A Poem: Listen To Me/ Hear My Potentual

Listen to me

Hear my potential

Ignore the nagging beep-beep-beep of my trucks

As they back up into the tight driveways

And my many many many loading bays

Hear the soulful street music

Seething through cellphone speakers

As my friends lie on the grass

Of my yet-to-be upgraded park

Listen to me

Hear my potential

Ignore the negative notion of yet-to-be upgraded what-what

Despite this apparent dilemma

Children play as they should however

Pat..pat..pat run the barefeet of school kids

The younger ones faster than the rest

Pat-pat-pat-pat-pat

Listen to me

Hear my potential

Ignore the tires screeeeching to a halt

After an almost accident

Mind the sour words darting back and forth

Even though it was nobody’s fault

But rather hear the banter

Of a boss and his workers

As they share a cold 2 litre coke

Accompanied by inside jokes

And of course a much needed smoke

Listen to me

Hear my potential

Ignore the ta-ta-ta-ta of a dripping air-con box

Protruding in all its glory

You’d better keep side-steppin’

As you walk carefully across 

Rather embrace the fresh

Whoosh whoosh whooshing

Of a miracle external fan

As its force provides some graceful cooling

Listen to me

Hear my potential

Ignore the crrrrr crrrrrr crrrr of the trolleys

Pushed on the road

Ha!

You’re lucky

The bumpy sidewalks wouldn’t go as smoothly

Listen to the call of my potential

I know it’s hard to ignore the call of money making

Seems like everyone walks with a ching ching ching-a-ling

By the way, loose change you’d better bring

As your utmost aim

Or you’ll find yourself stranded

Good luck finding an ATM

written by Kashiya Mbinjama

Video of poem inspiration

This is a link to the video of the different sights and sounds that captured the essence of Jeppestown and inspired the poem, which can be read in the captions of this video:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCqZjvqV30Q

JEPPESTOWN NEIGHBOURHOOD IMMERSION

AN INTRODUCTION

What it meant for me to immerse into a neighbourhood:

• opening up all of my senses

• allowing the space to speak its own language

• not being afraid to explore

What I found most interesting through observation:

• there is a lot of cool graffiti

• it is very difficult to find an ATM nearby

• the perimeter of the park is used as a running track by a school 

• there are many loud noises made by machinery and trucks

• the people are quite friendly and eager to engage with a new face

• the park is well used despite the benches having had been stolen

WHY I CHOSE POETRY AS A TOOL

The theme of my poem was sound because for me, that was the one thing that stood out as we walked from Maboneng. Being a light industrial area, the sound of the traffic grew heavier with an increase of trucks, even the genre of music blaring from trader's stalls changed. The relationship between architecture and sound is a spatial one, because sound relates to distance and the spirit of place. 

I felt this would best be expressed in a poem as sound cannot be seen but only heard or felt. I used alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia.