osu-kast-blog - Tumblr blog

[osu-kast-blog]

The life of a cockroach is short. He is pressed against the floor by the big black crooked finger. He is popped like corn and left to dry. He is a black head on the face of the wall. Or he dies any other way you can imagine. Of all the misfortunes that befall him, starvation can never be made mention of, for he is a symbol of a well-fed home.

[osu-kast-blog]

People whose land is Ituri.

photos by Michael C. Brown.

[osu-kast-blog]

Tradition and individual talent. At several points in the development of anything there will be a preoccupation with ‘how the thing has been done’ as though it ought to always be done so. Tradition in its very nature stifles and stagnates. Red, Black and Green is the title of this joint; and as concerns black tradition the colours have symbolized our liberation. This one by the man considered an ‘alien’ fallen from an UFO and his compatriots sounds like Massa’s whip cracking on a fellow’s back to an onlooker. Its texture is that of concrete and dust rubbing vigorously on an infant’s knees and hands in the current disposition. An unspeakable, incomprehensible enigma. Pharoe Sanders has always had his (third) eye on the future; he has always made it new.

[osu-kast-blog]

Slegs Darkies

The black homeless man behind Newtown's bp garage laying the chunks of beef (where did he get it, there's some good Samaritans in this out here world!) over a fire that he rekindles and fuels with the pieces of rags he keeps tearing off the desolete trousers he is wearing. The black woman of the lone Westgate mine dump shack, whose black child crawls behind her heels while she totters, bending to the laundry weight in the vaskom, towards the line. The two masked black men, in oily overalls pulling and pushing, towards Aeroton, an enormous bundle of recyclable bottles and boxes on a gigantic sail trolley. The black woman, middle aged, walking out the crèche in Diepkloof holding on dearly to her black child whom she last saw half a day ago. Fuck! I hop off at the Baza-Baza corner in Orlando jumping over a river of sewage water and I accept that I have arrived at a 'slegs kaffirs' boisterous concentration camp. This is — not a — life, as we know it, in the city of mine dumps.

[osu-kast-blog]

I have not found my laces, still.

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Osu is the greatest enigma — you don't know

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Osu is the saddest thing you don't know

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mother.father

My mother was a woman who worked the soil. She hurtled the plough from left to right behind three pairs of yoked oxen that gasped for air while forging forward to a crackling sjambok above them and lilting melody piercing through her pink contorted tongue and blunt, yellow decaying teeth. She would rise with the sun dawning, with a hoe and a stack of seeds in hand; a five liter of fermented mageu on her head. She would return with it setting, putting on an even grumpier facade. She loved her crops. She must have also loved her children. My father was a boy whose imitation of death was cut short by a pestering alarm clock that reminded him he was no better than a rock. He would awake to go blast, drill and load rocks on train carriages, for a week save a single day of resting and recharging his body and spirit through song, scripture and prayer in a classroom at a mine owned school. Come the 7th day and sometimes the second tuesday of each month, he crawled to a window to collect crumbs from a double chinned van de Merwe. He hated his job. Since I feel need to extrapolate: The first part is some advice to God; to anyone (and anything) who is elevated to—either by others or themselves— godly status. The second part is a far-fetching observation of lives I continue to share in. It is an iteration of a sentiment that people suppress purely because they have to eat.

[osu-kast-blog]

I.am.black.therefore:

What business do I have with the world when it positions me at crossroads with its moving self? Why should I be burdened by the possibility, the terror of alien life forms when I am exactly that on this world? Fuck! I am black and can never be one with this world.

[osu-kast-blog]

me.and.my.comrades

Me and my camaraderie We listen to Lauryn and Erykah together We drink Oros and Black Label together We get shot and gassed together We run on streets and parks together We hide behind trees and buildings together We read Biko and Fanon together, We burn racist buildings and torch exploitative cars together We fight security guards together We stone police vans together We sleep in holding cells together We swear at white people together We disrespect elders together We fight the white world together We will fail together

[osu-kast-blog]

When the Cape approaches midnight

"Everything is in silhouette. It is the time of forms. For the sun finally set about an hour ago. And it is the time of forms. No wonder that this of day has eternally been the time of,stories; for it is the time of abstraction s. It is the time when the mind is at rest; when it anticipates nothing else but itself,and fulfills itself in the infinitude of creations..." An excerpt from Njabulo Mndebele

[osu-kast-blog]

I had no time to title this piece

Afrika is a rape victim who had an orgasm during the rape. For this she is guilty  and repeatedly attempts to commit suicide. Afrika is a woman who looks at her illegitimate rape child and is pleased. Her face exudes merriment  for she salvages satisfaction from seeing that their child is lighter of pigmentation than their peers. She is not conscious of this, she thinks she is by so doing exacting her motherly act of love to her child. Afrika is a stupid rape victim. Afrika is the many other women of colour who wish they were also raped by this white man.

