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Best Poems Written by Lebo Bopalamo

Below are the all-time best Lebo Bopalamo poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Lebo Bopalamo Poem

This Freedom

We created a dream…
A collage of triumphs hoisted high,
We spun a misty halo
And left 
brisk utterances hidden inside 
our pensive sigh

They redrew
a nexus of sun and doom colluding 
with inexplicable shadows
For our freedom to be whisked away,
To await
a freshly arching course

This freedom sows nothing 
but
an estranged black hole returned to life…
and borne anew
Unfelt and wielding a people’s wish,
turned to ash
Confirms 
a grinding and sapping strife for all,
bar the few…
A covenant trampled 
and delivered as doubt

It’s meant to flow unhindered
but ours is sated
Resting to regain its lost breath
amid whispers and tears
Regains its image to emerge
as a fallow truce
A seething trust before
real freedom brews

Words lie broken and promises creased
Winter smog mixed with liberated fatigue
A cocktail of sweat and pressured peace
Leaning on a state of grime
imbued
with loosened tricks

Details | Lebo Bopalamo Poem

Why Wake

Why wake when first takes fade to night
Why wake when days evade your plight
Don’t ask to rule when thrones you lost apply,
To things you wish, keenly brewing bright
Don’t say you know 
when the sun’s last chance arrives

Arrange your passions however you wish
And twist your eyes when they bewitch
Don’t ask of men to fashion a new breed
…the thought, of course, relies on me
Don’t look again 
as I slip and slip

In fact your rangy words subscribe
to bottled pride repacked and retooled inside
To every hint of light this way derived
the prospect of insightful sparks you blight
Don’t send me a word
if my memories from your words may die

 
Don’t sign a cloud with brownish words of clay
A cloud is seen worldly through light and rays 
Your words for clouds could thus retain 
a will to cast all light aside and rain
Don’t cry for two
when clouds rephrase your words and fade 
Don’t tell the truth
that saintly words of love unsaid remain

Details | Lebo Bopalamo Poem

Let Them Know

Negritude has been invaded,
by carefully instilled dread of better change
while misery endures a standing ovation
Power is methodically toned down
in phases, 
to colonise freedom…
Don’t allow it

The future is now related,
servitude ingrained
by liberation’s inflated egos’ quest to quench,
Blind to constitutional elevation
of these masses, and an impending storm,
We are not surrounded by defeated fighters…
These lies are unfounded

This battle cannot be grated,
By weakly defined attempts to wrench
a revolution from our roasted patience,
History coloured in sweat may lie forlorn
but piously spawns patterns in melting snow
Don’t let it slip unseen into 
a miserly pit…

Let them know
you know

Details | Lebo Bopalamo Poem

We Call It Time

We lose when we love, 
retain the dripping remnants 
of losses we keep.  

We call it time, 
but cease to count the raging moments 
of a sandstorm 
when it cries. 

And then we say goodbye, 
a final soreness of heart 
that in braveness, 
says "no"...

Details | Lebo Bopalamo Poem

If I Could

If I could
I would write myself to death
and cripple my self to a non-xeno image
I would create a world of no end 
and sink to depths unending

I would write a song
with no descenible ending
that just says I am who I am
when no one knows
who I am

I would cripple 
every word I hear
to define me,
and I would cry for no reason
at all

I would light a spark
and give it a cryptic name
and I would sigh 
with every breath given to me
in delight

If I could
I would lie and I would try
to sing every verse 
my heart demands of me
and still 
I would cry
if no one 
cries along with me

And if my brother
says to me in fear
that history bears no truth...
I would sing and cry along
I would sing and cry in sync
for no truth bears a better strength 
than my brother singing and crying along

Details | Lebo Bopalamo Poem

Elusive Love - Restricted Love Under Slavery

No road elects to prune
a wavy path past mindless
parts of this life, 
resembling our ghosts,
my love

I need no hearing,
no strings and
no sounds,
I need only hear your voice...

