The Present is a Dangerous Place to Live

by Keorapetse Kgositsile, George Kent, Keroapetse Kgositsile

The poems are penned by a South African who observed and absorbed the culture of African Americans. These verses contain his observations of this Black culture and the connections with his native South Africa.

37 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Keorapetse William Kgositsile, also known as "Bra Willie", is a South African poet and political activist. An influential member of the African National Congress in the 1960s and 1970s, he was inaugurated as South Africa's National Poet Laureate in 2006. Kgositsile lived in exile in the United States from 1962 until 1975, the peak of his literary career. He made an extensive study of African-American literature and culture, becoming particularly interested in jazz. During the 1970s he was a central figure among African-American poets, encouraging interest in Africa as well as the practice of poetry as a performance art; he was well known for his readings in New York City jazz clubs. Keorapetse was one of the first to bridge the gap between African poetry and Black poetry in the United States.

Harlem-based early hip-hop group The Last Poets took their name from one of his pieces, and his son is the highly controversial rapper Earl Sweatshirt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keorape...

Reviews

[Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Present is a Dangerous Place to live by Keorapetse Kgositsile‬ ‪Prof has an amazing ability with language and this book is another demonstration of that. He ends the book with ‘home is where the music is’

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

A colorful book of poetry with a sense of urgency.

Kgositsile is about the fertility rites by which life is made rich or by which we betray, if we are merely going through zombie motions.

He ask, demands from himself and us real gestures, real actions, real love.

Despite frenzied gestures and radical postures, and deluded resignation or conformity, we are still conferring upon ourselves and posterity a legacy of despair and death.

Still he remains humble and reflects a powerful fusion of the lover-warrior-revolutionist

For all those brothers and sisters
Who struggled to look at the present
Straight in its dangerous face
And faced it in attempts to change it

For Ipeleng
I saw her come here with no words,
arms flailing air, past mother, thigh,
and blood. Here we begin again

...Bust she asked: if mother or father
is more than parents, is this my land
or merely soil to cover my bones?

In the Mourning

...Where is the life we came to live?
Time will always be
Pastpresentfuture is always now
Where then is the life we came to live?

Beware of Dreams

The present is a dangerous place
to live. There were dreams once,
riding past and future alike; we
embraced the dream, drunk past
any look at the present in the face.
...There were dreams once,
gold, or red, /green&black
but the present is here
like me and you. And is articulate.

Without Shadow

...I live here now
silent. And the silence
does not have the peace
of understand wrung from the past.

Mystique

...I have seen their eyes
Filled with the question:
Where is the warrior-prophet,
The carrier of our purpose?
Where is the collected step
The toehold of the coil
Through and around
Our soul and soil?

The Are No Sanctuaries Except in Purposeful Action

The fifties,
...we are so bleached at our supposed hippest
we call america home, edladleni

( eDladleni, which means 'in the kitchen' in siSwati)

When Things Fall Apart (After & For Chinua Achebe)

I lost my virginity and ran
into a world liced with whores
...
If you are afraid of your reflection
do not come my way
at times I am a mirror
…
Spirit, I could dub you tree as baobab
but where did your soil go?

Exile

My memory is surrounded by blood.
My memory has its belt of corpses - Aime Cesaire
…
We try to begin again
but our dance is more waste
than the menstrual flow of a barren whore
…
When even your temper is sucked
for fun and profit like a whore’s tit
I know we are pawns in a pimp culture

Lumumba, do you hear us?
I stand among my silences
in search of a song to lean on
but our breath lacks the rapid rhythm of the river

Logistics

i saw her try to rise to sun
against pillars of ice slippery as pus
i saw her try to rise to song
...
night, like the color of our
desire, come bind u

but there are no distances here

even against the hate and the hurt
of the vampire’s teeth deep to our marrow
i taste the bone of our purpose
in the salt of your nipple

since the real man comes from his heart
i rise to offer you mine
where night binds us like an oath

Notes from No Sanctuary

There are no sanctuaries
except in purposeful action;
I could say to my child,
there are wounds deeper
than flesh. Deeper and more
concrete than belief in some god
who would imprison your eye
in the sterile sky instead of
thrusting it on the piece of earth
you walk everyday and say,
Reclaim it.

But I let it pass since
it is really about knowing today and how
This is what it has come to. Daughters
and sons are born now and could ask,
you know: Knowing your impotence why
did you bring me here?
…

Blues for Some Literary Friends & Myself
…
Your soul is soiled
Your memory is but a bloodstain
teetering on legs thinner than your shadow
…

Home Is Where the Music Is

For Billie Holiday

Lady Day, Lady Day
Lady Day of no happy days
Who lives in a voice
Sagging with the pain
Where the monster’s teeth
Are deep to our marrow

Lady Day of no happy days
Carried in a voice so blue
She could teach any sky
All about blues
…
Lady Day,
Them that got power,
Wealth and junk
Are still picking your pain
For profit and fun
…

Acknowledgement
(After & For John Coltrane)

I said a while back
John Coltrane. Trane
And the tracks. What
Womb they lead you to
Is your life nourished,
Or pushed against the walls,
Of your festering decay

TRANE, Goodgod, we been
dead so long and missed
the Trane. Listen here:
There is music, will always
be in spite of songs that die
or dry up like crust over any sore

John Coltrane, they say
he died, the hasty fools
that pick his bones for a quick
dollar, John Coltrane, who is
a door, how could he die
if you have ears!

For Hughie Masekela

Manboy of the ages
Mirror of my stupidity
And wisdom: yours too
If you know there is no such
Thing as even a perfect god

We are dispensable
Like words or songs
Like obsolete tools
Like your mother’s afterbirth
…
This, then is the rhythm
And the blues of it.
Home is where the music is

[Artem Brukovskiy · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Time will always be
in spite of minutes that know no life."

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

some good direct poetry! "we shall know each other by the root of our appetite and rhythm where is the life we came to live there are dreams once and the illusion led to the present I taste the bone of our purpose in the salt of your nipple"

visceral and political ... ends with heartfelt tributes to musicians e.g., Lady Day and BB King