3 Poems: Veli Mpho Mnisi

Swell Of Acrylic

Tell me, once you have –

Witnessed the lines and shapes

Of pain, dread and beauty circa 1992,

Or perhaps any other point in eternity,

The colour of art and the space of the world it makes;

Felt precise, delicate hands tracing your insides,

Reaching up to contend with

The blackening of your precious heart,

Not to break it entirely,

Only to stir it a little bit;

Seen the unity of a billion wings

Covering the lustre of a seraphim

Painted on the ceilings of cathedrals old as time;

Felt compelled to speak, and display your erudition,

Both for your vanity, and to show your disdain, in equal capacity,

Of beauty beyond human comprehension,

Immortalised, alternatively, on the sepia of slick film,

These visions of love, and of destruction,

And of history in ecstasy;

Fallen into portraits again and again,

Like they are framed revival,

Mounted on white wall;

Felt the warmth of the sun,

The soft burn of canvas as you drag your fingertips down,

That feeling of delirium,

Like a fever that begins to spread,

Knowing that you have just met God –

(1) puso ya gage e se etlile

thatho ya gage e se e dirilwe

mo lefatseng

jaaka kwa legodimong –

That art, held in for too long,

To rupture in a climax of fire and fury

To land wet on the canvas,

A swell of acrylic, formless as you;

And the art gone unseen and unheard,

On a backdrop, maroon of dried blood,

Like a prayer said in wartime;

Once you have had your fill,

The museums have closed,

The lights have dimmed,

Th guard and her torch have finished their rounds –

Who is left to tell all of that poor art that it is beautiful?

***

(1)

His Kingdom has come

His will is done

On Earth

As in Heaven 

Tiny Feet

I can’t remember too much,

But I’ll never forget that sensation of

Burning tar road under my tiny feet,

And the controlled explosion of sun overhead,

And all those days you would dance all alone

In the middle of our shoebox living room.

I’ll never forget that you were dancing all alone

Not because you wanted to

But because he wasn’t around as much as

You or he would have liked,

He was doing the best he could.

Also because I could barely grapple

With being flung into this calm discord,

And that my cries at the death of July all those years ago were not because I was scared or confused,

But because I understood and felt I knew what was coming.

But I did stand up, eventually,

And I did dance with you.

I had fairly good coordination,

Interrupted only by concerns that the

Kitchen door was open at 7pm and

The starving darkness outside only waited to be invited in,

And that he was outside within it, doing the best he could.

Further concerns that maybe all this noise would catch the attention of all that darkness;

Others, that Barry White’s bass-baritone boomed louder than the next instalment of Brooke Logan’s

Regular muffled whisper cries and the tear-diluted mascara running down her cheeks.

I thought maybe she had something important to cry about and perhaps we ought to pay attention.

I felt I had something important to cry about, too, but I could not articulate it because I did not know how.

Also because you might take one of your shoes and

Give me something (else that was) real to cry about.

I did stand up, eventually.

But it wasn’t without kicking my tiny feet into

The sharp corners of that lonely house, and

Tables and chairs, and screaming at the blood before I even knew it was there.

It was not without running outside the second I realized that little people like me did not cease to exist at the end of the school day when you ushered me home.

It was not without realizing that the darkness grew tired of our loneliness too, and gave way to the sun.

So, I resolved to go outside and subject myself to that great ball of fire overhead,

And the flesh beneath my feet melting because all the other kids took their shoes off outside, too.

And maybe they, too, all waited to be gifted something real to cry about.

And it seemed to matter so little

When we said our goodbyes with no real prospects

Of meeting again

On Faith And The Gospel Of Prosperity

Blessed are the Pentecostals, for there isn’t anyone more adorable.

Our sermons were touted as a come-as-you-are affair.

So I was only marginally shocked when the sons and daughters would come in their flip-flops,

Cargo shorts, golf shirts and caps to walk on supposedly hallowed ground on a Sunday morning.

We were told that this was a home for the homeless, and that the people behind you,

In front of you, on your left and on your right were your family.

That this is Sanctuary.

So you could colour me intrigued when an actual homeless man came to get his share of the kingdom.

The Pentecostals were so righteous, so polite that they didn’t want to draw any undue attention to him,

So we all pretended he wasn’t there. And eventually he did disappear.

Perhaps he didn’t.

To dip your head and feign ignorance is a baptism of a different kind.

On the rare occasion that someone who looked like me preached, he told us that we were too tempered.

That we didn’t really come alive. Perhaps we should be more charismatic.

I suspect this faith business is made valid when your congregation believes on your behalf.

And overtime we were less embarrassed to sing our hymns the loudest and stretch our hands the highest

Like school children, with the hope that the Lord would notice and remember that we were down here,

and we were lost.

Each time we were away from the church, I would remember how painful it can be to see the

ones you love shrink to the size of a mustard seed for the sake of complying.

When it gets dark, and the sun sets before dusk,

My mother might clutch at the cross.

My father might clutch his holy books.

I might clutch my pearls.

I’ve never understood prayer to work this way.

To hold relics, hold your breath and make a wish (knock on wood).

Then again, I am only a boy, space-grey and gay, not sure whether God’s Kingdom is mine to inherit.

I haven’t been here in a while, but my mother assures me that I am missed, and gently suggests I return.

She says that when I left, Jesus noticed and He wept.

Words: Veli Mpho Mnisi

Published: June 2020

Veli Mpho Mnisi is a South African poet and a student in Literature, Law and International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. A winner of the Deon Hofmeyr Creative Writing Prize for poetry in 2018, Mnisi’s work has appeared in Cobnetwork, Odd Magazine, Poetry Potion, and TypeCast. In 2019, he presented his research on ‘African Literature As a Form of International Relations’ at the Millennium Journal Conference at LSE. He was also credited as a researcher in Makhosazana Xaba's book "Our Words, Our Worlds" (2019) which examines the work of Black Women Poets in South Africa throughout 2000 and 2018.