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Poetry Sample

Below are original poems that emerged as a result of deep wonder and sacred contemplation.

Bones, Breath and Blessings (Must Meet)

Listen Here

Bones, breath and blessings must meet

Which one are you?

Which one are me?


Bones, breath and blessings must meet

Which one are you?

Which one are me?


Bones

Here, lie messages from our predecessors

Cosmic energy from our ancestors

Dance gestures and caged-in heart centres 

That precede all realms

And seek to compel


Their stories find rest in our bones

Deep into the unknowns 

These skeletons that know of memories buried still live within us

Their voiceless songs are varied

While their essence demands to be carried 

They seek to shape-shift, air-lift and water-drift

Into a light-filled gift


For the free formed

To be free from 

Spineless ways of the world


Bones, breath and blessings must meet

Which one are you?

Which one are me?


Bones, breath and blessings must meet

Which one are you?

Which one are me?


Breath

Everything is breathing

When it comes to the matters of the heart 

It is not the heart that gets to decide what matters

It’s you, in your entirety 

It’s you in your pain, joy and power

It’s you, in your breathing 


See, we breathed together so deeply and closely

That I could taste your pure intentions and heartfelt expressions in the air

And you could taste mine

You offered me a loud kind of love

The kind that gave my name the echo it deserves


The breath of y(our) love gave my heart a beat to skip to;

A moving rhythm to surrender my grip to-

Wards a reason to set my beating heart free to flee

And spread its dreams into our dance 


We have a date with destiny

And getting to know her means doing the heart work;

learning how to breathe better;

How to take fuller, truer and deeper breaths


When you breathe better

The world is clearer and quieter

You can hear God when He prays to you

You can hear the things He also needs from you


When the echoes of my beating heart

Begin to fade

The love we share in my breathing heart

Still remains


The language of a breathing heart

Is spoken in inhales and exhales

Through what we allow in and out 

When the day ends

Learn your heart

Understand that it is still beating with you

And breathing for you

So, breathe like it 


Bones, breath and blessings must meet

Which one are you?

Which one are me?


Bones, breath and blessings must meet

Which one are you?

Which one are me?


Blessings

Release and make space

We are here to retrace


In a body that offers you daily breath with grace

There is always room for depths of death


When a thing dies

It bleeds then dries itself into a burgundy shade of established cries

This is where we rise

This is why we breed new life


Release or else the body will keep score;

Will store the sore

Of all that came before


Release and embody their prayers 

Thick with sacred layers of divine favours

Give thanks to what flows

Because as we breathe blessings into our bones

That’s when we’ll know

How to meet our free


Bones, breath and blessings must meet

Poems: Work

The Holy Wild

I am not lonely

nor am I lost

This vast land knows me

even if our paths have not yet crossed

 

I am not lovely

nor am I of lust

The beauty in me is love itself

and belongs to dawn and dusk

 

I am wild

and I am holy

I am no stranger 

to the nude afternoon

Bare with grace and grief

hanging inside the air’s wounds

Poems: Work


The Unborn in the Company of the Dying

 

Lost, 

with no intention of being found
It’s soft, 

this redirection of dreaming out loud
of seeing through the screaming clouds
of believing truths extracted from Earth’s sacred ground 

I am found here, 

between the loss and memory of all things that live

and die in an unsound mind

 

The ancient stories left untold 

tend to unfold
The moment you lose your mind 

to find your soul

 

Here I am, in the company of my dying selves 

Witnessing the cells

of the Sentient One

create me anew

revealing all that is true

It is through
the mouth of my Creator 

that I am graciously pursued

 

Here, is where I suffer beautifully
where my laughing selves are prophets of pain 

and my pain the resounding sound of the insane

 

My spirit altogether abandoning my flesh

My flesh altogether abandoning my bones

Who knows,

where one begins and where the other ends?

Image by Shelby Miller

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©2020 by Philile Nkabinde.

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