For My Friend from Soweto (d.March 2011)

I didn’t have to find out this way,

But I did.

Wind raging outside as I heard him say

You’re gone.

I didn’t have to heave back a sigh

But I did

That slow smart grin at cheeky eye

In Sandton

Coloured time we had,

Running on our nerves

You taught me the Chiefs

Holding your son aloft

“A new striker is born”

Coloured time we had

You in your bubble of girls

I, on the edge of the drop,

But you kept a hand out

In case it, just in case.

But remember what I said

“See Sello”

That day, after they caved your head

“Wake Sello”

That week, tube up, hands bound

“Call Sello”

And we gathered round?

“There are people who love, there are people who call you”

You came back then, half of you,

Maybe a bit more, no soft shuffle of hands

But the glint hiding just, just, just a little.

We stopped running colour, then.

Maybe I should have dared to, then.

I have reasons, they mattered, then.

I have things, useless now, but then.........

So, Sello, hear Sello, wake Sello

There are people who love you still

And you lived for us then

Though I lose you once more

There are those who live for you still

©Ali Naqvi

Witness

There is no god but God

There is no god, gods,

Built in stone or steal,

Built in Dynamics

In suspect prophetics

There is no god,gods

Sounding through speakers,

Singing through pop

Fizzing through bass beats

There is no god, gods,

No quarterly gods,

No outsiders, insiders,

No KPIs and indexes

There is no god, gods,

Lip gloss gods

Busty, elastics, red raging

Hormone playing gods

There is no god, gods,

Orange like jumpsuits,

Rampant like rhetoric

Collateral and bleeding

There is no god, gods,

Codex written on capitols,

Parléd in the open,

Discourse of the damned

There is no god,gods,

Despite electron tracking

Quantum building

Hunting Superstrings

There is no gods, gods,

Because time and space

Are rulered and regulated

Hypothetics in chalk

But there is God.

In choice there is God

Found in the gyre

Fawn, Frost and Fire

In Schroedinger asking

In pair sequencing

In the one who gives cover

While helmets dive for cover

For those who shed

Whose heart and head

Feel out the dissonance

And rinse with the resonance

There is God

In the mountain that shuddered READ

In the seas that tore to PART

In the tyrants pits DREAM

In the marketplace SEE

In the garden blooming FORGIVE

In the darkness BE

And there is God

Known from this soul

In the moments between

Known from other souls

In the moments connected

Known from the faithful

In the moments that faith left

Known from the grateful

In the moments faith flowed back

Known from those that know not

In the rippling half giggle

Known from those that knew too much

In the yearning seeking sighs

And there is God

In the lack of Words

©Ali A.Naqvi

Zainab Calling

Those five timed salutes,

Up and down submission

That meter your life

That you say all is based on

Came to you epigentically,

Of a Woman’s loss and pain

Of a caravan burnt and robbed

Of ravaging and chains

Now, you stride the world,

Muscles, beard, gun and glory

Raising your hands in praise

Of the words you though you knew

Waving honour around

Telling us what a woman’s place is.

And in the Ten Nights we remember that:

In those dark days, in Syrian prisons

In the markets of Kufa,

When the whips worked,

When there was no Hijab from the sun

They preserved The Word

Under each strand of tattered hair

These lessons are never lost,

If forgotten.

By

Ali Naqvi