“Often
times I find my naked eye overly dressed…a retreat into thoughts that carry me
into the arena of gladiators becomes a better option. Hereto lives the nuance
of what makes me…me. I shudder to think of any day that I fit a mould, where
the wonder of butterflies or strangers with stars in their eyes seizes to evoke
in me the curiosity of a young child infinitely asking why or why not. I
believe in continuously negotiating my own peace through ridding myself of my
physically embodied state. As every day begins so too does my infatuation with
daydreams”—
Zethu Macatsha
We were set apart like all wildlife does
the sick, old and wounded
Through our words we exposed the cuts of
their own words and drew blood
Smelling the flesh that opened like a
flower they came out like vultures and what an exquisite artefact did the ruins
of our carcasses make
Ruins they would soon forget bones bare
who watches over us now?
Us who have misplaced our place in their
design
Us who have stayed in their yesterday as
we fixated on the facets they couldn’t fix
The labours of our love were first
labelled as art
But then we grew older and the cracks
became bolder
When our fires started to smoulder they
put us on couches and made us believe our abilities were defects
We drummed along under their spells and
portions
Where are we now?
Remember when they told us we broke the
mould? Now we sit on the chairs of their high-rises and on the inside we spoil
like mould
Enough of your self-pity of that you have
been too indulgent they say
I say in your silence therein lays the
full propensity of their violence
You pioneers and second generations
reduced to third rate pageantry
They say what is written is forever
immortalised so what once was still is even if seen through a different set of
eyes
The only voice we had then was our own
Years pass- seeds we have sown
If only to soften the blow of the very
same pain we have known
No
shelter
You hammer words cracking down purposeful
like wrinkles on landscape
You chip at me as a prerequisite to the
boulders that demolish
Bundled up heaps of debris I pile myself
neatly infused with sheets of strengthened metals
And yet your criticisms flood what little
I could reinforce
My basement of inadequacies resurfacing
while I erode
The pestilence of your promises infests
and just as the feel of you I fumigate, in your temptation my pillars give in
All
the resentment and the regret a foundation of what you have left
Your degradation of my womanhood is my
self-esteem as it depreciates
My quiet little cottage run-down and no
longer homely, if only for a few seconds of your time so I feel less lonely
Views from dust padded windows and cobwebs
adulterate the lies until they seem real
When rejection is the cement that binds
and you are to me because I am nothing to you
I whither but weather the pain
What is it about me that takes so
stunningly to your neglect and disregard?
Running from myself has always meant
colliding with you
In those moments yes I may forget but the
self-loathing is reborn anew
Even in sight of those on site willing to
rebuild, renovate and re-mould those who want to refurbish and resell
You claim good intentions so paving the
crossroads to my hell
This little cottage of mine remains
characterised by the damage
Paint and gloss over you say just enough
for you to walk in and out again
I fixate on facets I can’t fix while contemplating
theories conciliatory only in concepts proclaiming the prevalence of hierarchy
as oppression there where I idle in my ignorance
Soothing the senseless sense of
lonesomeness with the ideology that solidarity is the bone structure of
branching out of my branding
Mourning the absence of values attribute
it to the malformation of society misled by the malice of monetary motivation
Not realising that dreams do not eliminate
order or decipher the debris left from the defect of being mentally encaged by
desired difference
Justifying judgement as the separation of
aspirations yet we all seek success conveniently forgetting that worldly worth
is predetermined by wealth
No hesitation in diagnosing the human
condition mapping out its habitual symptoms comfortable in its hypothesis yet
science cannot find the cure
Forlorn longings for peace, love and
happiness while the preservation of self lies only on who pulls the trigger
first
It’s futile to fixate on facets I can’t
fix because institutions and systems will remain fixtures on the face of change
The search for uniqueness puts us in a
unit where we are all the same so all I ask is that tomorrow you remember my
name
SICKNESS
The eve of daybreak stirs itself free from
the night before
I am authentically with you who is left
behind
You will not be the one that can peer into
the future solidifying a place for yourself in it
You will not forge past and beyond to find
purpose in your ways nor set goals for your ideas
Because I remain faithful your emotions
will run wild even when you lose the conviction to cry
You will stubbornly cling to
rebelliousness of no cause as the tethers of live long into forever without you
Anything less than who you’ve become is
sleeping your last
I am the culmination of bolted fear
The poster child of anxiety
I am the root that sprouts paranoia
I am the key that locks you in
I am your unwillingness to try as you
methodically hear each tongue wagging and see each gaze
I am with you as you devalue your own
truth and make it the villain
I am in the relationships that fall
I am your:
Isolation
Lonesomeness
Emptiness
I am your every thought and the pressured
speech that follows
I am the doubts that you wear and I am the
clothes that cover them
I am on every corner and in your likeness
like your shadow
I am
(Borderline Personality Disorder)
Addiction
There are days I look up and shout for you
to save me softly you whisper
No
There are times I cry out humbly placing
my fate at your feet
Slowly I am forced to watch my life’s
essence stumble, trip, fall over and die
There are moments I want to remain
blissfully blameless yet my body convulses with sacrosanct shame
When does the parade end?
