SOUL SEEDS Illustration

Soul Seeds: Reality & Mental inspiration Poetry pencil on paper illustration by Ronald Pled Kegomoditswe, 2015 

Featured: MamboNtema

SOULSEEDS DailyNews, SOULSEEDS UK

Copyright holder Ronald Kegomoditswe, 2015

Of Life and its Notions part 2

Or would the asylum despair when reality devours our littlest;

Days to captivate us before dead?

For religion and isms know no word;

Uttered by tribal rhythms except in ancestral tribute.

For life is a termite mount, a season. 
And I hesitate not but to live, for life knows no beholder, a pity.

For life and its notions a mystery. Our days a victim.

For the asylum would seek, but neither here nor there,

Either near or drifted in desert lands of my grandfather’s crop field.

And when elephants gather, rain clouds would gather for our seeds;

To grow and replenish our famine. For life is a dream, a seed.

And our littlest time to live shall fade at the cross-fields;

Like death upon Mother Nature’s creatures.

For the asylum would speak in spoken words for time to heal our hearts,

Yet summoned before the Creator’s jury to bury dead our past.

But not just our past;

For our past defines what we would become,

Our last laugh lasts before the soul.

And I reiterate my articulation, my language,

For life is a language;

Of repetitive extremist imagery as though a refugee,

Not a slavery kind, a tragedy.

As though I were living in the Blue Mountains;

The higher mountains, the Ashanti hills, the untouched, the unexploited,

As though I were singing for the unknown, the unborn, the ancient.

The serpent, the secret, the sacred, of course I'd dare not,

I'd embrace the essence of life and its notions...

22102015-1300

Extract from 'Of Life and its Notions' part 2

Onalethuso Petruss Buyile Mambo Ntema

The Voice of a Shadow: Life, Reality & Mental Inspiration Poetry, 2016

Author of SOUL SEEDS: Reality & Mental Inspiration Poetry, 2014 Xlibris Publishing UK

Soul Seeds - Amazon Germany, Soul Seeds - Xlibris UK, faceBook, #opnMambo

Of Life and its Notions

For the asylum would insane;
When reality entangles beneath hearts to a mermaid,
Of norms and customs gone but decayed and faded,
Of horns and phantoms bold but enslaved and painted,
Of arms and toes hold than betrayed and wasted,
Of yams and pawpaw’s than entrenched and fainted,
Of dogs and puppies than brave to be humbled,
Of guns and monies but grave in their last moment,
Of moms and sapiens, wrongs and rights for a planet,
Of charms and mountains, tonnes and tongues but fallen,
Of gums and porridge, deaf for a student,
Of calm and solid, death had secluded;
In sacred days when secrets of the metropolis unfolded,
Bound, found, sound to the deaf ear unwanted,
For life could suppress us more but depressed,
For I am not a Poet, I am just a simple man;
With notions of life complexed between the two men,
The you men, the new men, the gone men, the me man, the few men,
But true men do not hide, they delight in eyes like a true man,
They strike for a piece of bread in the basket,
They strive for a niche but dare in the casket;
As though theirs would be a better death than dead,
They cry for peace in pieces of their hearts a burden,
They smile to please their peace of mind blinded,
They hide behind their fingers like frowns of an innocent girl haunted,
They pride in times of their leaders like clowns before marriage,
They child in dozens of their notions, for life is a notion, a mystic,
A devotion. For religion knows no word uttered by tribal rhythms.
Except in ancestral tribute. For life is a termite mount, a season. 
And I hesitate not for life knows no beholder, a pity.

For life and its notions a mystery.

22102015-0940

Extract from 'Of Life and its Notions'.

Onalethuso Petruss Buyile Mambo Ntema

The Voice of a Shadow: Life, Reality & Mental Inspiration Poetry, 2016

Author of SOUL SEEDS: Reality & Mental Inspiration Poetry, 2014 Xlibris Publishing UK

Between Two Dunderhead Friends (Part 3)

Between Two Dunderhead Friends

What if dunderheads befriend dead-woods?

