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Best Poems From
YOLANDA MBATHA
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1.
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Blaqpearl
Feeding off dump sites
Government preaching about human rights
The minds hunger now difficult to fight
The authoritys pledge Ive learnt to recite
Insanity, poverty for eternity
Your unwanted possessions
My essential obsessions
My riches, your rags
Your trash, my designer bags
Your side plate, my familys table
My love unstable
Insanity, poverty for eternity
Ngiphephephi, where am I safe?
Not in my matchbox house
Where the sun knows not the sky
Where it is eternally nightfall
Where trees never grow tall
Insanity, poverty for eternity
You preach about ubuntu
Hold on to your zips because nginsundu
Caring is sharing
Yet you scrutinize as my skin keeps shedding
Insanity, poverty for eternity
Izingane should be seen and not heard
Yet when tears overflow you fly away with the birds
A starving nation builds my judgment of life
A life of manicures and pedicures for your wife
Insanity, poverty for eternity
My brothers, my sisters sighing, crying, dying, trying
Searching for an escape from this death coated,
Pain flavoured bitter-sweet candy on which I was deserted
Stop hearing the voices of black uneducated children
Start listening to the cries of a needy youth
That life just aint simple
For I am black because you are white
For I cook because you will eat
For I die so you can live
For I am because you are
Insanity, poverty for eternity
You are born into a cycle where luxury becomes a necessity
A cycle where education is a source of publicity
You get consequently knowledgeable that your heart matures before your head
When you CHOOSE to wet your pillow in bed
When youre incapably capable to feed yet another head
Where I am born into a cycle where necessities become an improbability, impossibility
A cycle where education is narrowly for minority
So uneducated that your heart learns from the head
Where the tears unintentionally flow because Im unfed
Where Im incapable of dependently feeding all my sibling that arent yet dead
Insanity, poverty for eternity
For you are in possession of the power to silence the critics
Inspire the pessimists
To astound the optimists
Insanity, poverty for eternity
Black is the coal that lights the fire that houses hell
Black is the pupil of the eye that enables me to see beyond the eyes of the mind
Black is the dark emptiness that us victims fear
Black will be the day that blesses us with Gods judgment
Black is the gift of pain that tolerates abuse
Black is the strand of hair that defines my ethnicity
Black is the colour of my love extreme
Think Insanity, poverty for eternity
Yolanda Mbatha
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2.
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Innocence
As the darkness settles in and lights go out
As the city goes to sleep and the owls see light
I cradle my bundle of joy close to my heart
I am awakened by the smell of impurity both inside and out
I battle to suggest what this is about
The lights go on, my intellect switches off
I am tied up innocence dressed down
I am blinded, innocence exposed
The tears pour down as baby wails out
I keep it in she cries it out
I spectate under black emptiness
Man is happy
Innocence is weeping
Baby is bleeding
The bath fills up
Innocence instructed to get dressed
So evidence is physically invisible
But emotionally always beams bright
The lights go on
Man is gone
And so is babys innocence
She is robbed of her pride
I am cursed with anger
Now man is locked up
Baby still crying
Mother still dying
Man still smiling
Innocence still living?
Yolanda Mbatha
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3.
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African Roots
My DNA dates back to the trees that planted
My identity.
Soils creep up to distress how the hairs on my head were made.
My ancestor...
the ghosts that breathe through me
exclaiming their identity.
The roots that planted my existence flow through me
My
African roots.
The earth carries on its back the blood of those who fought for our liberty
Liberty... Our hips, our thighs
Free to paint itself into a frame of its own choice
And it chooses the hourglass
Dating back into time where
African women spoke through their stride
Head bowed down
An unspoken noun
That he the man and his muscles may protect his crown
Wabonga izulu
Esho izithakazelo zikaShaka Zulu
Thina ma-Afrika
Thina esinsundu
Esabeletha isintu
Ngoba kwathiwa umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu
Thina esinezimpande ezingasoze zahlubuka
Indoda yabukwa
Yabukwa indoda
Kwaqubuka ukuziqhenya
Laqhamuka iqhawe
Kwaqhaqhazela umhlabathi
Kwazalwa izwe eliqhakazile
Thina ma-Afrika
Thina esinsundu
Our DNA dates back to the trees that planted
Our identity.
(A poem by Yolanda Mbatha and Mbali SImelani)
Yolanda Mbatha
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4.
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Black South African Woman
Because i anwser to our children when you're nowhere to be found,
because i provide food with the scraps i was given;
I AM A WOMAN.
Because i am robbed of my privacy because i wont willinglt satisfy you,
because i have to accept htat i am no-longer a priority for i now have a fat belly;
I AM A SOUTH AFRICAN.
Because for my children i am forced to be your slave; restricted to household duties,
Because I am forced to tolerate your inappropriate behaviour a you get home late from the pub
I AM BLACK
Because I do what I have to, but not what I want to;
I AM A BLACK SOUTH AFRICAN WOMAN
Yolanda Mbatha
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