With no trace of regret inevitably you
shake your head and tell me never
Unvoiced pleas concoct unheard as they
dance on deaf ears
I wish to shed the misgivings distorting
inner sanctuary
So many times you have dressed my wounds
You were always stronger than I
This time you refuse to salvage this
wreckage
It isn’t my fault so I seek help door to
door struggling like a child clutching for support while embracing the first
step
Voices
Hospital blankets and empty Princeton
boxes
Tears as I look in but stare out
Voices like a poltergeist
Tones
Moans
Reassurances
Calming noises
Complaints
Shaky validations within replies of love
Glossed over hellos
Sticky goodbyes
Roars from intercoms
Rambling intonations
No modulation in story-telling
Murmurs embrace from the back
Mutters with one foot out one foot in
Shouts from night terrors
Speech without reflections
Passive yells
Aggressive threats
Dazed tongue utterances
Venting in whispers
Vocalize only to let time pass by
“Yes, no, maybe, wait, tomorrow, surely,
is it okay, are you okay, am I okay?”
Voices that split my head in two as I
remain awake
Voices that rinse out the dirt and put me
to sleep
Fading
Encroaching spaces the colour spectrums of
madness call me forth
Tears bloody up the corners of my corneas
telling stories of soul and body seldom meeting
Yet reaching with all they possess
Emotions like tornados in a fish tank
Their weight is mass ten times doubled
Hands damp with sweat
Blinking eyes deem
Bones feel brittle like skin’s sunburnt
peel
Breaths caught
The bed a dizzying height
Feet rooted like stems stand fast
A cosmic misalignment followed by the last
gulps of the sun’s permeating rays
They travel the depths of the pits in my
ocean
Body trembles
Inhaling flames and I gingerly fade
A crack of a smile for the assault and a
debt of gratitude to heartache
Reflux
Mediocre mind minefields
Defined by our flat-lines
Our literacy illiterate to the plight of
men
Loss of mental aggression paved with
technical, scientific textbook logic
Our intentions diminished because of
biblical anaesthesia
Predetermined sets of normal
Days
Just days where things don’t change
Time can’t spare a minute
Never enough patience to wait
Hidden agendas and reaching for the last
benders
Everyday alive sealing a dying fate
Withdrawal
Symptoms
Presumptuous indigos telling lies to me in
a different hue asphyxiate the butterflies as they waltz in the pits of my
tummy
Severing the bars of music notes
commiserating thuds of my own heartbeat beady eyes glistening in drops of
violet a hundredfold layering kisses on my carotid artery
Cover me from head to toe in lavender
pulsating with sinking second tries like black pirates who sit with captured
feelings as their loot
Clawing renditions of lilacs on pale skin
walk the yellow brick road paved with the validation of cynics
Masterful mahogany to myself I must prove
that mindlessly feigning for the taste of acid one last time must be fought
with the urge to run as far as nimble feet can carry me
The fingers of addiction pull me close and
the fix continues to entice making me curse the very day I let you in
Hangman
Lonely minute pieces of string tighten the
grip on the noose
Falling so hard my head swirls, spins and
my neck is disfigured just as my feet lightly brace the ground
The stool that props me up provides feeble
defence against the dirty moth-ridden brown rag cloth of shaded pain infesting
my eyes and in its blind state maintains the worthlessness of illusion
Days pregnant with uncertainty as I have
been told that gelatines possess more mercy for their swift in their assault
The torturous anxiety of expectation as
visible as the all commanding sun
This death and detachment is the arch
between flood gates and safety
When all is locked away only the remnants
of self-mutilation will strive and conquer
I am lost and even without the Hangman’s
assistance I combust and internally I destruct
Blue
Forever measured by time
My forever transcends
The very first steps before time itself
My forever is timeless
Lyrical serial arsonists watered down
I have reached for things beyond me
Hands stained for I have known worlds
And smudge for smudge worlds have known me
Cursed by way of being blessed
Prying my chest open
Only to find my divinity in past tense
Running
standing still
I am the fabric of expression interwoven
with a factory default
Forfeiting prayer with thoughts un-kept
Yet I dream religiously
Searching for insights unknown in the most
vast kind of nothingness
Life in my system
Death on my mind
I don’t trust myself well enough to wake
up tomorrow happy with my yesterdays
Will I learn to love my pulse with every
heartbeat?
