NDABA SIBANDA - POEMS

Sibanda is the author of Notes, Themes, Things And Other Things, The Gushungo Way, Sleeping Rivers, Love O’clock, The Dead Must Be Sobbing, Football of Fools, Cutting-edge Cache, Of the Saliva and the Tongue, When Inspiration Sings In Silence, The Way Forward, Sometimes Seasons Come With Unseasonal Harvests, As If They Minded:The Loudness Of Whispers, This Cannot Be Happening :Speaking Truth To Power, The Dangers  Of Child Marriages:Billions Of Dollars Lost In Earnings And Human Capital, The Ndaba Jamela and Collections and Poetry Pharmacy.  Sibanda's work has received Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. Some of his work has been translated into Serbian and German.

The Elephant In The Room ​

​If the nudity of his truth
were not solid and smelly,   
its audacity was unclothed, 
he told her something silly 
about his whereabouts
and a jive of jinxed bouts 
that could possibly coerce 
an elephant to chirp & deny,
“Don’t rope me in this mess, sir,
I`ve my troubles. My trunk has
been stolen as if the trunk thief
thought that it was too heavy 
for me, it`s not a relief. It cannot
be too heavy for me. Your truth is.     
I’m not your witness. Your truth
or lack of it seems to the elephant.” 


By the same token, perhaps
his justifications, his accounts   
could arm-twist a virtuous dove 
into committing crimes of murder,
bed & bird-hopping & trumpeting too.

In all fairness, his various versions   
were as frozen as a lifeless stone,
as mouthwatering as a pink puke
after an extravaganza of  titanic 
beer downing and decimating      
which he claimed was nothing 
else but the truth of all truths.

His lady was not swept away by 
his accounts and promises of love, 
she told him to spare her from it all,
she was not fast asleep, she jogged
his memory before calling it a truth 
that had lost its virginity and sanity
under a brazen blanket of fairytales.            

Life`s Oscillations & Obsessions  
​

They beheld beautiful seasons
and events, all were lessons; 
So life rolled on—with grins
and frowns, losses and wins,    
So summer was summoning, 
Residents continued moaning 
About Covid, rising bills, crises,   
Lack of jobs, lots of burglaries,     
Winter was winding down, 
Gwanda citizens were shaken 
When snow seized upon them,
For days things weren’t the same
Yet they had plans and expectations
Despite life`s fluctuations & infatuations  

​

Just Her Opinions And Beliefs ​

She doesn’t intend to be offensively offside, 
yet you don’t need to be on Sithabile`s side, 
She says: you may flag, scare, scold or strangle me,
A mother`s love is a mirror of care, agree to disagree.  

Sithabile doesn’t always believe that Love and Sex
are synonymous in spite of that the worldly souls 
seem to have applauded, attended and endorsed 
their choreographed but contentious wedding.    

She doesn’t believe that Holiday always
depends on Hotel for business or survival
but that Hotel eats, breathes and dreams Holiday.
She thinks Holy Day is petulant, precious and personal.

She believes that Good Health and Happiness
are good bedfellows we should invite always
on our dear friends` wedding anniversaries
or birthdays. Please make a date with them.   

She doesn’t think that Money and Happiness are one 
and the same, either. She believes that if she were to choose
between the two, Happiness would be the ultimate choice,
only if the absence of Money won’t  be the absence of Happiness!  


​

A Woman At Work
​

Her brain is on the grain that is being prepared
and processed. There is no maze in a common
sight and sound as the  maize  grain is threshed
 and pounded by crude mortar and pestle .

She is grinding corn in a mortar. A mother of 5, 
in a village where the mill is far, she has no
choice but to manually process all her grain.   
It is a backbreaking, laborious chore.

She learnt the traditional principles of hulling 
and milling when she was a little  girl since
her parents couldn’t afford paying for 
commercial grain-milling services. 

She knows the importance of food production,
the objective of milling: improving the digestibility 
of the grain for  human consumption, 
to produce a grainy, palatable meal.


Her pestle weighs 4 kg and the pounding task 
is sweat, toil  and energy. It is an effort. 
Mortar and pestle are a pair moulded
from a tree stump and branch. 


​

A Healing Heart

​inner beauty is priceless
its twinkle is taintless  
its hoot is humankind
its love is one of a kind 
 
inner beauty is invaluable
its splash & sparkle ,silent & able  
it is an oak wood which is yielded 
from the solidest timber ever preserved 

in general, it provides trust, temperature 
moderation & is prized for real furniture,
groundwater recharge, water pollution
attenuation & air pollution reduction      

like an oak tree, its heart is harvested
& invested in humanity, it`s cultivated 
to weather moisture, rotting and decay
during different seasons & times, I say!
 
butted by lost winds & earths that are unclean,    
inner beauty remains shiny, solid & evergreen, 
it grows both in temperate & tropical climates, 
a handsome heart heals medical ailments & mates 

Fantastic Beyond Scholastic

​the professor professed 
possessing witlessness 
over his student`s claims   
that her relationship with him 
was exceptionally complex 
and often intimate and wily

​Kindling And Kind Heart

​her heart is a hefty, happy hearth, 
a fireplace blazes and plumps 
the depths of her interior life
it glows and grows every day
as if fuelled and fanned 
by some frantic firewood