Lebogang Mashile
Lebogang Mashile Poems
I want to write a poem
About pretty black girls
Who don't relax and lie their dreams away
Voices that curl
...
You and I
We are the keepers of dreams
We mould them into light beams
And weave them into life's seams
...
Every child, my child is wrapped in a ribbon of rhythm
Every child, my child is wrapped in a ribbon of rhythm
Every child, my child is wrapped in a ribbon of rhythm,
...
After they've fed off of your memories
Erased dreams from your eyes
Broken the seams of sanity
...
"I dance to know who I am
When I am in motion
I move to find the rhythm
That permeates this commotion
...
I see the wisdom of eternities
In ample thighs
Belying their presence as adornments
To the temples of my sisters
...
I knew a girl once who lived in a house made of skin
With the spine of time stretched through it
The slightest wind would make it spin
...
Home is a foreign land
That hurls the might of its confusion around the world
Strangers believe they know my bruises
The smallness of boxes they call eyes
...
Lebogang Mashile Biography
Lebogang Mashile (July 2, 1979) is a South African actor, writer and performance poet. The daughter of exiled South African parents, she was born in the United States and returned to South Africa in the mid-1990s after the end of apartheid. She began the study of law and international relations at the University of the Witwatersrand but became more interested in the arts. With Myesha Jenkins, Ntsiki Mazwai and Napo Masheane, she founded the poetry group Feela Sistah. She appeared in the 2004 film Hotel Rwanda and has performed in a number of theatre productions, including Threads which combined dance, music and poetry. Mashile also recorded a live performance album incorporating music and poetry titled Lebo Mashile Live. She co-produced and hosted the documentary program L’Attitude on SABC 1 and hosted a game show Drawing the line on SABC 2. In 2005, she published her first poetry collection In a ribbon of rhythm, for which she received the Noma Award in 2006. Mashile was named one of South Africa's Awesome Women of 2005 by Cosmopolitan and one of the Top 100 youth in South Africa by the Mail & Guardian in 2006 and 2007.)
The Best Poem Of Lebogang Mashile
Tomorrow's Daughters
I want to write a poem
About pretty black girls
Who don't relax and lie their dreams away
Voices that curl
The straight edges of history
Hair thin slices of a movement
Turning the world kinky
I respect the disciplined silent screamers
Who expose the holes
Emily Dickinson, I am climbing through
To your wooden shed of isolation
Where the robin's song
Robbed you of your sanity
I revere people to my own detriment
Perhaps you did too
But when I enter your hallowed hearth
Please don't turn me away
I want to show pretty black girls
How to look at their hearts
With eyes blaring at full blast
The way you did
Together we can build a bridge
To the promise in their faces
And pull them towards poems
By pretty black girls
Wearing crowns of change
Lebogang Mashile Comments
Great work Ausi Lebo I love your work and everything you do you are my role model
What an inspiration ....... you are a good person to all Africans
You woke up the poet part in me since i was 14 years old..through LATITUDE, i one day woke up as a poet at school, since that i have been writing poetry..i adore your work ausi LEBO MASHILE
I miss her, love and crazy about her poems please bring her back on tv.
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Lebogang Mashile Popularity
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4/25/2024 4:50:17 PM # 1.0.0.1119
Fair comment, from myself. I am poet today because of you. I was engaged to poem during Latitude days. My favorite part about that show was the starting introduction of the show THERE IS A SPACE BETWEEN YOU AND ME and the last two minutes of the show, where you were wrapping up the show your scripts. I you are the reason I join the industry and the industry is also happy to have a poet like me, because of your motivations that's was all over my mind. #OneLove