Will purpose be given to my great abyss?
What a mad race to the finish
Mine fogged by what gives chase
Having nothing to lose therefore losing
myself in everything
Order and pass academics schooling me on
how to think
Simultaneously dealing with the ponders of
my youth
My anarchy tamed
Facing an expressionless world
Running
Running
But standing still
LOVE
You
and I are undefined
Inside the Devil’s dinner we have dinned
Gurgled our blood red wine over the years
refined
We broke bread saluting a dying slum
We inked the insides of our eyelids
Bowed our heads in bargaining prayers
Vision of body polluted
Shaken but not moved
Observed but not controlled
Limited and unconvinced
Within our mind crimes we board on the
boarders of supreme
They would shackle, buckle down and morph
the backlash of our proof of existence paid due
Never just physical
Euphoria as a state of mind
You and I are defined
He
is
He pours unto me deeper shades of urbany
complex and intertwined connected living vigorously through a single moment
diverse yet similarly shared
A seal to the forbidding and impending
sense of emotion so menacing that it insults the person who wills to express it
He is my Adam, the apple eater that is so
crippled by his love, the one whose black sockets idly grasp for sight
He is the sin collector because of his
heart he shares and bares with me
A lighter, igniter and peacemaker he fuels
the combustions of my life’s conspiracy
He revolves around me, my constellation
I am his Venus a smile so contagious it is
the prudent afterthought of those who dwindle, claw and scatter at his feet
He is the protagonist, the father of my
unborn child
He is the judge, the preacher, the affair
that drives woman to her death, the finger, the trigger
He kills me, he makes me the ghost of lust
and the tangible climax of colossal fated meetings
He is ultimately fatal yet he is my
favourite flavour fastidious he spins me around in circles
He is the guiding hand of my destiny, he
is my father, he is the unfathomable elapse of time, a man effeminate in some
ways but masculine in others
He is my lyrical poem, my pen and my p pad
the beloved of Gods and Goddesses
He is the devil’s right hand man, he is
the crime and the prosecutor
He is the hand that feeds me, an elegy I
write with sorrowful rivers cascading as they meet at the apexes of his heart
She
is
Sunny compositions and harnessed solar
energy composites in your eyes
Your body is a conceptualized paradigm
everything in its rightful place
Conjugal visits in your breasts beyond the
patterns of archetypes far from a-typical it amazes me each time I let you get
close
Godly tender outlines tracing the
merciless shape of your body keeping myths and secrets beneath the mellow
embrace of my pillows
With you I will share in sampling the
subtle beauties of all men
I will never forget the pleasure of living
inside your laughter
How can any man not heed the curse and
witchcraft that is a woman’s work
Amicable
separation
Shell shocked and hard pressed
Can I be despite you
a conquering victor without contest?
Who you are hounds at me
And the pursuit leaves me scaling walls
I fall, plummet, spill and topple over
each time with you once again and more
over
The gradual descent into my inevitable is
in smiles held
Gazes shared and hands intertwined
Making love a guise to the lies you tell
I’m not looking for classic fairy-tales
They’re too secure and bolt in our
laughter in stupid senseless possibilities like happily ever after
Never
let me go
Salt water burns the curves of the sunken
buckets that are my cheeks
Struggling to bare the scale of regret
that my arms and palms carry
Honey to coffee my words attempt to soften
the better taste of confession
Maybe we could last a little longer
But your body remains rigid
How can I touch you again?
