WOW Poetry Launch @ Warwick Estate

In case you had no idea what to do with yourself next week Sunday 1, December! It has been divinely decided for you that you shall be at my exciting poetry event taking place at the most spectacular venue. Warwick Wine Estate in Stellenbosch is where you must be on this day! It is going to be so much fun.

Following a rather exciting and successful www.thundafund.com/sikidlanga campaign I will be launching my WoW book (Word of Worth) at this most splendid wine estate.

....

BE INSPIRED...................................................

SURPRISE ........

yourself....................................................

What I sound like..... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNGLZjjAcyI

Invictus by William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)

OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Henley was born on this day 23, August, the same day I was born.

Yes I am a Poet. I am an Illustrator.

Yes I am a Poet
I am an Illustrator
I write on the grains of the earth
On the coast of the tip of Africa
I write so that words of life will be blown by the wind of the ocean
Transported to the body of the continent
I write so that the wind would whisper the identity of the child in Congo to know that she, he has worth unmeasurable
I write so that the wind will sing to the refugee looking for the hope of peace
That hope and peace is possible in a hopeless land
I draw in the sky
So that the wind will lift it up to the clouds
Let the clouds interpret it over every nation to see
More
To wonder
To question
To hope
To find
To not stop until their neighbours too have their inheritance
I write at the tip of Africa
Where Mandela learnt wisdom
I let the wind blow the words
To every nation of the earth
I let the ocean carry it wherever it wishes
Washes it off like a shell
So that the old man in China
Will also pick up his pen
And tell us things
We have never before
Heard

Poem & Illustration By Siki Dlanga
Last day of the campaign
www.thundafund.com/sikidlanga

"Say"

A window into my book Word of Worth.

There are 9 Days left of the campaign from tomorrow. What a journey it's been! I have never experienced anything like it. You can still support me on this land mark moment
www.thundafund.com/sikidlanga

A poet's dream - A prince's birth?

My poetry campaign

Fell on the days

Where the world’s most powerful cameras

Were held outside hospital gates

Held with the precision of a gunman

Waiting for his target

Waiting to shoot

The last blink of a legend

Before the earth takes him from us

Microphones artistically extended like Mpondo sticks at Marikana

Hungry for any word from his daughters

Who called it violence?

Only the cameraman knew that his target

Was as intense as the soldiers at war

Only this time it was not ‘shoot to kill’
It was to shoot for the love of a man held so dear

To capture a moment that belongs not only to this generation

A moment too great to slip quietly

This was a gift for generations

Just as the man has been a gift to a generation

My poetry campaign

Falls on the days where scribes, story-tellers

In two continents

Sat waiting outside hospital gates

One for the end of a great story

Another for the birth of a prince

Whose former fathers

once stripped off the royalty of the father

of the grey-haired-great-man lying in hospital

Invincible

The master of his own destiny

The little prince is born

Angelic in nature as all babies

With an inheritance like no other baby

With a heritage that looks like yin and yang

I sit

In South Africa

In a town called East London

Writing in the language the little prince will one day speak

And wonder if the prince will one day read these words

When I am fifty or sixty

What would I want the prince to know?

That on Mandela’s 95^th birthday my poetry reached its first five thousand milestone?

That five days later the prince was born and I received a healthy sum for my poetry from England?

That South African born Jeanette Kruger was that famous donor?

That our money was called the Kruger Rand?

What would I want the prince to know?

With the millions of messages he has received

With the zillions of information that will one day be his to sort through

Will he find the poem that will always be as old as he is?

© siki dlanga

22 July 2013

One day when you’re looking wondering when the prince of England was born remember it was on this date. 
Give my campaign some royal treatment. I only have 19 days left to make it count! www.thundafund.com/sikidlanga

It's not just a poetry book... it's royal beyond design. African and universal. www.thundafund.com/sikidlanga

MANDELA JULY

So here we are and it is 1 July 2013!

Thank God we are alive to see it! And thank God Mandela is alive! This is officially Mandela's 95th July ever. That is just so cool. Most of us have lots of Julys to live to get to that number God-willing.

I always find that July can be a game changer. It is that time of the year where you have stepped into the second half of the year so that if you got the other half of the year wrong, this is the half to make up for it. It is also the half that makes you think seriously about the following year! I am praying that this half of the year will introduce all the things necessary for my next steps next year.

