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Show Me The Differences

Show me the thin membrane
Between love and hate
Teach me how to cross it
And maybe stay on one side
And never on the hating

Draw for me the line
That seperates insanity and sanity
So i could limit thyself
In norms acceptable to your sanity
And cease to be the odd one out

Show me the difference
Between a smile and a frown
So i will smile for you
In my own happy frown

Teach me the small things of life
When i grow big
I will hold them in my heart
And know the difference
Between pain and pleasure
Love and hurt
And madness and creativity…

By Pardon Gwara  (Zimbabwe)

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For Chipo

Thank you for believing I could write again

So this post is me learning to speak through the pen’s tip,

Once more

To share thoughts in ink and immortalise them on the internet’s forever canvas

What good is a poet if no poems emanate from him?

What good is a scribe if scrolls are always blank?

#RandomThoughts

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Ode to you, Lovemore

Do we call it a eulogy,
Now that you have been gone for a while?
Ten years and counting
Some days better than other
But this one, harder than the rest
For you were untimely ripped
From the face of this earth
Only to have your being live in our memories

Today though,
I will not wallow in self pity
Or inflict myself with painful memories
Of wishing you were here
Today, I will celebrate the life you left behind
For, what is a man if not the extension of lives he touches?
And those that he allows to live on after he is dead?

So, here is a poem of gratitude
Thankful of the time the gods lent you to us
The lessons you hoped so much we would learn
And the dreams you hoped so much we would achieve

Here is bottoms up
To all the countless smiles you punctuated our life with
To the selflessness in which you allowed us to bask in
Forgoing your dreams for us to realise ours

Here is to you and a life well lived
The jokes
The laughter
The tears
Here is to all that made you human, and superhuman in dad form

Continue resting in power, Lovemore S Gwara.

by

Roots

Life is no fairytale of happily ever afters
And roots…
Roots just hold you down
So you don’t leap off to the unknown.
There is no bliss in ignorance,
Just disgrantlements
Where we step on each others toes
Then slowly assemble pecking orders
And compete against the next person
When we should be working together
For betterment of ourselves.


There is a whole world out there!
And it waits,
Arms outstretched in a ready embrace
For the first
Soul that leaps off to the horizon.
But we have developed roots,
And accumulated too much clutter
Then clipped off our wings in infancy
Before we even knew how to fly.


To us, the outside world is a mirage
Wishful thinking for
What we want but can never have.
So we emulate it instead
And call it a simple term, “to dream.”
I might not be able to buy that sleek Mercedes,
But I’d paint up my battered corolla
and fit pre-owned
mag rims
On second hand tyres.
Its not as safe,
But it works!
See? Sleek and shiny.
Its never the same though
Because none of it is ever real.
But what’s real is a
Reality much harsher
Than the fantasy we emulate.

My brother brags with friends about bitches and hoes.
The same mouth he swears with, he kisses momma with affection.
And I know that nigga is pretentious.
Because I see him sweat everyday and still evades his landlord on payday.


Momma ain’t raised no pimp,
She’d give a kidney to see him walk on proper pants
That don’t sag below his knees.
My baby daddy said he’d call tonight,
Third time in a row now he didn’t
When he said he would.
He makes promises that man
Half of which he always fails to deliver.
But I know its hard at work
And he says stuff keep piling up,
I just pray I never catch that jezebel
He strings me along with
Because then he’d have a valid reason
To pay maintenance while I am behind bars.
Its platonic, he says

But somewhere between his tides of aggression
And calm aftermaths
I lose all reason to
Trust him
He submerges me and I drown
Losing breath as his currents sweep me under
Then just as swiftly washes me off to the shore.
Yet I cling to him
As if he were my life jacket
but I know perfectly well
His heavy anchors draw me under.
Someday I may have to cut loose
But I dread the day I swim on the deep end
With no life jacket.


Still, there will come a time
Where there will be need to shed off all entanglements
Sprout new wings and practice my leaps
we’ll disassemble all pecking orders and
Come to realise that our strength lies
Where we are for,
And not against each other.
the roots that ground us
Have no need to imprison us.
And in hindsight
We reminiscence that
There is as much world here as there is out there for
Our wealth was never monetary
And we are worth much more than silver coins
Or currency notes.

How real are you?

Jennifer Legotlwane, Botswana

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The Commute Conversations: Episode 6 – I got arrested in Harare, Zimbabwe, for hitch hiking (I think)

The first of February 2021 will go down in history as the day I saw the inside of Harare Central Police Station. I have always walked past this place and wondered what was beyond their grand entrance. Well, Not anymore! I woke up at 5am on this fateful day and prepared for a long working […]

The Commute Conversations: Episode 6 – I got arrested in Harare, Zimbabwe, for hitch hiking (I think)
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#MemoirsOfUs #SmoliAndI

See, I want to write you down as a poem
That I will recite in my heart
For days days on end because
Its the memory of you that I want to keep alive in mine heart

I want to quote every moment I spent with you
Punctuate every moment with your smile
Pen every feeling and capture it in ink
The same way I press the shutter to freeze our moments spent in our bliss

There are things we know by heart
And there are those we don’t
And right now mine yearns to write you poems
Only you can read
So I can put a smile on your face once more

I want to write you down like you are the last poem I will ever compose
How, when you smile,
I get closer to believing in divinity
How else can I not
When simply your smile takes my breath away to give me life?

I want to write you like the sun that set
While we watched it from atop a mountain
From whence I knew time is also tender
Because of the moments I spent with you.
And I vowed I will chase these sunsets with you

I will write you down as this poem
And tuck you safely in my heart
Because I know its where you belong
And tell you these words
Because I…


Pardon Gwara, Zimbabwe