My Mother's Words Poem by Thabani Khumalo

My mother told me words
that drew me closer to the object of physical maturity,
she told me that I was a breech-born
wizard of the dark side, at the extreme left -
where every scary monster throngs obedient to the master
and a human king is the master of them all;

I am the sorcerer of the holy dark mountain -
where there is lightning and cancer
under the control of a human hand.
I will bewitch you to get chased by the police
after you've dreamed of me sending you a lightning bolt,
and you'd been expecting me to get you hit by a speeding bus.

I will not die at 85, no,
I will only disappear at 72.
There shall be seen strange men clad in black at my time of disappearance,
they will not even be remotely known by anyone
and their purpose of being will not be at all understood by anyone.
They will exist for three years before
their first woman is seen walk upon the plains of the mighty Barmby -
and she shall be seen from among that multitude of inaccessible strangers,
and they will all be beautiful beyond planetary comparison.
It would be my time to leave
and head for another embattled time-space.

I will ride with the rolling thunder,
against the rocking dark storm having started as the April rain,
in the company of my legion of angels
having come to witness the grandest departure
and return me to my long forgotten home
faraway at a place that cannot be reached
by simply... a human soul:
and yet on earth I'll stir a dense controversy,
that my sudden silence renders multiple individuals... totally unsatisfied.

On that legend,
I will base the fantastic mystery:
the long lasting marvelous ghost of the devine Barmby.