The poetry journey continues. I do not see why a brilliant poet is not earning as much as Torres. At some point in history, sport was just a game. He or she was not necessarily rich because they were good.

It is time for the poet. It has to be. This July can change things. Here is one way to make poetry count www.thundafund.com/sikidlanga

Let the games begin. This is a game changer.

The Resurrection of Poetry - Finding the Pot of Gold

Well, yesterday a friend and I literally drove through the end of the rainbow. The colours vanished in our car or sprang out from it! In another continent, in Asia, a friend of mine tells me that she put up a slide of my poetry without knowing about my rainbow day, she used rainbows for my poetry.

This can only mean good things for my poetry campaign with www.thundafund.com/sikidlanga 

My campaign has begun TODAY! I have 45 days to go to make at least R 20, 000.00 towards my poetry book printing. 

Only to find out someone else already beat them to it! And so the poetry story GOES.... I have two fears! I am afraid that someone will give me a million bucks and the campaign will be over in a matter of days. Or that it won't reach as wide an audience as I would like it to. Well, while I was busy writing this blog  I received a supporter that threatened to be a poetry resurrector! 

POETRY RESURRECTION IS ON!!!!

thundafund.com/sikidlanga

The Voice

Let it cry aloud 

Let it be heard

Let it sing

Release the voice

Release the sound of freedom

Let it ring in the streets

Let it be heard

Cry aloud

Call wisdom

Recall joy

Release the Voice

Let it rule us once more

Rule us with freedom

With Joy 

With singing

It is time for the true voice 

The Voice of voices

Speaking among a clutter 

of billions of vices pretending 

to be voices speaking at once

Voice of the sound of many waters be found 

Confound the learned with Your wisdom and grace

Paradise Waiting To Be Uncovered

Rustic 

Ancient 

Older than Mandela 

Nothing is changed

Gates are rusty

There is electricity and water 

So it isn't so bad they say

Look how much we have achieved

Together we can do more the ANC says

One hundred years of existence the party boasts

A party it was for the ANC for a

whole year 

Celebrating dead heroes

Their philosophy begging for resurrection

A monument is enough the party says

For now they drink and dine in fine wines

This community can tell you in person what happened in Marikana 

No raise followed 

Just death and life as normal

Continues as it had since Colonialism

Yet paradise waits here

Paradise waits to be seen and unveiled beneath the unfulfilled promises 

Paradise waits behind the cloud of lack of vision

Even children are ready for more

do it again - (poetry africa)

do it again

i sat
beneath the light
of your performance
last night.
where you
fed me
with a silver spoon
many
rich
courses
of your rare

words.
then
when the night
was over;
i,
i
staggered
home,
because you,
you,
had me drunk
with your
poetry.

©  siki dlanga
27Sept2010

I wrote this the day after I had spent an evening listening and watching the greatest poets of Africa perform in Cape Town CTICC. Poets such as Gcina Mhlope, Lebo Mashile and many great poets of our continent including an interesting duo comprised of a White South African and a White Zimbabwean ripping each other off in the most fantastic performance. It was the night where a great base guitarist accompanied one of the poets. When we went to compliments since my friend is crazy about base guitars, the base guitarist was rather mesmerised by my eyes. My favourite performance of course the entire evening was Malika Ndlovu. What a discovery! Wow. I just love that woman. How I wish I could attend it this time again.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow 

Tomorrow is not just tomorrow,

Tomorrow is that day,

It is the day of days.

It is that day that is worth waiting for. 