They can only do as cowards do,

For they are just mentally constrained to;

Rationalize than defend

Their defenceless senseless;

Being and pride in helpless

Cry-foul.

They're just as thin air between dark clouds,

They descend in envious yet porous;

And empty as vessels of a dumb

Mongrel that only bites when fed

And often

Fall from grace to disgrace their soul.

For they not know their purpose,

They just are dead;

As walking skeletal kind.

They are never here nor there.

They chase a silent wind from imaginative deficiency,

As though theirs were a brutalized kind without remedy,

For enemy

Is their most adorable human face. They are ready;

For what does not concern their little mind.

They really are just as innocent like a broken child,

Their innocence is deceptive, as snake to a tongue.

Yet enslave their brethren with perceptive arms;

Of a lost but lunatic. O what a vulnerable pal,

For yours would fade into pages of the missing. After all;

Life cares not about you either. You can harden to a stone,

For hard ears rebel against their deafness. They're prone

To know the truth as though they had known,

And I know that you feel weak when I talk,

As days have coloured in empty blue skies galore!

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Onalethuso Petruss Buyile Ntema

The Voice of a Shadow: Life, Reality & Mental Inspiration Poetry, 2016

This poem discourages greedy and seemingly narrowed-bourgeois friendship. It scores further to forewarn human beings against such deceptive 'mark of the beast'. For life is just a friendly kind, yet distorted by shadows of friendship.

Mambo Ntema's SOUL SEEDS Poetry Preview

Maun born and Botswana's rare multi-talented Creative artist Mambo Ntema has confirmed that since its publication, SOUL SEEDS: Reality and Mental inspiration Poetry has not been previewed visually to extend on the book's potential outreach. The outspoken Entrepreneur and Cultural activist has indicated that the 4-minute sneak preview was filmed in different locations in Botswana and Namibia (in Kasane and Impalila island along Chobe-Zambezi rivers, and in Matsaudi village along Thamalakane-Santandadibe rivers in the Okavango Delta)  and directed by Tumelo Prince Mokongwa and published by ISHYN GATES Graphix Media & Arts. The promotional video is hoped to reach-out to Folk and Contemporary Poetry community worldwide, whilst working on an Audio and DVD projects scheduled for 2016. 

Watch the Promo Video: Mambo Ntema Poetry promo video 

SOUL SEEDS online: Xlibris Bookstore, Amazon, Google Books, Loot RSA, Bokus Sweden, Barnes & Noble, Saxo Denmark, Amazon2, eBay UK, Mercado Libre Spain, Amazon Canada, Amazon France, Amazon Germany

As well, the Scholar-Applied Researcher-Author-Musician-Entrepreneur is editing his second, third and forth book(s) 'The Voice of a Shadow: Life, Reality and Mental Inspiration Poetry' a 250 poems and inspirational quotes anthology featuring poets and wordsmiths from Africa, Asia, US America and Europe, and 'Poko Puo: Tswana Same' a 50 Setswana poems collection and 'Ntema and the Wayeyi Ancestral Chants!' which is a historical tribute to my late grand father Ntema Shaldiwara Sinqaera. He has also worked (and continues to) on numerous trans-continental poetry collaborations to spread his wings beyond just Botswana. 

The philanthropist (if not Community Developer) has pledged his creative skills, expertise and indigenous knowledge in mentoring and facilitation of Arts and Cultural heritage in Chobe through establishment of a legal arts structure; Chobe Alliance for Arts Organization (CAAO) which is a newly registered arts entity, seeking to leverage on Social Enterprising through Cultural tourism; a component-based 'company limited by guarantee' in the nearest future. 

Mr. Ntema is a founding Director of OPN Group of Companies (Pty) LTD which trades as African Arts & Crafts and Chizo Travel & Tours based in Kasane and Maun (Botswana), with partners and agents across Botswana, Africa, Europe and Asia and world-wide. He also is a Secretary and Public Relations (and Marketing) Manager for CAAO, and a member of DysisGraphy, Chobe Alliance for Non-Governmental Organizations (CANGO), Craft Council of Botswana and World Youth Alliance. He has a BA (Sociology) from the University of Botswana with vast experience on Sustainable Rural and Remote Community Development, Land and Agrarian Question, Land Rights and Land Use/reforms to mention but a few.