Colour drains with each breath that
escapes you
I want to hold every vapour
A woman broken and a man who was once that
way
We are no match for the temptation of
retaliation when trust is lost
I dress up the covers we took off going
back to the world as it has always known me
Loose and losing
Lies the third person that tore us apart
No more room for allowances
I have looked for love when it was always
with me all along
A puddle of my own mess asking you to wait
as I clean out the rest
Sacrifices and promises
We can never be the same
Not
there yet
I pick-pocket the times I had you
Even then it felt too true
An empty ring of infinity since I lost you
Wonder if you look at it in the same view
Love was when I had you not because I had
to
Close as we were now the moments fall
through
When the sound of my voice in the morning
no longer excites you
And when I cry it’s the same old story to
you
The tears are still fears I hold on to
Every now and then I still dream your
chest is my tissue
I think of the day when another kind of
heart will give instead of lend itself to you
I picture her warm smile and kindness
The way she will unveil your blindness
That time you will know without a doubt
And her ultimate being will be more than a
re-occurring hand out
In her eyes you’ll find daylight as your
seed in her grows
You’ll be a type of man you’ve never known
In the place of passion you’ll revise the
arms of comfort watching her as she sleeps
A little baby girl you can truly call your
own
Without a single thought of me hearing her
say “daddy” will be like coming home
They will know you for who you are and
maybe then the walls I made you build will fall apart
Your rapture
You undoing and your fulfilment
Until then please excuse me if I text you
knowing you won’t answer
Excuse me if I ask for forgiveness when I
know you’ve on to the next chapter
Excuse me if I tell the world that I’m
still in love even though it’s a boxing ring with only one pair of gloves
But please bare with me if I’m not there
yet
Body
shots
We’ve been holding hands for some weeks
Stolen kisses and then you look away
You’ve held me close and your lips smiled
on my right shoulder
We’ve been glossy eyed and unblinking
Sinking
I’ve made you laugh while you took your
load off
You’ve held me still
Fingers drawing me anew
Loving me beyond my skin
Fanned flames unwilling to die
Lover
There’s a quiet in my cul-de-sac
My lover is an old English castle
Greenery is his ankle bracelet
What he footprints grows
Where he moves they think they know
He is silent but never on the tip of his
toes
My lover will not prostitute what he
emotes
He is a wise traveller of time
A nay hand to the deceit of Delilah
His arms are a secret covenant
My lover is in the roundness of my waist
I fall unto his waste sweetly rotten
I slide down he’s face dripped empty of
lies
Names of ex lovers in fly catchers
Dead they are a healed cancer
He promises what little he has
Even without this is my man
My lover is my laughter
My tears and my answers
He is by design not by luck
Crowns never leave his head
I wash his feet and like a blind man I am
led
Where he begins if it pleases him that is
where I end
He is in the covers of my bed
The execution of a grand plan
On oily skin like sand
My lover is a apple from a seed without
the tree
He is the wave and I his sea
He is such and such is he
He feels so he can be
My lover came after others
Others have not come after him
He is a peaceful fighter
The story he lives is there before the
writer
I cannot say enough but of him more than
enough will be said
My lover I call by many names
I have him carved in stone
With or without him my thoughts are not
alone
I am the stage and him the microphone
He is sound amplified
My lover is space and matter
My lover is my everything
Even without a wedding band
Every day I wear his ring
And when the clouds change
My lover is forever Spring
Taken
If the sweet decadent aroma of lust
caresses these senses then devoid of all feeling I have been rendered unmoved
If sultry seduction made itself known as
it oozed from the crevices of each skin pore washing over me in pure fulfilment
then unmoved I have been rendered un-inspired
If contemptible simply indecent carnivals
of affection spread themselves and cast shadows wherever thought might struggle
to form culminating in the death of any other expression then un-inspired I
have been rendered untouched
If suggestively looking through lidded
eyes in piercing gazes sweeps lesser dames off their feet with spoonfuls of
honey drenched compliments that sway inciting passions then untouched I have
been rendered unperturbed
If unadulterated and vulgar stirrings
plant themselves in all my muscles with conations of foreign wants and desires
then by all these advances I have been rendered
Unmoved
Un-inspired
Untouched
Unperturbed
Yet the embodiment of irony that is you
leaves me standing here completely conquered
Only
beautiful when you cry
Gouging impatiently at your father’s loins
you became the forgotten by product of an irritating itch scratched
They stripped you of your dignity like ink
assaults a bare canvas they brazened your golden brown skin with hateful marks
you are cursed to adorn proudly
Initiated now they call you a man, but no
such stranger do I find in your restless eyes
The company you keep is wax to your midway
fledged wings they call you beautiful but why won’t they let you fly?
