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Adolescent Girls

‘He says you smell like crushed pineapple and coconut oil.’
‘Is that a good sign?’
She nodded her head carefully making sure she was understood.
‘He says he wants to make out with you.’
‘Oh really.’ She blushes but you can see that it makes her happy.
‘So?’
‘So, do you want to?’
‘Want to what?’
‘Stupid girl. Do you want to go and make out with him in the woodshed?’
‘I don’t know. Do you think he respects me?’
‘Why do you ask that? It’s not about respect. Don’t you want to be popular? Don’t you want to be my rival?’ Elizabeth turns her head to hide the smile on her face.

I’m sure it’s cold in the woodshed. Already it sends chills down my spine. Elizabeth is popular. Elizabeth doesn’t care what anybody thinks about her. She drinks and she smokes. I am her friend. I don’t know why she likes me. Seems to have accepted me. To me there is a silent threat in the brave that go ballooning, the family tucking into the potato salad at the funeral, expressions from a family picnic in childhood, from memory and desire a cook for all seasons from childhood, and that roast in the oven with its juices running dry. The triptych expressions of a modern day Picasso. It is all a feast of vertigo to wash away my sins. I hear voices.

I have heard them since childhood. They came out of the closet at night like vampires. Dancing like mad at the bottom of my bed. Chattering away like hummingbirds. They come out from under my bed. They are armchair travellers in their private self-worlds. Those ghost people have wings. They have an angelic shine to them. They breathe in ice. I am the experimental nation. The boy can’t see. He doesn’t have a third eye. He’s handsome. He drinks and smokes too. When the others come for me I have different personalities. I’m obsessed with the supernatural, reincarnation, illusion and imagination. But I’m also obsessed with celebrities, swimming, Egyptology, genius, philosophy and couples.

‘But what’s it really like?’ she began to whimper.
‘What’s it like?’ Elizabeth repeated with a snort and not for the first time I wonder why we’re friends. Is it only because she sometimes copies down my homework for class. Is it only because I am cleverer than her by far.
‘Okay this is what you do. Pretend he’s like a vampire going in for the kill. Why’re you such a scared cat now all of a sudden? Don’t you want to do this?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Look. It’s not that hard. He’ll perhaps hold your arms down, sink his teeth into your neck and all you have to do is perhaps moan a little kind of like you’re enjoying it. That’s all you have to do. It’s not history or calculus. It is really not that hard.’
‘But why me?’ Elizabeth just rolled her eyes.
‘Because you look white and talk posh, Coconut.’ Was Elizabeth’s reply. And then she realised that she could back out of it if she wanted too.

I wear the shroud of troubled and illness well. Assia Wevill little earthquakes shooting off inside her heart. Assia Wevill little earthquakes shooting off inside her mouth. The perspiration glistened on her skin. She certainly never seemed wasted on anything other than the otherworldly. Sylvia. Syliva. I will scream I promise I will if I ever hear that name again. I can hear her breathing down my neck. I can smell the gas. Can’t feel her pulse. I am letting her go, surrendering her to night land. For isn’t night time, and the dark where she belongs with her head filled with the elegant math of night time and dark. I always feel dissatisfied with my writing as if I have never done enough. And Ted looks at me as if he knows better. Lift your head. Arch your back. As if that is all I can do. Look perfect on his arm. Flirt and flit. You don’t talk English proper but that’s okay you were a beautiful child who grew up into a beautiful woman. But I want to tell them that I have news for them beauty does not last forever.

Housebound cooking and cleaning like mad and looking after his children. Teaching them German. Death becomes you. They all stand around him. They all smile and nod. I wonder what it will be like to sleep with his doppelganger who will probably have half of his intelligence, his wit and charisma. Ted’s poetry reminded me of how vital our humanity is to us. And every day he makes promises he will never keep. He tells me that the bruises will go away. But I know better. I know they will never go away. And what I say goes. And the bruises will never go away. There I said it a second time and you can’t make me take it back. I didn’t know who I was on my way to seduce when we went to Devon. Strange as it may seem now. I didn’t ask myself beforehand, make notes in my journal that I was going to seduce Ted Hughes the future Poet Laureate. Luncheon of meat and potatoes again. My lunch of blood. How I wished I would never have to cook another meal for Ted’s father again.

