#PoeticLicence, New poetry column by Poet, Journalist and Author @Rabbie_Wrote
Poet, Journalist and Author Rabbie Serumula. Picture by Nokuthula Mbatha. Poet, Journalist and Author Rabbie Serumula. Picture by Nokuthula Mbatha.
THE SOUND waves were your puppet. Your trumpet the strings.
This puppet danced to the strength of your lungs, the thumping of your fingers and contortion of your lips, this puppet danced.
Its motion translated into a trance, and transported the listener on a journey.
Death knows that he will acquaint himself with all man, but still I frown.
Your vision phoenixed from Young Man With A Horn at Harlem Bioscope in Sophiatown.
This was decades before a train running on coal ferried young and old African men away from their homes.
Before these men cried for their children, and their parents and their wives.
Before their land and their herds were taken away with guns and grenades, teargas and cannons.
Before they cursed the coal train that brought them to Johannesburg for gold.
Before you gave us Stimela.
Beyond the trumpet, lays a beauty in words so ugly they smell.
But the words still transported the listener on a journey.
Our ears would whisper the serene distortion of this realm.
These whispers would echo in our hearts through your art.
Your music triggered memories we had forgotten we had.
It picked them apart, aroused the ones we had not chosen.
It evoked emotions we had sealed in the basement of our souls in a box marked "do not open".
At the knots of your strings, this puppet was an enchantress.
A magician who effortlessly shaped frequencies.
What we heard and what we felt never always corroborated.
Attempting to correlate vibrations and the music coming from Bra Hugh’s heart,
A yearning for understanding would eat the listener alive.
But that’s the beauty in Bra Hugh’s art.
His trumpet and words kept us fighting to use our temples to knit our maize, and sow our cloaks. Fighting for the plants that we read and the books that we grow.
The thoughts that we see and sights that we think.
The eyes that we seize and the moments that we blink.
The truth that we hold, and the hands that we speak.
The journeys we articulate, the tales that we walk.
Fighting to ignite the fires that we love, and the women that we burn.
The lessons that are men, and the trash that we learn.
The ashes in a flower pot, and daffodils in an earn.
When Stimela was released, I was eight years old.
It took another eight years for me to see the beauty in the ugly stories he told.
Both with his voice and his horn.
They spoke of a South Africa we could never choose.
The cumulonimbus that never bruises. The skins that never rain.
The clouds that never blast. Explosions that never cast.
Broken hands that mishandled this nation, bangled with razor scars on its wrists.
Oh what a party it must be in heaven with a trumpet for lungs.
I bet breathing through music feels better on the other side.
You have left sacred scrolls for us to sing along to.
As old souls that love words and jazz, and I am almost certain that whatever the good fight there is, we will be fighting it.
Rest your earthly shell legend.
@Rabbie_Wrote
* This poem was co-written by Magnum Opus (@OpusPoetry).
Rabbie Wrote is one of three founding and current members in the ensemble of award winning and nominated poets.