Even as a hero, your beauty lies only in
the paradox of bloodshed from within enveloped in dense masses you making your
heart the emptiest
Destined to feel alone in any crowded room
a shadow of perfect reflection is permanently cast airbrushing all your
imperfections
Allow yourself freedom, your inhibitions
exist only in your head
She subdues herself to your fanned
arrogance but did she care to take a second look?
For your revelations make the bitterness
taste a little sweeter your body like music notes that many have known
Still the most haunting melody was played
that night
You are constantly changing faces, do you
recognise yourself at all?
You hold such animosity solely in that
look but they do not know that when the
silence embraces you that is when all the
true pieces fall
You stained me with your naïve notions of
declaring war upon yourself
You are unanchored and rage on
So fragile
So delicate
Let them see what you momentarily showed
me
Don’t let another part of you die because
man or no man you are only beautiful when you cry
Case
22
When capable eyes avert their attentions,
it’s a shame what they fail to realize
Like eye-witness accounts- realities are
similarly turned into lies
They yellow tape boundaries conceal the
conflicts played out of sight
White chalk lines are the whole extent of
the victim as she lays
With the murder weapon presumed discarded-
her emotion forensics reveal all finger prints and trace evidence
The medical examiner solemnly dwindles it
down to matters of the heart
As 21 how strange it seems, to have a
stranger follow you in love into your dreams
He stalks your affections like a convict
in the night, creates his silhouette in the comfort of the darkness
His mind crouches, and onto your
subconscious he pounces
The sway of his hands are like syllables
annunciating his character
His pupils glisten like the on-set of a
full moon
His teeth glimmer as if privy to the
reaction
His head cloud surfs open wide
At 22 as she took notice, so did the
vision come to focus
From the top of the mountains, echoes
carry down and on her dresser a letter was found:
“He is awake in me, his name whispers
boundless infinity. I am patty so mouldable I find even physics allows me no
less than to glide to his side. I am woman in him as electrons vibrate
synergised. I nurture naturally and care longer after he is not there. I hear
it said before it utters my lips, yet it remains such a silly notion. That I
would let myself drown only if he is the ocean. Every day I worship and curse
the ticking clock for it is the space in time that determine in how long and
for how long the magnetism of his orbit holds mine.”
On the day of her burial, unspoken words
loom lower than the leaves of autumn’s past
After many years he peers down where she
lays and on her tombstone it still reads:
“The commotion of beautiful noise unheard was
her regress.”
As he stood there he knew, her final
resting place was in his presence
The
morning in your eyes
May the contorted gluttony of my
affections be a safe haven
May the discord of my disobedient emotions
pilot you towards comforts unparalleled
May the rigid bondages of a life lived ill
at ease provide you with generous servings of pleasures inconceived
May my wasp-stung lips intoxicate and the
pigmy insignificance of my bosom be intertwined and interlocked with the highs
of your touch
May my burly, strong thighs inherit of
genes passed down forever welcome your drizzled kisses
May the monotonous beat of my heart be the
willing substitute to yours
May the perpetual glint in my eyes deliver
umpteen injections of delirium from which you rapture in unsung climaxes
May my callous camouflages seize to exist
so that you can submerge yourself in the calamity that is me
May the awkward clutter that stalks my
mind with clumsy stutters be the muzzle to your bad day
May I satisfy and elate the hankering you
posses so as to see that smile which has always belonged to me
As the lull of the sea breeze breathes
life like the phoenix that hails from shrivelled ash
To you I mindfully utter this
“Only with you am I truly awake”
A
love letter to the motherland
I dream now the universe a heart song in
acapella
I recite now verses conjoined with the
preludes of orchestral flights nursing all we are yet to become
I move now to the pulsating stars, no other
beat but my own as I give myself to the night
I hear now the voices of nations humming
the ancient anthems of Gaia
I paint now rainbows with brush strokes of
you and I as we whistle at the wind
I see now a map of mountains, valleys,
oceans, rivers and seas the intricate anatomy of home
I walk now with the strait of a man who is
the change the world wills to exist
I hold now to my chest diverse fauna and
the falsetto of flora in full bloom
I am neither poverty
ethnicity
crime
nor class
I am my people and I am African
A
familiar love
Bodies flower beyond cement slabs beneath
a stone that is the summary of an earthly matriarch who once graced spoilt soil
Merriments of a temporary home and trades
made are the rules of existence
A spirit bound to heaven we were specs
where she was the Creator’s mould
We were projects where she had been a part
of plans foretold
What a blessing was given when she was set
apart- everywhere she went sharing her heart
Infants in her capable hands she rocked us
back and forth until anxiety was lost in the peace of slumber
If we had never known love while she was
here she is selfless enough to shine it from above
Timeless knowledge she had acquired no
more of her shall be asked because she did more than was required
Walking up to a morning that is a quarter
of her light- the universe a far less bewildering sight
Scientists study the stars when the
illumination was always in her eyes
What is love if it has left with her?
