Why I Don't Tell That I Love You Poem by Phiwokuhle Mpendulo Manana

When you hear dirty story wash your ears.
When you see ugly stuff wash your eyes.
When you get
bad thoughts wash your mind and
Keep your feet muddy.



FIVE THINGS I have five things to say,
Five fingers to give into your grace.
First, when I was apart
from you,
This world did not exist, nor any other.


Whatever I was looking
for was always you.
Why did I ever learn to count to three?
My cornfield is burning!
This finger stands for love
And so this not for someone else.


Is there a difference?
Are these
words or tears?
Is weeping speech?
What shall I do, My?
So the lover speaks, and everyone around
begins to cry with him,
Laughing crazily, moaning in the spreading union of lover and beloved.



This is the
true religion.
All others are thrown-away bandages beside it
This is the way of slavery and mastery
dancing together,
This is not-being.
I know these dancers.
Day and night I sing their songs in this
phenomenal cage.



I have been given a glass that has the fountain of the sun inside,
A friend in both worlds,
Like the
fragrance of amber inside the fragrance of musk,
My soul-parrot gets excited with sweetness.



Wingbeats,
a door opening in the sun.
You've seen the market where they sell cooked heads:
That's what this is, a
way of seeing beyond inner and outer.

A donkey wanders the sign of Taurus.
Heroes do not stay lined
up in ranks for very long.
I set out for you, even though my boat is anchored here.
In your light I learn how to love,
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest
where no one sees you,
But sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.

Drum sound rises on the air, its throb, my heart.
A voice inside the beat says,
"I know you're tired,
but come, this is the way."
Are you jealous of the ocean's generosity?
Why would you refuse to give this
love to anyone?
Fish don't hold the sacred liquid in cups!

They swim the huge fluid freedom.