How should we live when we know we will die?
Introduction by Terry-Jo Thorne (Researcher)
Poems selected by Alex Gwaze (Curator) & Zaza Muchemwa (Writer / Director)
We cannot experience everything, become everything or remain forever. So we must embrace life while accepting that the world does not depend on our presence or our actions. Pleasure, fear, forgiveness, love, regret, grief, human insignificance and mortality. These are not merely emotions. They are the electricity running beneath our daily existence. We navigate uncertainty, consciousness and limitation, knowing that our experiences will always be incomplete. We arrive into a moving current and leave unexpectedly, without having seen, understood or accomplished everything. But we can still attain meaning. Whether we find ourselves at the beginning, middle or end of things, meaning is what remains.
Before You Die
BY MAJEKODUNMI O. EBHOHON
Nigerian theorist-playwright, poet, and journalist who won the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Prize for Drama and was runner-up for the Professor Festus Iyayi Poetry Prize. His work has been featured at the Lagos Book and Art Festival, longlisted for the African Human Rights Poetry Competition, and published in Penned in Rage, The Fringe Poetry Magazine, LampLit Magazine, and SaharaReporters. He was a guest poet at HOMEF, TYEN, Poets In Nigeria (PIN), and 60 Seconds Poetry.
Before you die,
taste the mango with both hands sticky,
let the juice disgrace your shirt.
Before you die,
forgive someone who is not asking,
just to feel the iron bars melt in your chest.
Before you die,
quarrel with the ocean,
shout your name into its mouth
and wait to hear how small it sounds.
Before you die,
teach a child your secret song,
so that your breath may echo
in another throat.
Before you die,
burn the letter you never posted,
scatter its ash in the wind,
watch how it refuses your control.
Before you die,
touch the hand of a stranger
as if it were your mother’s.
Before you die,
watch the moon all night,
and let it remind you
how patient light can be.
Before you die,
stand in the rain without shelter,
let the sky baptize you
without a temple or a priest.
Before you die,
love once without bargaining.
Before you die,
kneel on the earth,
press your ear into its ribs,
listen,
for the worms are already practicing
your welcome.
Before you die,
accept the truth,
that the world will go on,
with or without your footsteps,
and the earth, untroubled,
will carry your bones
the way it carries trees and rivers.
Soul Salad
BY DESMOND GALLANT
South African musician, poet, rapper, producer, and philosopher who hosts monthly poetry sessions every first Saturday at the Cape Town Central Library and performs regularly at Expression Session Kuilsrivier. He is the founder of Evolve Studios, a music production platform through which he produces his own work as well as projects for local artists. In addition, he is a practitioner and lecturer of The Human Pin Code, offering self-analysis insights and personal consultations focused on psychodynamic profiling, individual strengths, and interpersonal dynamics.tor to emerging young writers.
This life thing,
is mysterious
don’t take it too serious.
One day
It might be Monday
or Sunday,
Next it’s Thursday
you won’t be here.
So be weird
as long as it’s sincere.
Don’t let fear
be your puppeteer.
I cut the strings off
when I started to see
it.
(Now) I’m a mind
body, soul,
engineer.
I specialise in repairing
and maintenance.
Give me the omo
as I moonwalk
through your ears.
Lemme clean
and disassemble
your gears.
I’m in the passenger
while God steers.
Heart is colder
than four
frozen beers.
Lost so many people
been grieving for
the past four years.
Forgive this river of tears.
God is a drop
in the Ocean
he jumps in that Ocean
to be you.
For
a moment.
Threshold (a peep into the heavens)
BY MATHEW RICE
Zimbabwean writer, poet and contributor to several poetry anthologies, including Where My Heart Rests. His writing explores resilience, memory, and the human condition, giving voice to stories and emotions others cannot express for themselves. He is currently completing his debut collection, My Little Flute, and his work appears regularly on the All Poetry platform.
I peeped into heaven in my sleep
the latch unfastened, the hinge silent.
Light pooled in my palms like warm coin.
I woke once, the ceiling was mine,
I woke twice, the light still held.
Am I back, or is this the longer dream?
The air here carries the same weight
as that other place, where colours hummed
and names were spoken without mouths.
Majestic, not with crowns or thunder,
but with the quiet of a room after weeping.
The feeling has not left me. It walks
behind my ribs, familiar as a brother.
If it was only smoke, why does my skin
remember the temperature of it?
Tell me, when a door opens in sleep,
who keeps the key? If we cross
into other worlds by closing our eyes,
what proof do we carry back except
the ache of being here again?
I count my breaths against my wrist,
I press my thumb to the pulse
and ask it plainly, witness,
which side of waking are you on?
