HOME BEFORE FEBRUARY

Picture: Skorzch

As I gear up to publish my sophomore book, HOME BEFORE FEBRUARY (Lefoko La Kgosi Publishing), I take stock of a few things in my own life, relationship-related, and nod in agreement to the relevance of the inherent inscriptions that weigh the pages of this book, even if some of this work was written circa 1997. How I loved and how I was loved brought me here. We are love. We grow in love.

Yes, it’s another book on love. It’s actually an anthology of poetry about love. Are you uncomfortable as yet? Good. Because that’s what love kinda does. Plato, in his musing declares that “every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.” If you’ve loved or love, you’re poetic. Now that we have determined that this book is for you, here’s what it will do to and for you: it will make you remember and cherish love. And some of us would rather forget, and it’s okay because “love is patient”. Love remembers you.

The imagery and verse in this book will conjure up feelings and memories of when you first met, how you got together, when and what made it hurt, how and why you broke up, how you missed them, what you did to move on, what you did to get them back, and how what you thought was love keeps growing everytime that time sings the melody of seasons to the heart.

HOME BEFORE FEBRUARY is centered on the idea, belief and expression of love. It not only involves my experiences, but it is also about how I saw other people express what they thought and believed love to be. One thing I’ve realized is that we’re all just experts at trying; love masters us.

The colour of love is not red, but it is willingness – the willingness to die for another. The time to love is always now, this beyond the hype and commercialization of February, hence the #LOVEbeyondFEBRUARY hashtag. At anytime when you post anything on social networks about love, please use the hashtag and help in propelling this old age truth that love is 365 days a year, and 24 hours, 7 days a week.

As a sign of things to come, please receive the poem below this note.

I will soon communicate on the pricing, when and where it will be available. 

In the meantime, #LOVEbeyondFEBRUARY.

Love,

Mzilikazi

love

love embraced me when I was only an excited childhood conversation

that rolled with days to mold itself into a gleaming teen dream

which found itself deeply seeded in the hands of a budding adulthood

and exploded with the rapture of marriage!

a product of a celestial disposition

which elevates the ground of conception

because one born of love’s loins

is an assured candidate of eternity’s embrace.

love, a thought of yesterday

that brewed with clouds heralding summer rains

reigniting our hope of better days

richly embedded in the unturned soil

of wishes our parents passed away holding onto,

looking death in the eye and defying notions of hopelessness,

prophesying that whether in their lifetime or ours

love will find our courts worthy to host HIM

to love is life.

to love is to remain alive

long after this world has bid you farewell;

when you move from mortar and start to inhibit hearts and minds.

beauty, surely like the fleeting moment

may last for only a night

yet one thing that time won’t season

is LOVE.