Grandmother Hearth

i looked at her face

And i was confronted by engraved tributaries

Spidying in trickles trinkets in a thousand cracks impressions

 

Hair bleached

By the wink and dosing suns

That peer, skip and dunked away during her lifetime

Silvered not by artificial means, nay-nay

But a grey of knowledge

 

Her magnetic eyes

Washed out as if by thousands and thousandth of life’s film reels

Year in year out as her moon galloped onwards

Her faded fiery orbs giving in to complain as they hold the world with a soft gaze

Dazed and weaned of their potency at everything life has strewn before them in a swoosh

 

Ears sagged

Like heavy puffy bags that held over the years all and all of all noises, sayings, stories

Fabled sagged and suckled

And the potency of listening itself

An art that a few master in their circle of life

Movement obscured by retardation of all miles walked

All grounds conveyed beneath

Her scuffles

Sole screech

Pause

A look here, a look there. Aloft. Brittle.

But cherished as a prime leaf in free fall;

Standing on an extra leg

Squeaky woodenly leg

Indexing the unreliable heavens

 

And as you’re young ‘ones sway in the harsh wind slap blow

Reckon that time claims everything

Somber warm tears shimmer

Meshed with selfish gladness and burrowing sorrow

Oh dear, we’re sated in every seconds of your sageful breath taken with us

And in your spring we’re quelled quenched, nkokoa’rona.

 

© Mmutle Arthur Kgokong 2014

  • This Poem originally written in 2014 is dedicated to the matriarch my grandmother Mmule Evelyn Kgokong affectionately known as Mmane Baba (8 December 1922 – 8 January 2020). May your commune with the primordial be blissful eternally.

 

 

COACO: Morena David Mthubu Koloane

At certain points in our life we meet people who influences how we see things. At the very best such moments are not really prolonged. It could be a conversation lasting for a few minutes or under fortunate circumstances it can turn out to be a philosophical exchange that lasts for years. However such finer moments in our lives are not really marked by their prolongations. They are marked by the exchange itself. They are marked by what one take away from them. From there on wards it really doesn’t matter how often one can be exposed to the one who have insight into things that we wrestle with. They have cleared the cobwebs. We return to them to iron whatever creases that may remain. This might be an extended privilege on our part because we already know what needs to be done.»»

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COACO: Perhaps to the river we will arrive

» Sometime in 2005 the exhibition Take Me To The River (TMTTR) took place at the Pretoria Art Museum¹. That exhibition featured a group of international artists amongst them South African artists, Nicholas Hlobo, Sharlene Khan and Churchill Madikida (now Songezile Madikida). At that time the Genesis II exhibition was at its infancy. I recall how at the opening of that exhibition on the evening of Wednesday 25 May Together with some of the Education Assistants (Museum Volunteers) of that time, Thami Msimango, Nthabiseng Rachel Montshiwa and Mxolisi Xaba, we looked at what the TMTTR as a project had achieved; which was the group exhibition as well as the incorporation of art made by learners from Gatang Secondary School. This left us with a satisfied feeling that the learners eventually when they arrived that evening to for the opening would see where art can take them and where it eventually belonged when an artists is established; when their work became heritage.

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EarVasion – SAKHILE MOLESHE: The Final Call

SAKHILE MOLESHE: The Final Call

Released: December 21, 2018

label: Imilozi Music

Number of tracks: 15

Length: 1:09:12

Here is an album that challenges monotonous conventions while proving that an album does not have to be one thing; it can be many things held together by artistic innovation and creativity.

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Tekkies

  1. Introduction

In this essay my aim is to discuss the Biography of the Jack Purcell sneakers. It will emerge that there is no way that the story can be told without considering the space within which the shoe has been bought and the processes that leads to its acquisition.

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What do painters do all day?

»When I first received the invitation to this exhibition I thought I would perhaps see an array of paraphernalia of what amuses artists when they are at home chilled and not occupied with the uncertain nature of the visual art object. After all can one really work all day long without rest? As an artist, unless you are employed in a dimly lit sweatshop, there must be something else that occupies you during your art practice on any given day. I walked away from my viewing of the exhibition fortified in the idea that artists wrestle all day long with making art; even when they are suppose to be taking a breather«

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Artbud

‘a small lateral or terminal protuberance on the stem of a plant that may develop into a flower, leaf, or shoot’ 

I am still cranky from being away from the wordmachianikon for most of this year but the writerly bug juice beckons; the writing about nothing or everything or something gropes around. There is just a myriad of experiences that flood my psyche. To log into one is to gingerly watch every step of where I am going because everything is so muggle lest I get lost in the byways. So perhaps I should use a delicate scalpel to slice off this little tale…  

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