

You walk the street once again and again
There has been an uncovered empty hole for years
You pretend you do not know its emptiness
But you still fall into the hole
Its emptiness swallowing yours

You walk the street again, again and again
There has been an uncovered empty hole for years
You acknowledge its emptiness
And push yourself to fall into the hole
Its emptiness embracing yours

You walk the street again, again, again and again
There has been an uncovered empty hole for years
You look at its emptiness
And decide to walk around the hole
Its emptiness staring at yours

Wishing you took another street
Smiling
Crying
Running
Aping
Wanting
Admitting
Acknowledging
Your emptiness
You are lost
But the voices keep yelling
Telling your emptiness
To pull itself together

Prickly Pears are not in Season

My grandfather loves calling me names
names with no particular meaning
of no particular origin
he calls me to make him tea
with the milk he didn't bring
to fetch him drinking water
even after the long drought
a drought that seems to move wells further
every
year

My grandfather loves to call me
to bring him a half burnt piece of wood
to light his equally half burnt tobacco
and often his half burnt index finger
a half burnt piece of wood
that he hit my grandmother with
on Sunday morning
burning her only church dress

My grandfather has been calling me often
to scratch his back for he has taken ill lately
there are so many of us but he calls me
not because he loves me I bet
like all my cousins he enjoys the bullying
but I will scratch his back today
may be for the last time
my fingers smell of death
a mixture of sweat and Vicks rub

My grandfather has stopped calling me
In fact for twenty years now
In this silence I learn he loved me
may be only now in his grave
he might have loved me one day
like when he gave me a male chicken
well more like lent me his chicken
bribing me to keep a secret from grandma
for a few days we shared a secret
i was the special granddaughter
until i found the chicken feathers
behind his little farm house
my grandfather ate my cock

And I have erased all bad memories of him
and wish he could give me something else
steal it secretly and lie it was hit by a matatu
and the only memories of him are those of war
the Sunday morning wars with grandma
the end-of-month wars with mum
my uncles
my aunts
his demands for his share of their salaries
wars he fought for other people's causes
for reasons he didnt know

BURMA, K.A.R, M.I.A, WWII, Germans

And in Burma he forgot his brains
came home with a lie about his brother
the Albino brother he lied to us was German
and these fucking prickly pears
that have stolen a half my grandma's garden
and things keep happening in halves
in my family
a half portions of food
a half told stories of fathers
a half schizophrenic aunts
a half religious uncles
and Woolies has the guts
to tell me their prickly pears
are so expensive now because
prickly pears are out of season! GASP

Our Programme for the future

There is a myth doing the rounds

That we no longer have a need
For a conscious revolution



There is a myth doing the rounds
That radical politics is reactionary
For a civilized population



There is a myth doing the rounds
That Black people have become racist
For a theory of evolution



There is a myth doing the rounds
That Black women are too angry
For a role of reproduction



There is a myth doing the rounds
That continental Africans are ready
For a project of neocolonization



There is a myth doing the rounds
That queers are poster children
For a large-scale demonisation



But this the programme for the future



We refuse to sing love songs
In the midst of hate crimes



And



Africa will no longer be a woman
Embodying fourth-nationalism



The programme for the future
Will entail the criteria for admission



And



By the time we are done with you
You will understand our need
For a revolution



In world beaten into submission
Warped by the vagueness of a prefix
Post-race
Post-sexism
Post-Black
Post-Patriarchy
As if the postcard in your post office box
Did not box me!

I speak with my vagina

You
See
there's been a bad smell
a disturbingly sour smell
almost like rotten amasi
stirred in cow dung and milk

a smell from my vagina

my vagina has learnt to yell at my gynae
about his flawed diagnosis
that emphasizes
the propensity
of candidiasis
for this specific
body part

and i have had this conversation
with my vagina
asking her
to seek
medical attention

no
i have become
a prisoner
and when your mouth
became my guardian
i was muted
and i learnt to
close my lips
caught between
the smells of
the daily toils
of your thighs

i am the vagina
and i want to speak
just as much you do
yell about
rape
violence
pleasure
desire
 
and once I have learnt
to speak
of sex
your mouth
will know
delegation
specialization
division
of labour
for i do the shit


and this smell
is the smell of queer intimacy
caught between
fluids
fluids that
I wont wipe
until i can
finally air my hair

Dear Body

These are the commandments in bullets
these demands you must ever obey
from now on

• always love your own
• and never hinder desire
• please let pleasure just be
• whether you
• ready or not
• in public or private
• please dear body
• learn to embrace yourself
• in ways no one else can
• and when you've unlearnt
• the rules of conformity
• wrap yourself in your hands
• and let your heart embrace
• that of your own

God is spelt with a Q

God has a tendency of rocking up at my door

God has been stalking me in my dream
And I have learnt to sleep with my dream
Cuddling
Caressing
Moaning
Laughing
Crying
With a dream



Then she woke up and flapped her bedding
Trying to get rid of strands of blonde hair
As if she was wishing away whiteness
But her dream was up and gone
Then she rushed out
Breathing
Panting
Panicking
catching up



But when I got to the door I could move no more
caught in a yarn of orange and purple wool
I stumbled and fell on my face
The wool looked like a blind cat with green eyes
And when my heart leapt out the cat's ears
I knew it was God
Wearing baggy jeans and kinky hair
And my heart shook my hand
Breathing
Panting
Panicking
With intensity



Fuck damn dyke the cat has been saying to the green eyes
her heart had learnt to wear pink lipstick and skinny jeans
and wool had become a web of butch dreams
caught up in mascara too heavy for coloured eye shadow
Cuddling
caressing
Moaning
Laughing
Crying
With God



I know you once had a cat named pussy
But entangled in your dreams she's been blind
And your green eyes aren't exactly white
So when God called herself love
Love became a dream
Your pussy dreamt of seeing again
So God started wearing hats
God dropped the G
G in G-string
and spelt her name with a Q
She has just woken up
Her dream is love
And she just learnt
That God is Queer

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!