It is the kind of day you could not dare whisper

Not even in your sleep

You could not 

Wish

Upon such a good 
Thing

For sheer reverence

I shall not speak of it

I can only allow

Tomorrow

To announce itself
As an angel called

Today

Waiting to take me 

By the hand

To a place

Where angels gather

In awe

In anticipation

Of future days

Days whose bliss

Is ever increasing

Whose blessings

Multiply with each

Waking Day

The angels are here

I must 

Go

© siki dlanga

The Nunnery Wedding

I was one of four young ladies

Changing a car tyre for the first time

As your marriage set us in motion

Crossing boarders for the first time

When our passports were stamped

We could not say that we were fully outside of our country

Since we had never been more inside our Mzantsi

Lesotho Mountains curtaining our eyes from the sight of our provinces

Preventing our ears from hearing the noises of our cultures

Creating the perfect setting for intimacy

We forgot our lives

We were in a new land

Trying to communicate

Lost in Sesotho

The wedding took place at the Nunnery

Old non-smiling humble nuns looking on

Creating an unreal serene atmosphere

Fortunately the wedding priest was no nun

Sprowson announced Mthi and Lite man and wife

A few Sotho people responded in song

A song so silent we could have been at a funeral

South Africans took over

Fair enough nuns and marriage never do meet

Yet this day the nunnery would know the sound of wedding celebrations

In an instance Basotho land became Xhosa land

Singing, dancing, rejoicing fearlessly

With pride we boasted about the bride

We showed off the brilliance of the groom

I remember the night as though it were yesterday

Darkness fell that night yet unable to quiet our singing

Stars shone like angel eyes looking through the curtains of heaven

Watching and in awe of our uncontainable rejoicing, dancing and singing

Elation covered us like the blankets of the Basotho people

I could not recall anything of journeying back

What remains in memory is only happiness

That had me believe that I floated back

Leaving the humble world of nuns

In total wedding bliss

I sometimes wonder

If that nunnery

Still stands

Quietly

Or if our songs

Still loom over that night sky

While angel eyes testify

Proclaiming
Eternal wedding

Celebrations

© siki dlanga

25 September 2012 for Mthi and Lite Adonis on their Anniversary

To End Love.

To end love

There is no such

A thing.

Love

Is something

We

Found

Here.

It was

Before we

Ever decided

To take it up

Or to put it

Down.

To end

Love,

There is no such

A thing.

Love

Is a never ending

Circle,

Whose sphere

Is without measure,

Whose shape

Is unknown.

Love is

Not

A thing

To pick up

Or to put

Down.

Love

Is alive.

It cannot be switched off

Unless

Hell

We choose.

Where love

Forever hides.

Yet love

Is

More

Than what we choose

Or not.

It waits.

It watches.

It sees.

Love

Has always been

Here.

Long

Long

After we are gone.

Love

Shall watch.

Love

Shall wait

To show kindness

At the first opportunity.

Love

Is not a thing to end.

Love has no end.

Love does not end.

Not for me,

Not for you.

Love abides

Forever.

© siki dlanga

Aug 2012

She said NO

1956
She marched on
She was black
She was white
She was Indian
She was coloured
She said NO 

Strydom hid
From her voice
Demanding justice
Strydom hid

Under her gaze
Apartheid shuddered
Apartheid quivered
Until it shattered

She said NO

2012
She is black
She is white
She is Indian
She is coloured
She says NO

Do not touch
My children!

She says NO
Do not
touch
me

She said NO

(c) siki dlanga
2012

Shakespeare In Love vs Siki in Love

A crazy joyous love adventure is completely next. Sometimes you have to go on an external journey to find the internal journey. It is going to be as explosive as a volcano. It is going to be deeper than the depths of the ocean. It is going to be wide and spacious it will be so playful and bring such freedom. It is going to be so high it is going to be crazy joyous. It is going to be long because it will be forever. It is going to be worth giving up everything for because it will be the most valuable treasure. It is going to be so good and juicy you will taste it from afar. Yes I literally have waited my whole life for it. It is everything or nothing at all. I have done the nothing at all, now it is time for everything.

“I will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all. No! Not the artful postures of love, but love that overthrows life. Unbiddable, ungovernable, like a riot in the heart, and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture. Love as there has never been in a play. I will have love.”

—	Viola de Lesseps, Shakespeare In Love

We can do with love that brings peace. Yes to love that has never been in a play but let it not overthrow life let it create life anew. I have not come across a film with more beautiful poetry however, I have seen enough riots in my country to last centuries. I want a love so captivating that it will stop wars that have been carrying on for centuries. 