Published Research works: Decentralized Land Reforms: Cases from Botswana, Madagascar and Mozambique by Rick de Satgé (Phuhlisani, Republic of South Africa), 2011

SOUL SEEDS ISBN 978-1-4931-4128-9

Interviews: https://afroartvism.wordpress.com/2014/11/03/conversations-with-onalethuso-petruss-buyile-mambo-ntema/

http://www.dailynews.gov.bw/mobile/news-details.php?nid=17385&flag=

http://www.theblackapostle.com/#!Soul-Seeds/cuhk/5500237b0cf24585979fe2ad

Her and (Between) the Two Men Part 1

Her and (Between) the Two Men Part 1

She had just met them, the two men.

And of course at first she would appear an innocent child;

With an innocent face but caught between the two men.

Her smile could make a bachelor’s taste by the night;

Like dreams over shadows of a teenager’s eye.

Her thighs could drag a man’s feet to a jury. Her eyes;

Could provoke a blind man’s sight to the chest of a juvenile.

But at times she would appear a crazy child, a lazy child.

And she would pride between the two men. She would cry;

A silent tear and she would choose to die inside.

She gave it a try at once and a dozen times thereafter. Her life;

Was a talk of the town, she’d frown;

She’d frown—but ignore. She was the gem of African beauty.

And the voice in her told her to be calm but she would ignore.

She would act as though she did not know.

She had brutal eyes of the beholder. She was still younger;

Than her first daughter when she met her sudden lover,

He was a little older than her but kind to be a brother.

He was a man. A fighter. A warrior, but a drifter.

He had become an intruder, an abuser,

And their friendship could not sustain its vulnerable matter;

But her and between the two men.

She had just met the other, and on way to the other.

She had escaped from the other, O what a saga!

Her and between the two men.

She could not bend to mend a broken heart;

But decided to desert the inner self to a fallen kind.

She submitted herself to the civilized kind. The broken kind.

The material kind. And she was a teenager.  She was enticed;

By fairy tales of the working class. And she would miss a class,

To quench an old friend’s thirsty days. But the two men retained theirs.

They kept a secret. And the secret between the two men became a little curious.

And curiosity is relative. It is never absolute. You’d rather be a coward;

But curious for rhetorical matters to unfold beneath the mountain of lovers.

03102015-2147

Onalethuso Petruss Buyile Ntema

The Voice of a Shadow: Life, Reality and Mental Inspiration Poetry

MAMBONTEMA

mambo.bw@gmail.com 

Dear You (Me)

Dear You (Me)

Dear You,

I looked through you;

Beneath my swollen heart. I miss you. 

I wish time could tell us more about you.

And pieces need connected to lead us to the truth.

And truth is, I am yearning and longing for you.

I put all my ten toes between yours over the full moon.

And we'd stay longer in each's eye like two moons;

Over shadows of an empty blue sky. I miss you. 

I wish I could see you;

Every time I open my eyes to seek you. 

As birds to a feather, my hands are weaker than you.

But I miss you, dear you.

Dear Me,
I looked through this;

Person beneath my skin. I miss you. 

I wish time could tell us more about life. Just a clue.

And pieces may connect, to lead us to the truth.

And truth is, I am yearning and longing for you. 

I put all my ten toes between yours over the full moon.

And we'd stay longer in each's eye like two moons;

Over shadows of an empty blue sky. I miss you. 

I wish you could see me;

Every time you open your eyes to seek me. 

As birds to a feather, your hands are weaker than mine.

But I miss you, dear me.

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Onalethuso Petruss Buyile Mambo Ntema

- The Voice of a Shadow: Life, Reality and Mental Inspiration poetry 2016