The Creative Edge

Jenny wasn’t beautiful, her forehead was slightly more pronounced, her cheeks puffy, her lips thinned and her skin difficult to maintain in the heat. However, she did have eyes that moved men to arenas of sensuality that very few women could, and an attitude that would never apologize for it. Jenny understood what many women in her position understood—sex is leverage. Power. Control. On that cold night on Christmas Eve with the wind combing her skin and her hands stashed away in her coat she paused at the door of a pub tucked away in a corner of Lusaka’s biggest shopping mall. Jenny looked at two men heading her direction…and smiled. The men looked at each other as if trying to verify that they were not seeing things. “Will you gentlemen be so kind as to open the door for me, its freezing, I don’t want to expose my hands to the cold.” The men nodded and both reached for the door. After a few awkward seconds of what nearly degenerated into an argument over who would open t...

Verse 1 Dear Future Wife, I pray before I meet you I go blind, Hmmm, okay, not physically but metaphysically, I pray that my eyes don’t drown in the sea of your beauty, That the planet of my heart is not illuminated by the sun of your smile, That my emotions are not  strangled  by the curves of your body, I pray that I may never get so lost in the  richness  of your eyes I forget about the poverty of life, That the vacuum of your sight may never make me lose my breath… Chorus Verse 2 ‘Cause I know the blasphemy of my eyes, The idolatry of media shrines that stripe you of your substance and glorify the superficial, I've  worshiped in their temples, With Twerk Prophets, Bikini Priests and Apostles of Lust, Sacrificed your worth at the altar of porn, I don’t know how to find you in the garbage bag of my retinas, ‘Cause  I've  dated girls whose beauty had me way past tipsy…Am drunk! But when the hangover of their p...

Magnifire may be short in stature but that man's talent  & heart propel him to lands even giants dare not step. I was fortunate enough to interview the young man. This is the interview below: Why spoken word? Why spoken word? Rather why not spoken word?? It’s the purest and rawest way to artistically communicate. It’s direct and as a spoken word artist, on a stage with a mic, I have the opportunity to be a voice—voicing God and people. Doing it fearlessly cause am able to say stuff most are scared to say. WHEN DID YOU START WRITING? I've been a rapper longer than I've been a poet. Wrote my first rap in 2001, at 11 years old. Wrote my first poem in 2003. So I've been penning stuff down for a minute now. Which artists most inspire you, local and international? My hugest influence poetically has to be Nas. Nobody puts the "poetry" in "rhythm and poetry" better than he does. Other International acts I find inspiring are, Lupe Fia...

Forget the clichéd pleasantries, and the tedious list of excuses for not blogging often…I will just get into it. So, if you had a feel of the Lusaka social scene, it’s hard not to have noticed the explosion of ‘spoken word’ that has threatened to envelope the whole town. From the branding of Bittersweet, to the fiery tenacity of Please Don’t Snap (PDS), to the underground rawness of Cross-Factor, and the mushrooming of many spoken word acts, it is nearly impossible not to fall in love with poetry all over again. Gone are the days when poetry is looked at as some archaic, impersonal, snobbish caricature; designed by boring Literature teachers to cage pupils in a cell of academic torture. It has changed. The rules have been dropped. Organic, raw, creatively seductive, it yearns to be  moulded , adapted, and redefined to the glory of art and relevant refinement. Many, vigilant supporters of the vintage works of poetry from Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Edgar Allan Poe; might find t...

She was the quintessential Renaissance woman, A flourished mutation of success, For she flew in the skies without recess, She, the concentrated speech of motivational-ists, She, the uncompromised sermon of evangelists, She, the assertive cheer of conservationists, An embodiment of spiritual maturity, Manifested in worldly sovereignty, As if such rarity was too bodacious, Her looks a reflection in the mirror of Aphrodite, If Beauty was a law Gracefulness was her right, Alas, she lent her vocals to the dirge, “no one is perfect”, On the commandments of parenthood, Her sin was motherhood, For she was a waste bin of bad decisions, Blinded by career, Her kids wallowed in fear, Fear that mother never loved them, Fear that mother would never be there for them, Choked by insecurity, Walls were erected, Not wanting her children to be infected, With the virus of her lack of affection, Stemming from a genetic selection, For before she sang her p...

The Priest blared through his homily on that hot October Morning with about as much oratory skill as an eight year old kid. In my twenty-two years in the Catholic Church I had learned to expect as much. To keep from dosing I would usually daydream. However, that morning, because of a terrible headache from a brutal hangover I was trying to get rid of courtesy of the night before, I decided against it. It would be too much work, I just blacked out into the realm of thoughtlessness. Before I knew it the Father was done and it was time for the profession of faith (creed). We all stood up and on cue began to profess. I knew the thing so well the words rolled off my tongue without any thought or any conviction either. We sat down and the Father did things I paid little attention to. Then, shortly after, the most interesting part of the service began—Offertory. Why? Simple, it was the time when many of those congregated in the chapel walked to the altar with their offering. Each ...