Sunday 19 June 2016

Home ~ Naadir Vorajee

This... Is not my home!
This is where the sugar does not taste sweet.
This is the place where the words have No meaning and the people have No faces!

The city has No religion. It's bright light shine through the humble man's hopes and lighten only his futile dreams...

This is not my home!
This is not where i live.

This place sells life with death as it's buyer...It's hustle and buzz rings only to the ears of wandering man searching for home-broken woman.

This place has No stars!
It's tar drives the cars to It's destination.
It's freedom is barred by sky-scrapers that not even the tallest man can escape!
This place is not my home...

The people are slaves to the "tick" of every "tock"
They are slaves to the "Yes" of every "No".

This place can't be my home...

Oh, take me back...
to the place where my feet Touch the soil,
where the sun shines to Me and Not the smoke in the sky.
Take me back to the place where my food has taste and the proud stars can guide me,
the place where my roots can grow and My meaning has life, where my fruits of labour bore from and my charity began...

Take me back to the place where i cried my first tear and breathed my first breath...


©  Naadir Vorajee


***
Matriculant 2013
***

Saturday 11 June 2016

Educational Terrorism ~ Omhle Duma

Next thing you know its 1985 again. Guns blazing in these city streets, these souls have caught fire.

This time it isn’t your mother, father and neither is it your sister running from the police.

This time it’s you. The yellow tanks are chasing you. Roaming the streets; crushing your dreams.

They are waiting for us to express our freedom of speech, just so they can put a bullet through you.

Say they had sufficient reason. Say that what you’re doing is an act of treason. Call you a terrorist.

We are not trying to overthrow the government! We are saying we are trying to get an education.

So she can take her siblings to school.

So he can buy his mother a house.

So they will be better.

But here we are, sitting at the table, unable to afford what is on the table already.

I am not mad that you have money, I’m livid at the fact that you think that we all come from deep pockets, where education isn’t a major concern. 

These tuition fees you don’t think twice about are the same fees her mother is getting hospitalised for; the same ones she’s praying for a miracle for.

We aren’t terrorists. We aren’t the enemy. 

We just want an education man. We just want to learn to better ourselves.
 
And I am not trying to blame the past on these problems, but damn, it’s got you all so selfish.

You forget really don’t you?

That not even 30 years ago you were in our shoes.

Fighting against oppressors, now we are fighting for an education.

How many people have to die? 

We are a generation that will not be silenced. We are bombs. 

Momma told me that I can be whatever I want to be. 

Today I told her that I’m a bomb waiting to explode.

I am a rocket waiting to take off. 

I told her that I am a lantern waiting to light up the world.


Here I am, a non-explosive bomb, a failed rocket ship, an unlit lantern; just because you won’t light my candle. 

Don’t you know we shine brighter when we all have lanterns to carry? 

When we all explode at once?

When we all reach for the stars?


©  Omhle Duma


***
Grade 12
***

Contrast ~ Omhle Duma

I knew I was never your favourite student; knew at five years old that you would never treat me the same as the kids with the long hair and pearly white skin.
I knew.
I know I was never your first choice, always the last resort.
The ‘if I must’ option, the ‘just to add colour to this’ option; even though you liked your walls white you added some of my colour.
You never liked the big black spot in the middle of your clean white wall, never enjoyed much the sight of my small hand on your knee;
I knew.
But my Daddy taught me that, you Omhle, you are beauty in its finest form.
You are a tree that never withers, an earth shattering thunder, a crash of dangerous but oh so beautiful lightning.
He told me that I was skyscraper in a city where the only things the people are surrounded by are two storey buildings.
My daddy told me I was great, I unlike the rest, was born to shake the course of this world.
I was never meant to let the earth rotate peacefully on its axis, instead I challenged it to rotate forty degrees upside-down and see if it would look forty degrees my way to see the angle I looked most beautiful in.

