Unposted Letters to My Beloved

By Thabo Moalusi

Be prepared to be taken on a melancholic and nostalgic trip.

This work is more than a mere poetry book; it speaks to your soul. Through his word-wizardry and insight, Thabo Moalusi takes readers to surreal places you never considered existed. The poems in this book speak of beauty, love, travails, politics and other aspects that make our lives adventurous and exciting. He encourages readers to indulge in this masterpiece to realise this is not a conventional poetry book, but a decorated truth.
Unposted Letters to my Beloved also features three thought-provoking essays – the first the tongue-in-cheek “When men were women” followed by “Matters of contents and contexts” and “Does the future needs us?”
This is a must-have book in any discerning reader’s collection.

About the author

Thabo Moalusi is an entrepreneur, freelance writer and poet. He is the author of the organisational leadership book The New Manager’s Maze and has a YouTube channel called Maze Channel that tackles management and leadership challenges.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thabo Moalusi
• Release date: Oct 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005901202

Book preview

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Dedications

This book is dedicated to all who blessed me with their lives.

Foreword

This is a collection of the conversations I so wish I’d had with my beloved but could not as I have to be politically correct, lest I antagonise them. All of us have unposted letters to our beloved, the things we are uncomfortable saying to them but which are of concern to us. We still feel stifled in this world of free expression and freedom of speech. This book is just the tip of the iceberg as I still have stashes of unposted letters to be sent out. But who is my beloved? All of humanity as I belong to a family of mankind. This ranges from my immediate family, relatives, friends, to fellow citizens of the world. It had been said that Poetry is a decorated truth, and I trust you will find this book to be just that, a decorated truth. Compounding the problem is the now prevalent cancel culture. Self-expression could not have been poorer. By self–expression, I do not mean the promotion of disguised racism, homophobia, misogyny, misandry, and the like, but rather of the uncomfortable truths. The truths that are incumbent on us to confront.

Poems in this book capture different moods and times in my life, albeit not all I have experienced. These include my observations of fellow life travellers. They are a mixture of happiness, sadness, lamentations and self-reflection. For instance, in the Arrogance of the Ignorant, I attempted to get into the mind of a substance addict and his inevitable demise. I self-reflected in poems such as A dream, Coming in from the cold, and To those I could not show love. In Beauty and My teacher, my lover, I wrote from a woman’s perspective. The former consists of my observation of the relationship between women and their beauty and what could be going on in their minds when it finally deserts them. The latter deals with sexual abuse of learners by teachers. I also touched on my political side in My truth, Deliberate Amnesia, The night that did not end, and others.

I featured three of my essays in this book, with the first titled When men were women, which deals with gender discrimination. I took an imaginary trip to a world and time when men took up some of women’s responsibilities such as giving birth and wondered what it would be like. Same as with Does the future need us?. I shared my dream of the future and what I encountered in it. On Matters of contents and contexts, I gave my take on how to spot the truth and a lie, which is a very difficult but necessary thing to do. We are living in the world of fake news and propaganda. It is nearly impossible to spot or separate a charlatan from the righteous. You cannot just trust what you are being told without reflection. Although we have truth-tellers, we also have trusted liars in our midst. I trust you will be joining me in reading and finally posting these letters to my beloved.

Thanks.

Thabo Moalusi

Poems

1

Arrogance of the Ignorant

I think so, therefore I declare so.

I assume a lot, and I profess a lot.

No cue, no clue, but I know what I say to be true.

I said too much without saying much

I have been told before that I am delusional

Perhaps I am in denial

Because all make sense to me.

If I am sick, I love the illness and hate the cure

Let me bask in my ignorance for it is blissful

Better than this horrible reality, that is life

Live your life and let me live mine

For I do not meddle in others’ affairs

Pretending to be saintly to all and sundry

Calling other people’s sanity, idiotic vanity.

Please bring me my holy waters in good measure

Drowning in spirits is infinitely better than living in this hell

Slipping back into a welcoming oblivion

Never to be woken up to this reality

For I am immersed in my dreamworld

Having made a covenant with slumberland

Call it utopia or dystopia, I care less.

My friend said it chips away at my life, a piece at a time

But it feels peaceful while it lasts

What is the purpose of longevity if it is endured?

Why must I prolong my grief?

Could I not steal moments to be happy

Though it hurts in time?

These are questions best left to my whims.

Someone said, Stop before it totally destroys you.

Even my wife concurred

The preacher man said I must repent as the time is nigh

I said, Not now as I am still high,

Even though it felt like the sky was about to fall

Signalling my inevitable fall

The expressions on the faces of my beloved said it all

The image in the mirror looked old and strange

That’s not me! I ejaculated

Abandoning my inner silent intercourse

The truth had dawned and cast its awful shadow

The ghostly figure was staring back at me

The one my beloved grew accustomed to

For I became a slave no one could save.

It was a Tuesday that became a ‘Truth-day’

The day I lost my claim to pity

I did that day, what I did the previous day and the day before

Then I heard the faint sobbing voices of my beloved

The doctor said he did his best for as long as he could

My silent screams could not grab their attention

Have I kicked the bucket or am I high?

Please wake me up from my sleep once again

So I can choose differently

For this purposeless life had been deferred

Never to be studied by generations to come

Fit to be discarded in the bin of history

To