I Know Nothing About France

I know nothing about France

I know only of what I have heard

I only heard rumours

I heard rumours

That France

Was a ruthless coloniser of Africa

I know nothing about France

Only one sip of French tea

Made me believe

That it is true
That the French

Have great taste

I know nothing about the French

I only know of exotic French-Algerians

I know of Zidane’s magnificent boot

I know of Cecile’s spectacular grace

I know of her passion for God

I know of her fire to spread God’s love

I know of the miracles that follow her

I know of the message of God

That sits restless at the tip of her tongue

Tongues like fire

Are waiting

To baptise masses with the Spirit

I know that when she steps back into France

Heaven steps in with her

The earth with shake

Demons will flee

When she steps in France

France will be colonised by heaven

I know that when they see her

They will know that

She

Is not

The same

The power of resurrection

Is at work within her

There is power in her right hand

She will raise her right hand

Like Moses raised his stick

Whenever a miracle had to happen

Miracles will happen

When she lifts her hands to heaven

She will be called

Miracle woman

© siki dlanga

For Cecile with love

Diversity - for Will Nel

Speaking of diversity
Without speaking of unity
Is like
Expecting good fruit
While
Disregarding the tree
It’s like
Admiring beauty
Without
Adoring God
Unity is like good soil
Diversity is every plant growing on it
Unity
Is like a husband and wife
With their hearts beating as one
Diversity
Is their children
Unity is a rainbow
Diversity is every colour
That makes it a rainbow

© siki dlanga
as per Wil Nel's request on Facebook

Explosions of Joy - for Zandi

Hearts
Explode
With joy
Heavenly voices
Raining down laughter
Your song
Your voice
Joy releasing
Song unleashing
Like a weapon
In the Lord’s mouth
Cutting away
What must be cut away
Planting what must be planted
Do not retreat
Do not retreat
Heaven backs you
When you do
What you were made
To do
Do

(c) siki dlanga
as per Zandi's facebook request

Ancient Hands

Ancient Hands
That moulded man from clay
Ancient Hands
That drew woman out of man
Ancient Hands
That made her beautiful
Ancient Hands
That blessed Abraham, Isaac and Essau
Ancient Hands
That lifted Moses’ staff
Splitting the red sea
So that Israel would be saved
Ancient Hands
That strengthened Joshua
Ancient Hands
That brought down the walls of Jericho
Ancient Hands
That saved Rahab and redeemed Ruth
Ancient Hands
Whose great love even blessed the world through Christ
Ancient Hands
That will not let your foot slip
Ancient Hands
That hold you in its palms
Ancient Hands
That hold the breath of all humanity
Ancient Hands
That feed all living beings
Ancient Hands
That beautify flowers
Ancient Hands
That count the stars
Ancient Hands
That count your hair
Ancient Hands
Whose love is visibly spread out in the night sky
Those ancient Hands are over your heart
Giving it life
I see your heart shooting
Like shooting stars
A thousand times
As it comes to glorious life
I see those ancient Hands
Over your heart
Setting it free
Yet not letting go
Giving it light
Ancient Hands
Hold you with love
Yes those Ancient Hands
That healed the sick
Made the blind eyes see
Those ancient Hands
Hold you
Ancient Hands
That make all things new
Renew you

© siki dlanga
For Margot my friend.

About the Blue Book

Go, go, go up yonder
Go where words will take you
Where thoughts are ladders
Into heaven’s library
Go up, go up
Up the ladders
Through the clouds
Where books light up
There stretch out your hand
Take hold of the blue book
There lies what you ought to write
Pulling down stories
From heaven to earth
Bringing praise to God
By making known
His words
Go up the ladder
Beyond your mind
Lose track of your thoughts
Get lost in the words
That long existed
Before you were born
Waiting in time for you to pen
Write what you see
Write what you hear
Write what you touch
There write about
Messengers of God
Whose hair does not burn
Though they are in the fire
Though they are fire
They neither smoke nor burn up
Write of light without shadows
Write of sparkling jewels
The size of mountains
Close your eyes
Write these words
As inscribed in the blue book
The angels have opened to you
Write of what is
Yet remains unseen by the carnal mind
Write of what was
So that we will know how we can be
Write
Write of what is to come
Write
Because words
Become worlds

© siki dlanga
17 March 2012
Inspired by a joke by Isi De Gesirgney” about the blue book”, inspired by Esme Schmitt’s vision of “heaven’s library”. Written for every writer who longs to translate heavenly activities in earthly languages.