What is hope when she had it until
the very end but it failed not her but
us?
Who are we to question they say-be happy
being a stunning flock not of her design but of her guidance
Grief continues until the mind can begin
to conceive the loss of an angel
History
The sickness I was born into compelled me
Who was I then if I didn’t know him?
The reluctant substitute to the visceral
candyfloss grey clouds of my mind
My comfort
My outlet
Consistently shouldering- a pad to lay
my head
A sounding board to mend my earthly
but broken seams
My strides aided by the support of a
standing welcome
How could I have recognised a man’s love
when I had been brought up to see only his sins?
Me who is accustomed to my ritualised
abuse of those who care about me the most
Somewhere along the line I grew selfish, I
couldn’t help it
Asinine now that I had once figured
attraction only worthwhile if it was physical
Now my passions cascade when I’m drunk and
my want for him becomes literal
Reptile tears when I took in his rejection
Cold blood running through his vascular
The motioning of like and distaste circular
So fickle in his infatuation
We fell out and he misplaced his patience
Swirling winds of self-hate
Swelling desires devout of commitment
Blasé shrugs at each other’s affections
Time always off by melancholy’s mili-
seconds
My madness left wanton
Wanting passion
Wanting peace
And if it means being happy, wanting just a
piece of his delight
In my eyes I only wish he would’ve found
a reason to fight
Past the brash and the bush
To a me I could be reintroduced to
Instead to his disapproval I became acquainted
But hope springs eternal
Jealousy rings infinitely
And regret is the only absolute
ART
Ellipsis
(…)
Crayons redesigned smoke mirrors- what I
knew was what I was told and the reaper could always return what he had sown
I lit the years with caught fireflies all
I saw was love in my mother’s eyes
There was nothing a hug couldn’t fix-there
wasn’t a single birthday my daddy would miss
Storybooks said monsters had feelings too
it was just pesky thorns on the bottom of their heels’ that made them
angry-unsolved riddles were the only tragedy
Being lost didn’t mean burning alone-never
suffering through anything on my own
My thoughts never turned evil-only beauty
laced sacrifice and storm always faded into picture perfect skies
Bliss searched for me and nothing was
hidden behind the folds of my face-looking back meant I never left a person
behind
All was forgiven and only those cunning
red foxes lied- my clothes were my only defence
Words were final and the only thing that
could separate was a fence- goodbye was never forever it only meant see you
tomorrow
The prince rode in the knick of time glad
to be pronounced a hero- all hands that touched had the purest intent
A compromise meant colouring in the same
book –a smile was all it took
The closest I came to intimacy was holding
a cute boy’s hand-there wasn’t a cut a plaster couldn’t fix
Standing on the edge of the balcony all
these memories flood my mind so I wire my eyes shut like I am blind
I
blow the world my last kisses- my whole life defined by ellipsis
…
Poets
Mystique, pedigree of the consort that is
my imaginary mind
Purebred self-ordained Priestess to the
finery of superbly disturbed intellect
I cannot begin to articulate, embody or
express
The structure of what mould grows on the
waysides of my thinking
If you narrators of life only knew
There has never been a writer like I
I’m neither brilliant nor humble, chosen
or significant
English does not roll off my tongue but
staggers
Flow does not spill as planned but takes
the shape of the object it is contained
I am no slam poet
I won’t soothe and excite the pride of
your clan with my vernac
What is originality when there have been
so many others before me?