No love selects a raindrop's
teary glide, 
that leaves a broken heart 
unheeded,
my love

Those wails we use to un-robe
a sheath of repeated loss,
Demand we know...
and say no,
the second before we deplete
the trust

My love,
I know no worth 
beyond the faith you bestow on me
No right to think
aside from that storied
black man steel

My world elects to choose 
your captive smile,
kept in tow for him...
to signify 
my love denied

My love,
That welts and strain 
wrap our shared images with a glare
is an un-repeated refrain,
of the sunlight at dawn

That strands of desolation
retain misguided parity
with our measured truth,
is dusk's residual question

When rivers line up neglected masses
of sand 
and our curative rain ceases,
in the resulting twilight...
We can only call belief, endurance,
and call sanity...brave

We invoke a fictive trust 
replete with faith
For our elusive love to live
endessly

With you, my love,
We ask questions of fate,
that dies under rocks
unturned...
unheard...
Until the fate itself
loses its life 
in a lost dream's unneeded
disguises

Our triumphs 
call our dark moments reprieve
when all else fails

We lose our loves
in reprieves and dreams,
for our daring sanity
to stay brave

We call for each other's loves
to return like haunted dreams
To say for you my love. Unsaid.
And for me your love...
to never know
for sure...

Details | Lebo Bopalamo Poem

This Fear

You smile when dreams chirp but 
laughter evades me
I stagger when they evoke memories,
as mine endure a frequent misstep
We send them cues to light up
our lives
But sometimes only darkness remains…
A silent inversion of light

When hope delivers pairs
of cheery hearts
The wordless one ignites the other
It works it up into clouds of emotion 
and starry wishes
But soon wilts under the weight of 
a too common dusk,
To twist the senses anew

The chirps ring in our ears 
as words of pride 
Driving falling boulders in sight
of anchors defeated 
Their weight is soft
but insightful
Their tunes degrade
an already deadened soul

No fear repeats
when I can hear them
But deafness does not regard a melody 
as charm
I see but I cannot hear…
Inside, the rule awakens this fear
I stack the souls I’ve seen to render 
me whole
As if I chose what came before
I sink in dreams unlike the ones 
you know
Call them in, 
so I won’t fall

But I fear
you will not call

Details | Lebo Bopalamo Poem

No One To Tell

Searing love does not fade 
It simply lies in wait in hollow partitions 
Prone to sudden gusts  
of breathlessness 
These come in waves 
Some driving brusque prickles  
Others curling unhinged senses 
into further disorder 
Yet others stirring a cruel blend of  
cupidity  
and reason 

The waves prompt a light-headed 
introspection 
About confidence in a fractured shell 
About love with no one to tell 

They commit to change 
But winds carry a familiar scent 
Songs are about us 
And she’s in every silhouette  

The scent and songs 
swirl around the hollow partition like dreams  
Walls are tested 
to the point of rapture 
And still,
there is no one to tell 

Memories merge with the scent and songs  
Crafting a cogent immunity to time 
Our past is fused 
Changing seasons bear credence 
to the tenet of hope 
But tomorrow hangs on meanings 
crammed into last words  
Laughter ceases 
And searing love seeks deliverance… 
But 
there is no one to tell

Details | Lebo Bopalamo Poem

A Dream

Endless tracks cut a geoglyphic maze  
through the grass 
A sudden gust whirls a messy cocktail  
into the summer air  
Grassy hills roll playfully in the distance 
Closer to my heart,  
she glides eloquently down a fragile track 
Cracks in the path forming an intriguing 
array of shapes  
You could choose one, line it with blood 
Colour it with emotion 
And still be no closer to the induction of  
a lasting heartbeat 
Flowers adorn her hair, striking an 
irrepressible  
innocence upon her weary eyes 
She sings the sweetest song, though 
a fair distance from the past I know 
It starts with a sharp shrill as if  
borne of childbirth 
Rises to meet my twisting brows in 
a crescendo of glee 
Settles on an ingrained compulsion 
to sing in tandem
Insisting quietly, softly,
That when the song ends, 
something must colour 
the emptiness inside
Like our timeless wishes coming true
she dreams this dream
for you

Details | Lebo Bopalamo Poem

I Count Them - To Our Nation's Children

Every step you take haunts me
I count them each morning you toss to avoid 
the searing sun 
I count them as if 
each ray ends in trickles of our unsavoury sweat 
I count them as days 
that have sown my endless regrets 
I count them for you 
and I count them for the odious nature of 
the emptiness in all of us
I count them too, 
as they perish like flies...
denied the chance to further infect irony,
to inflict further harm, 
by the end of everything

There are times days are shortest
in summer
I count them,
And the fear that I do not know
how to make life love you more
They seem as infinite
as the cliff that perilously retains 
your distracted mind
It's easier to count the joys
between the moments of dread
Between the nightly screams of unwanted new life
I count the days till they are you
and someone counts their diminishing dreams

There are times
when night nestles beside me 
and seeks its own redemption
I count them, 
In fear darkness will soon yield,
when I have lost count...
and storms count for me