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Some few weeks ago we made a decision to sample lyrics which touch on the religious side of human existense. It is a brilliant project which we are pursuing with gusto. However, it has emerged that our focus was largely on the Christian religion and very few lyrics touching on other beliefs were explored. This week we make a decision not to publish lyrics, but do so next week with a mixture of other poets, those who write about their own gods and mediators. Instead we publish this old piece from the archives of the writer, nothing edited and as good as it was when it was rejected by a certain magazine.

Dear Diary

The day is Friday, just before Freedom Day. I've just hit the bookstore and bought myself a fresh magazine, obtained a couple of e-mail printouts and am facing a day on the rush to end. I suddenly remember that I 've got a guitar lesson to attend, my tutor taught me a couple of keys the day before and insisted that I master them before we move on.

But then I also have to watch television since I picked it on the transistor FM radio on the way from Hazyview that TLC's Lisa Lopes's number had been called and she responded and abandoned this fucked up earth, went where no one could follow her. I also have brewed myself a fresh mug of highly caffeneited coffee to drown before it becomes cold and suddenly taste like lukewarm wine.

What should I do first? Difficult. Finally I rip the cover of the April issue of SL Magazine and flip the pages like I usually do at the bookshop when I don't have money to buy. Then I passively run my fingers on the six guitar strings while trying to read the magazine. I don't really care what I play but some hours later I get told that the melody sounds like Sade's By your Side. I love my fingers, I worship every unmanicured-earth-smelling nail on my roster of five geniuses. I'm thinking of taking my five fingers to Coca-Cola Popstarts when the auditions reach Nelspruit and get them made stars, with their own custom-made recording contract, divorced from me.

To make matters worse, the coffee smells so good it begs to be gulped. I take a couple of sips while the TV is filled with gory images of traumatised learners and teachers at a Frankfurt school. Apparently, what Tumi Makgabo at CNN is trying to find out from experts is whether Germany's gun control laws should be strengthened to make it difficult for relics of the Bundes's education system to get their hands on pistols and pump action shotguns. The gun control legislation brings to the fore Gun Free South Africa's decades old sermon of gun proliferation.

What I really enjoy about everything is that Tumi is at times briefing the world about Mark Shuttleworth's journey to the final frontier. Incase you've been in the gulags, they are both South Africans, and for just that split moment I'm thinking, "wow, the world is finally kissing our asses. Our proudly South African rainbow asses".

That hasn't started to solve my problems as I ain't yet started to practice the keys I have to master. My coffee is getting cold and Tumi is not about to break the news of "Left Eye"'s demise, the woman I loved from Donnel Jones's You Know What's Up and Lil' Kim's Ladies Night music videos where she was proudly shaking that booty like it was the 4th of July in the USA. I loved her and I will miss her. Teardrops. (Pause now for a minute of silence, zip your flies at half mast)
(Thank you, read on).

Just as I'm about to go loony and blaze myself some home-grown Mary Jane (she's a natural daughter of the earth cuz she comes from seed) my homie budges in, still in school-uniform and a backpack. I tell him about the school incident in Germany, he says it's none of his business. He's in no mood to listen to my skewed guitar tunes or even read a single word from my magazine. To top it all he doesn't even want coffee, steamy or cold. All he wants is to cremate (rap tight rythmes for) me with verses filling the whole quire of a school notebook. He insists I listen and comment after every thirty two line rap verse. Well me, I'm one of those heavenly beings stranded on earth from Touched by an Angel and I do.

That's Volume One of his life and all of it there. His ambition is to blow up like Afroman and Limp Bizkit, not Moodphase5ive or Siempre. He's addicted to life and he hates drugs. He also hates his mother and father, please don't ask me who he loves cuz I just know he loves his country smitten.

At the end of the day I've been through my forty eight e-mails, read the ninety eight pages of the magazine, bled my finger practicing the tune (the tutor never pitched) and have had a patriotic exchange with my one truly proud South African friend about why do we import coffee while we can grow our own and export. Import-export, to me they sound the same.

In the evening I'm sitting back watching TV, the show is The Making of Britney Speares's debut movie. Is she talented?. I find myself wondering all alone. Maybe she's just like me and you, fucked up proud American/South African on a mash for the elusive dream and making wishes upon stars, even on cloudy nights.


UPDATE: Tumi Makgabo has gone on to be the spokesperson of the South Africa 2010 World Cup Local Organising Committee

SL Magazine is still going around

My homeboy has since passed matric and said he's going into music

Britney Speares has been unmasked as a troubled woman

Afroman has gone bust

TLC has since died an unceremonious death

I am still here, now blogging as opposed to writing for magazines