It’s the idea of purpose of which I have
none
My crowd is of two or three
My unpublished works far from prestigious
If you narrators of life through word only
knew
I am an imposter
I am crazed and pass off my rot as the
ramblings of a smith
Hail you who are able
Hail you who are knowledgeable
Hail you who are gifted
I am in awe of you yet I will not allow
you to give me the same courtesy
There’s a pleasantness in my mental state
It is an outlet for an outsider such as I
I fear humanity so I proclaim myself as
not being part of it
If you narrators of life only knew
I’ve never been one of you
Rejection
of my birth
Reading social mood rings
Navigating the lines
They get the wayward direction of my given
mind
My isolation of self hurts and confuses
them
Through mistakes I learn the confines of
their
Facades
Masks and two way mirrors
My birth never an option
What right do they have to make me be?
Who abuses their power so much as to
breathe life into my body unasked?
I am the one who has to endure the now
I have to go through it
Me
I have to hope for a better tomorrow
One that holds promise and reasons
Day in, day out
Dealing with the burden of being
Blind rage
Festering anger
Boundless happiness
Gut wrenching sadness
Inspiration
Hopelessness
Wonder
Faith and doubt
Because of them I have no choice
My right to refuse this world taken away
My right to forsake this existence
becoming the clutch of life imposing unto me the need to live
Even with owned decisions
How much of it is me or what was designed
by He the holder of my blueprint?
Duality
I don’t need your freedom
I’m trying to find my own
Demands never to lead but to follow
Never to own but to borrow
Placing value on the paper we kill, lie,
and die for
No love for men as blood pours
Fertilizing concrete streets
What grows thereafter silenced by
trampling feet
Listening with a heart with a rhythm
off-beat
I heard what we hear makes us aware of all
the injustices happening here
Global news rotating like a partially
blind sun
It’s when we place our heads on feather
stuffed pillowcases that the man knows that he has won
Only in dreams can we truly picture the
depth of poverty
Graffiti sprayed caricatures finding
humour in reality
Awaiting messages from the dead forgetful
of the living
What existence is this?
Make her beautiful
Employ your
illusions of grandeur
Teach the paradox
of crooked vices
Make her beautiful
Rehabilitate her
decadent dementia
Input aesthetic to
her monstrous self-inflictions
Make her beautiful
Paint on her frame
for frame your ideological interpretations
Decapitate her
deviance
Stump the tongue
guilty of debauchery and obscenities
Make her beautiful
Re-sculpt with
your weapon of choice so she can appease
Even if it adds to
her addiction
Society
The faceless
anomaly pleads
Make her beautiful
An
unforgettable companion
See the insides of my mind’s eye have
turned grey
In your absence waters turn murky and what
hope was left floats away
Tensions rampage as each page devout of
ink glares back
The remnants of kaleidoscopic art fade to
black
To tell lies to natural progression I have
needed no pen
Losing parts innate as the passage of time
forever stands
Falling asleep on my dreams and waking up
to a perspective of reality an imposter
Feigning interest while mourning the lost
lives of the living
For what a meagre existence it must be
To appreciate one’s life only in
accordance to the humdrum requirements of necessity
If the body is a temple mine was an
extension of my every intension before normalcy was the criteria
Excitement
Danger
Trouble
Polar opposing:
Security
Status quo
Comfort
The need to disturb the trance in which
acceptance of fate is considered destiny all but gone
I used to find my place on the fringes
Now on the routine I binge
Heartless full courses of dead dreams
Meaning left neglected in my every emotion
dejected
Distant memories of when a hard knock was
inspiration awaiting like a diamond in the dust
My uniqueness was all I had then
It was all I needed
And what a stance it was for me
To refuse to frame the world indefinitely
Unapologetic
Young
And free
Expression as vital as breathing
Until I figured myself in need of fixing
A disease that needed to be cured
A most sad realisation it is now that
although my dysfunction took parts of me everyday
-
It was still my own
My written word always a loyal friend
Having lost it, I lost myself
To reacquaint with my old companion I must
In hopes of one day regaining the great
taste of wanderlust
All works and pieces by Zethu Macatsha
….
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