seven ....

Last year, I was involved in an initiative to shake-up the comfort zone I had created as a performance poet. Seven male poets came together to conceptualise, develop and enact a theatrical poetry-based play called 'the streets have lips'. We called ourselves Seven, which consisted of Ayob Vania, Common Man, Flo, Afurakan, Mak Manaka, Kabomo Vilakazi and yours truly and we spent about six months writing, workshopping, rehearsing, etc and eventually put the show on in early September last year.

We had big dreams and great plans for the future of the endeavour but it eventually collapsed due to a number of reasons including ego, priorities, dreams, etc. What I have learned over the last two years is that working well with someone does not imply that you would get along with them purely on a personal basis. In the poetry scene, this is a difficult thing to understand because we are all chasing dreams and, therefore, our total interaction is on the basis of poetry - we start thinking we are friends because we spend so much time together and have so much to talk about.

Anyway, Seven never made it past its opening night and, for a long time, I haven't even looked at the stuff I wrote for it - the deal was that everything written for the production was purely for the production and couldn't be shared outside of that context. Somehow I have continued to adhere to that policy despite the fact that the arrangement does not exist anymore.

So .... to get beyond all of that, I'm going to put something from the show.... the 'title' poem - the streets have lips. oh, every poem was written according to a particular 'theme' or emotion and each poem featured stanzas from between 3 and 7 poets. The streets have lips featured all of us:

they read our destiny
from the cracks
beneath the soles of our feet
and we bleed

they whisper truths
in the swirling dust
and we close our eyes
blinded by unrelentless truth

they cringe at every crooked step
every misguided stumble,
and we weep

when slapped on both cheeks
we trip over our foolishness
hoping that our next step
shall reveal the eternal blind spot
and bring clarity

the streets lie inanimate
victim to our constant blundering
waiting for the day
they shall be heard
and the future shall be determined
without the blood, without the sweat
without the tears
that drench them daily

they are one with our footsteps
these crooked paths, these highways, these byways
and tomorrow they shall still be there
leading us, guiding us, coaxing us
till that one day when
we shall travel free of the hate and pain

until then
the streets shall always whisper:

the streets have lips .....
the streets have lips .....
the streets have lips .....
the streets have lips .....

It was an awesome experience while it lasted and taught me a great deal about collaborative work, some good, some bad. Who knows... maybe someday when we are old and grey, we will dust off the manuscript and do it one more time, just for the hell of it - no better reason to do something.