But you, you wanted me to be quite, to stay in a box so that the only time you would take me out is when guests came over;
Hold me like some porcelain doll and say: “My, isn’t this piece of chunky brown child, this ebony skin, this curly hair and brown eyes- isn’t it so precious?”
And everybody would nod and play with my hair like I was some sort of consolation prize that had “Handle with care” written in the soles of my feet.
I was never taught to be careful.
Always taught extremity; always black, always white never here nor there.
But you, you white colour on the outside and red rage on the inside never was much attracted to us brown skin folk.
And the thing is, even if my hair had been straight you would still not have acknowledged me.
You would still speak at me and not to me, speak at a distance as if, if my words landed on you, you would be drenched in my mud.

Have you never been told that the earth is where it all began?
That brown is the colour of earth that rich soil is brown, the darker it is the more good things will come out of it?
I guess this is why you never really liked me; you never appreciated the beauty of my rich soil, left my good parts, my fertile parts always longing for a taste of your water.
I guess you loved to see me beg.
But now, now I realise I would have taken dirty brown water all over again because your clear water wasn’t all that anyway;
Instead the brown water had character, had identity, had personality and your clear water looked just like everyone else.


©  Omhle Duma


***
Grade 12
***

Saturday 4 June 2016

Dear Brother ~ Nash Aniruth

Do you remember our childhood
and the games we played together?
Do you remember how you would come home from school and say,
"Dont worry, little Bro'. I'll be around forever."

Do you remember July 3rd 1998?
You were just 10 years old
Do you remember how Mom & Dad were so excited?
"You're going to have a baby brother!", you were told.

Perhaps it's been the city life
that changed you as a person
Forgive me, big Bro'
If our relationship seems to worsen.

It's been quite a while now
Since you moved away from 'home.'
12 years to be exact
Since you left to live on your own.

12 Years later
I've grown a lot during that time
Realised the tragedies of the world
and attempted to change them through some rhymes

I don't blame you
for wanting to pursue your own life
This year I'll be done with school as well
the end of a decade of pure strife

I'm sorry.
I'm sorry if reading this makes you sad
I just wanted you to know
that you'll always be my brother
the only blood sibling I've ever had.


©  Nash Aniruth


***
Grade 12
***

Multiband Compression of a Dream ~ Nash Aniruth

I'm sorry.

Sorry that I have dreams...
Dreams so amplitudally high
that you high-passed
my harmonics
In an attempt
to prevent me
from reaching the sky.

Dreams which were once so miniscule
That they were often ridiculed.

Sorry for these goals that I have
Buried deep within the lowest frequencies of the succulent
known as my mind.

-The very orchard from which you
Extracted the ripeness
and synthesized it into something bitter
and dissonant.

You limited and compressed my creativity
Until my life eventually lacked dynamic range.

The kickdrum with a fundamental frequency Of 75 hertz.
Which pounds relentlessly through
the chamber of my mind at 128 beats per minute

Every.
Single.
Day.

-Sorry

For the perpetual
music within my mind.


©  Nash Aniruth


***
Grade 12
***

Astronomy ~ Nash Aniruth

[Her] name is written on every last granule of sand
In the sky
The vast ocean of darkness
To which [she] brings light,
waves,
and eternal happiness
and [her] smile radiates at the speed of infinity light years
per second
making the stars jealous.
I often find myself pondering...

Can I keep up with the universe?

-Perhaps [she] has become my universe-

For my love resides within [her] soul
The vast darkness
that is my home
Illuminated purely by the celestial-

-packets of energy
Which float
effortlessly
through time and space.

So some day
when you ask me...
What is love?
I'll reply

Darling, love is the alpha
and the omega,
The unjustifiable phenomenon that occurs
within us all.

The radiant energy
and scent of your soul
as it feels my warm embrace
never letting go.

[You] and [I]
and everything
around us

=[We]?

Yes, 'we' are made of love
and it cannot be quantified.


©  Nash Aniruth


***
Grade 12
***