[osu-kast-blog]

All Men

Today I met what I believe to have been a man. Today I met what I believe to have been a man seated amongst an all-standing, all hand pocketing and fidgeting, all elderly looking of the face imperfect circle of what I believe to have been men. The 'creature' was seated in manner of a crouch, its head bent down as though sleuthing the piece of land it stood on for a needle. You could have seen the tops of its head were it not fr the white Nike cap that circumferenced itself around the crown of the creature like a stripper gliding graciously (as slow as pus oozing out a wound) down a pole. Only the cap did not want itself stripped and a stripper could not have been the creature. It was leaning its rump on a grotesque humongous igneous rock that was cemented towards the entrance of a tavern fervently frequented by similar looking things that converged on particular days and times of the week for a sip or two, or more. The timing of their conglomerating concise and predicted like the Pikki-tup picking up of trash bins every Thursday in this part of the township. The thing attempted to move. Like a burning of ash its efforts simmered into futility. It gestured to be motioning towards the bitter-watered-foam drinking discretely standing imperfect circle. Its arms hanging and swinging like a pendulum from the thing's crouching torso, hands a fraction of a millimeter away from the newly-Democratic-Alliance-tarred road (so I am informed). If you ask me the creature appeared to be walking on all four of its limbs. It took it two or three forward facing steps — that were accompanied by an infinitude of groans, lamentations and attempts to vomit — to backslide to the haven it found when leaning on the grotesque rock. The reversing of its oblivious forward movement as swift and timely as that of a mouse seeing the shadow of a cat at the exact moment when it desired to run on an errand. The creature sat this time still in the sort of seating that is a crouching lean or a leaning crouch, as though its arms and head had spontaneously exponentially grown heavier and longer than their usual size. We were walking. We had somewhere to go. And the incident's moment of being beheld by my eyes lasted only this length. The last I recall of the thing was its posture and its silence. Perhaps a sound. A collective sound being made by the mouth and the nose. A sound of breath or a snore. I saw the piece of trash again the day that followed, glad to see it grandiosely walking only on its hinds, in manner of a dance, towards Ivan's Tavern like a bin being dragged to the edge of the pavement where it awaits the people of Pikki-tup.

[osu-kast-blog]

Elders About to die

When old chaps meet, they care to dress in stripes — "scotch never die" so affectionately they call them — and navel-belted chinos that stretch precisely to their ankles. They top their heads with spotties or golf caps which they, in a token of diligent respect take off for a fraction of a moment to extend a greeting to a friend or foe; elder or equal. Most of the most elderly are most found in Dobb's caps with lines that criss and cross as though a hovering halo tasked with reminding the outties of the many intersections they have trodden through in their relentless sleuthing of paths to find.

[osu-kast-blog]

ukayise ka tata ufile

Utat’omdala uNtelezi uswelekile. Utat’ omdala uManqineni ubhubhile. Utat’ omdala uNogwaza utshonile.Utat’ omdala wakulo Nomacwetshu usishiyile. I never imagined that such news would leave an immovable, unswallowable lump in my throat. I would never thought that I would shed a tear at hearing such news. My father’s elderly brother is no more. A thin, lean, meek man with strong features. Trousers belted at navel height. A jersey and a jacket clothing his torso all and every day. A sjambok at hand. Fermented sorghum in the stomach, in the head. Dogs at his heels. An invalid finger. The rest crooked. Front teeth with intentions of exiling themselves, protruding from the mouth yet still holding on for dear life to the upper jaw. A cough. A dry cough. With nothing accompanying it. No mucus. No blood. No gut. No tat’ omdala.

[osu-kast-blog]

Honesty

Man! I am doing so much ground trodding these days. I am being challenged by this out here world. I am searching frantically for each day through for inspiration to do the things I am thinking of doing. I think of it more, in fact, as me searching for reassurance that these things I am thinking of doing do really need someone to do them and that that person can be me.I call them things. That is so in-genuine of me. The term thing does not even come close to the definition. I am however not concerned with terms now. Sentences or paragraphs or even essays. I stopped writing. And that is as much torture as writing is. I just want to make my point. I do not believe in this self I contemporarily am.I have never been this insecure; this self-defeated. I think  need some feminine reinforcement. This is not to say anything about women, lest I be labeled, mistook. A wife maybe. I thought, once in my life, that I would be married by this age. Now that - this is not to suggest any reason(s) why I am not married, celibate in fact -- I am older and hopefully wiser I think I will never marry. You don’t know how (much) little women make me feel. People in general. People have had me led my peace for the longest duration of my life Do not make any assumptions, man. I am not saying I have let go of it. And even if I have started to speak I am not certain I am audible. This is not a note on women. I now have no fear of the fears I had. I am not trying to say I do not have fears now. Perhaps their changing parallels my development. I don’t know what I’m saying like I do not know why I reopened this blog. I think I am trying to say I have shed so many tears.

[osu-kast-blog]

Skeptic stoicism. word is writ and word is sounded.