EXPERIMENTAL

IN THE NAME OF THE LORD...

Award-winning author Alice Walker starts her Pulitzer winning book The Color Purple with the words, "Dear God, I am fourteen years old. I am, have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me"

And all of a sudden voice-over protocol flies out of the window as we all want to write personal notes to God and bypass his son. "Where was God when my only child died?" a question came. "He was where He was when His own Son died", came the response.

Tupac Shakur asked in Letter to the President, "sista had a baby as an adolescent where was God?". And the questions and statements never stopped there but continue to this day.

In our ongoing series of searching for poetry that makes mention of the Creator and His Son, today we look at the wordsmiths who have got lines about God.

"God made hands that hold the silences keeping false grace in place/ for a people burned to scorn the spiritual legacy of their race/ And God made hands that turned themselves into wings..."

Lebogang Mashile - The Ancient Ones

"I shed blood for the woman/ still hidden in a young girl's body/ who will learn to desire God's hand inside her"

Wisani Nghalaluma - Twelve Faces of My Womanly Blood

"we wish to provide for these people/ whom God has ordained/ the unravelers of our Divinity"

Alan Kolski Horwitz - A letter from Cabeza de Vaca to King Philip

"Gogo Sani saying God is good but I ain't seen it so far"

St Lucas the Ribelatti - Ha Ke Tsena

"we never had ideas to embrace everything was imposed/
when our 1st chance to choose our god came we looked to the sky/
never regretted our decision he blew breath in our lungs"

Goodenough Mashego - a new religion

"Oh God, good Lord:
I saw him, face squirmed
huffing and panting
on top of her"

Mzwandile Matiwana - Incesuous Bed

"The most devastating lie – which I believed for a while – is that God hates and wants to kill me..."

Liesl Jobson - Spiritual Lies

Copyright held by the poets quoted. The text is used only due to its relevance to the subject.