South Africa Poetry Magazine

South Africa Poetry Magazine –

"a man unfed by the world" by Tshephiso M. Phala

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September 15th, 2026

South Africa Poetry Contest #4 – First Place

a man unfed by the world

by Tshephiso M. Phala

i wake,
with a clock bleeding inside my chest.
hours gnaw my name like rats in the pantry.
streets spit back my footsteps,
and even echoes shake their heads
at my hunger.

my pockets are tombstones,
coins swallowed by dust.
i shake hands with hunger,
and it laughs like a jailer
who knows my soul by face.

tomorrow drips from a cracked jar,
hope slides between my fingers,
like oil on stone.
dreams pawned at the edge of town,
with a tag that says,
return when you have earned mercy.

the mirror spits riddles i cannot answer.
what is a man,
if his hands are bare,
if his children dine on shadows,
if prayers vanish,
like smoke through a locked door.

i send my name to a thousand doors,
CVs folded into paper coffins.
rejection rains like acid,
burning holes straight through my spine,
while my peers parade in stitched success,
keys clinking like small weapons,
against my waiting room skeletons.

faith limps on crutches now.
amen tastes like rationed water.
god is a distant call,
static where devotion used to sing.

i am not lazy.
i am stone weathered by cruelty,
beaten by systems
that never bruise themselves.
they call it failure,
when a man bends
under laws he never wrote.

yet still i breathe, stubborn.
still i stand, broken-boned.
still i sharpen tomorrow,
with borrowed steel.
still i laugh a wounded laugh,
that tastes like iron.

if survival had medals,
i would choke on gold.
if endurance paid rent,
i would own cities.
all i hold is this aching will,
these calloused, faithful hands,
a heart armored with quiet.

hear this cry from the unpaid nights,
from men starved, proud, unseen.
a man who cannot provide is not defeated.
he is a soldier,
fighting a war,
the world refuses to name,
and every scar
is proof he is still alive.

About the Poet
Tshephiso M. Phala resides in Mahwelereng, Limpopo, South Africa.
Read the poet's biography and Wax Poetry and Art publications on Tshephiso M. Phala's Artist Page.

This poem is featured in Comet #9, published in the Wax Poetry and Art Library.

Keywords: urban survival, social realism

Previously published in South Africa Poetry Magazine:
Miscarried Messages
by Nicole Chingosha

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