I met the devil in a white Toyota Corolla.
I said, I said in morose Zulu to take me to the gallery, a gallery
In Johannesburg.
Johannes’s mountain.
A mountain
Perhaps where the devil smokes dagga
Turning to me, in softly
accented Tswana, the
devil say’s Andre Mvelase,
Meet yourself
and I
remember my Fathers
wisdom,
spoken from the back
of a girls bare bodice lying on
twigs of dry skin and
broken baobabs.
Given the choice to look at
yourself look away.
And he say’s I have a
Personal Mandela.
A Mandela
who will sooth my skies, who will
tell me to have faith in the rainbow
nightmare.
And he speeds, Satan speeds
straight to a safe space, special
in its salacious and salubrious sty.
Telling me not the gallery in
Johannesburg.
But the gallery of ancient heads
In Luthuli House, in downtown Johannesburg.
Where heads of gold
will tell me my mother’s wisdom
will tell me the peace of my
Mother’s people.
will tell me in ancient angry
festering
Zulu that my mother was
jealous.