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Best Poems Written by Bantu West

Below are the all-time best Bantu West poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Do Not Leave My Carcass In the City

Do not leave my carcass in the city,
Bury me whole by my grandfather’s side.
Let me repose far from the vanity.

The skyscrapers offer no charity,
and people stay indifferent to plight.
Do not leave my carcass in the city. 

There are no modest pledges of fealty
to the men who seek to live by the light.
Let me repose far from the vanity.

I claim no virtue nor feign purity
but I am improved where mother resides.
Do not leave my carcass in the city.

Though decent men are not without pity
The noise alone will swallow them alright.
Let me repose far from the vanity.

Then, my home, forgive my own vanity
and absence-put my remains well and right.
Do not leave my carcass in the city
Let me repose far from the vanity.

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It Is Us

It is the singing bird.
It is the yellowing pages of old books gathering dust;
It is hot bread.
It is the sun, our beautiful laughs, and forgotten past.

It is the sunflowers, and the grace with which they move.
It is their quiet slumber at the end of day and the ease with which they rise in the morning.
It is the butterfly, perhaps more it than the cocoon.
It is in the way bees make more honey than they do sting.

It is a baby’s first cry,
It is the song on the Sunday radio,
It is the man on the corner tugging on his guitar, paid in half-eaten pies.
It is the humble transitions of humanity.

It is the first time a songbird leaves the nest,
Majestic in both music and flight.
It is the bird’s first injured wing that commands its best.
It is the first war that we must fight:

To profit. To conquer.
To service another man’s politics with all our righteousness, our rage,
our might,
To never see the burning huts, wailing kids, and men of the cloth
hogging tithes.

It is the caged bird.
It is the cocoon, perhaps more it than the butterfly.
It is our barbaric ways and bondage for the crumbs of cold bread.
It is a man’s final breath and the earth under which he lies.

It is evil.
It is children assembling weapons in bathtubs.
It is the man that fears his own kind because he is more dung than beetle.
It is the man that expects condemnation, like babies in mosh clubs:

It is gunpowder,
It is old people, it’s brittle bones and firepower.
It is love, it’s buckets of bullets, babies and bombs in asylums and hotels.
It is us, and our gospel.

Details | Bantu West Poem

I Must Be Black

Because once a time in a round mud hut
at the edge of the bottomless of pits,
I know that a three- or four-year-old roars with his gut
And he wipes snot with a broken jersey that barely fits

Because on the ratchet corners and bended streets
A growing child runs dust on tracks that gone bicycles drew;
And on his shined cheeks a laugh draws and sweeps
And he basks in the pastoral sun like a songbird and crew

Because the year is 2000 or 2001
And a child’s barely grown father must run to the city.
He must beg— (for working’s sake) ‘til pride comes undone—
The city that spurn him benches, toilets, parks, opportunity

Because ghosts of the ghoul that a people slayed
still lurk and parade office parks and boardrooms,
a child’s barely grown father must wade relics of Apartheid
In spaces of bigheads where he dances mops and brooms

Because a three- or four-year-old is now twenty
And the heirloom in his father’s stock is but lack;
I must work the same zero and struggle as plenty.
I must be black.

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Old Old Nest

His father is still away, still dying on his feet for my bread,
And I, the mother of a man, must open my arms for the millionth time.
This man at my door must share my children’s bread,
He must bathe with my water and drink it too.

Before I forget to love him, he begs, "I have nowhere."
Then, this man at my door becomes my son again,
He has walked the world and marveled many homes,
And still hasn’t the means for his own.

The old, old nest is falling apart,
And a benevolent God knows not to send the rain.
The paint peels, and the roof raises at a single breath.
There is no room for a man in the womb.

But my first bird’s wings are broken again,
He does not know the blue of the sky nor the proud walk of men.
He drags only, pitiful at my door,
He has not known love, at least not the kind that stays.

This man is my son, his face is tired,
And his knees weak.
He has worked, and his fingers show,
But all men do not reap on the same sun.

This nest is his father’s; In it he will know warmth again,
He will collect the logs,
He will build the fire.
This is my son; this man is my son.

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Manhood

My bears' beard came in when I turned eighteen.
I dipped my audacity in manhood
and it spit me out like sugarless tea.
The trenches near sent me back to curfews.

A man must talk and bear his own garbage:
He runs, He dies, and breaks his spine for pay
that’s bare. He does not shed tears to carnage,
He wars gracefully- like Frank to the Sway.

I never was taught to war silently
like shirts that know the wrath of a pen leak;
to walk giant and to laugh defiantly
at the loud drums and dances of deadbeats.

But I swear by my face to the beehive
I am – by my way- a man come alive!

Details | Bantu West Poem

If I Am Your Grace

When you scream to the empty dark of night
And die to the silence it returns
I do not consider you,
I sleep - peacefully sometimes.

The last time I had a nightmare of you,
I God near drowned in the lint of my own blanket
to the violence of my wake, 
My breath heavy and Indlamu on my chest
But when reality returns- so do I- back to sleep

I sit and watch gardens raise the earth
And the butterflies be as I am- Simple
Unbothered but desperate for rest the same.
If I am your grace, no one comes to save you
I do have my own graves to tend.

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The Storm and the Trees that know

If you can find shelter when the firmament rumbles
And drips spears of weighty waters
Keep about you the hope that clear skies might come,
Be glad for the storied house that a stray seed built,
That you might claim, and in it, brave the storm.

Heaven takes no command from men
that are stuck by the roadside under makeshift nests; 
Prepare, then, to wade from November’s head to April’s tail.
Find friends in the things that crawl, things that creep and jibe.
Say comrade to the tippy tapping tango of rain by the tree’s end.

Before the tree gives much comfort and you forget to miss the sun,
Before you curse Icarus for being too kind to the warmer things,
You will know that the earth can be dark and unforgiving;
The wind stings your skin like lashes from an iced belt
and the cold envelopes your adolescent patience.

The first men gave unto you rocks to strike light and conjure warmth,
Do not yet lead praises due north nor kindle your grass roof,
Because this shelter is made from paper, petrol, 
Paraffin, and things that burn;
And you are matchsticks bathed in kerosene.

Details | Bantu West Poem

Do Not Pee By the Roadside

Near the park, I screamed at a big chap—
“Do not pee by the roadside, ape-man!”
oh, because I seen fright,
I peed on a shrub a night.
The shrub —JESUS! —was a drunk man.

Best Poems Written by Bantu West

Do Not Leave My Carcass In the City

The Away

We Could Be Friends

It Is Us

I Must Be Black

Old Old Nest

Manhood

If I Am Your Grace

The Storm and the Trees that know

Do Not Pee By the Roadside