Long Aridity Poems

(Written by Mpho Leteng & Jennifer Legotlwane, edited by Onalethuso Petrus Ntema)

1. So you are still out-and-out with that old passion?
I look cogently at you actively warbling that song, unchanged, 
You sing out the aridity...

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I glanced in the side view mirror of the U-Haul truck.  One mile forward, one more, and then another.  With each mile forward everything familiar slipped further and further away.  The lush,...

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Aware of my attention to her as well as my proximate presence, she went on in a steadily refined rhythm, neither upset nor uplifted, holding my slick sight at reducible ductility and scotching its sneak...

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please allow ample delivery time 
     per arability of friendship
and hoop fully this acquiescence 
     can render an accord shared 
     via exchanging...

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I have heard people declaim
That Africa is the dark continent
Plagued by war, sickness and famine
The aridity of such a claim
Has left my people to pine.

Yes, I grant through the years,
Africa has suffered from war, famine,...

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I scan the horizon as I trounce the arid desert.
Brill trees and a trickling burn shape my stream.
To me, it's as if I'm showing God's entail I querist.
As away as I am aware, it is...

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He meanders down the deserted streets
of the uncouth ruins of shattered language
looking for creative act,
        nubile poetry,
celestial songs, 
devoid of cultural pluralisation,
	tarnished sensibilities,
	receding waves of celebration....
looking for-
 ...

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It’s so simple,
like the hue of oranges,
like citrus in the back of your throat.
It burns.

I want to drag his skin through my 
teeth,
taste the salt trailing
from the corners of his eyes,
lick the genius from the...

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The necktie wearers, and flag pin bearers
Combing arcane smiles 
With not one word out of place 
Colluded to recreate
Pearl harbor's reincarnate
History's wounds slashed by new swords
A mirror of quondam contempt 
Semblance of peace sat behind...

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What on her disgruntle to sidetrack my dear love-
When by all means all hers are the mainspring of my joy?
Her face; yea, hers, is the mellow effulgence of moon
That sweeps away malaise out of my...

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Wanton words or bits of paper
Flotsam and jetsam or progenitors
Damp squibs or ticking time bombs
Collect..and recollect
Their golden worth, silverfish and all
Revived or transmigrated
To touch earth’s core and zodiac zones
To recreate vibes syncing with a smart...

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Rustling like the faded foliage of a floundering yew 
I sweetly slide off of my bristling branches 
onto broken bedrock 
littered with dead cut flowers 
pale and powerless 
recounting yesteryears as the emerald enigma that
embroidered...

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(I)
I am the palatine oil
the astral gift
rumbling your
skeletal tree’s
truncated trunk,
each reverberation of
your sacral chakra
pleading you
to unfurl your
dormant wings
and soar above
animalism’s aridity

(II)
I am the
shamanistic secretion,
the nascent sprout that
blossoms into
a tsunami that
pounds rusted nails into
your bloodied flesh

(III)
I...

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Dried by the arid soil,
Brown brush painted
Upon emerald,
Levanter of anguish
Wafts turmoil,
Breachings now herald…

Exposed foot of crimson,
Bled into crying incisions
Upon this aridity,
Fury of the earth
Kindles destruction, arsons,
The world drowns in debility…

Crimson foot,
You shalt stride a day,
Upon...

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the slabs are huge and are uneven
sky horizon that is no longer perpendicular
another line is tangent to the straight line
stability donned its mist suit
it insidiously wraps around the curving walls
makes the mouth of life produce...

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