So inglorious of everything I said and did. Ted and I would just have to look at each other and he would say something, do anything. It was almost as if she was there in the room with us. Spying on us. All suicides go to heaven. They’re on a heavenly course. Navigating the silver linings of clouds. Wet hair smelling of driftwood. Feet finding footholds at the bottom of the lake. Sinking fast. Swim seraphim. Swim you modern day Sappho. You phoenix, you but you refuse to rise out of the ashes. Where’s your spirit quiet little contemporary, you funny little stranger you? Are you commandeering bliss? Stoker’s Dracula is hideously obscured by history. After that all the men that I met in my life seemed severely damaged to me as if I could see the childhood trauma on their fingertips. Fashioned after Stoker’s Dracula. Every one of them. Their wives were no longer thin, gamine brides awash in the illuminating glow of newlywed radiance.

Do not go in there. The voice said to no one in particular. You will be skinned alive. But I don’t know that voice. It is not familiar to me so I don’t pay attention to it. I also do not move from where I am standing. I am not yet a woman. I am not yet Orlando. I am not yet Lady Lazarus. If I go in there I will become a vampire. I will become a female version of whatever is in the woodshed. I don’t want to play this game anymore. The boys leave my sister and me alone. We are left standing on the periphery. We’re interlopers.

‘Don’t you want to see what’s in there?’ I ask my sister tugging on her arm. She’s ignoring me. Something else has torn her interest from me. So I turn back with her to follow her home.

There’s a loss that comes with breathing. But the stranger in the ghost house has no voice. He does not speak of self-help, a shelf-life and a double life, red dust, dead parakeets, sweat running down his wife’s back, the madness and despair of Liberace. Something is unanchored yet still beautifully functions. Something is productive. It is called family and the awareness of coming home, a flag was planted here in the South’s wilderness where a genocide took place, there’s whisky in a glass. There are books that are a sanctuary. An Eric Clapton record is playing. The red dust of this county does not speak of self-help. There is a suicide. A death in a river. And the police come. The police come in the middle of the night. Like the detectives in plainclothes that came to my house in the middle of the night when my brother took a knife and stabbed my father. Nothing romantic about it. About the onslaught of death, of it catching up to you.

Like a thief in the night, a cat burglar, a cat drowning in a bag with her kittens, that is how I felt as if I was a drowning visitor. I saw guns that night I led a double life. I pretended I did not see or hear anything and inside I was numb. When I saw my father’s blood. It had an oppressive quality. Like everything in my life so far. The drugs refused to work. So I took more and more of them slept all day and all night. The double life of the romantic jasmine. It lives and it dies and it lives and it dies. I can talk and talk and talk and no one will be listening. Down the winter road I came across men who stare at goats. Men who were good dancers. Men who were good actors, some were heavy drinkers in my mind, and philanthropists. The knife was sharp. It struck air again and again and again. And then is was anchored in skin. I didn’t scream. I was a Scout’s knot. Ran in my sandals to the neighbour’s house as fast as my feet could carry me. Outside the air felt cool as rain.

How I wished it had rained? But there was no rain that night and they called the police. Down that winter road there’s no romance in death, hair and flesh coming loose. And still daddy was left standing, unafraid. My brother was prancing around all of us, smirking, smiling. With cunning deceit, high he was having his cake and eating it too. Pinned daddy to the bed with his arms like shark teeth. My mother had ran away in the dark. I was left with notes, a stem and a route to follow. A flowering bleeding heart making waves, beating fast. It was Christmas. It was Christmas. But there were no presents. To hell with it if I do not ever fall in love. It is a case of much ado about nothing. I have lost my mind and recuperated in hospitals. Once again become anchored to reality in recovery. I do not have a brother and I do not have a sister. I do not have a mother and I do not have a father. They live their own lives, so they amuse themselves. While I am kept sheltered in Pandora’s Box.

It is a box filled with romantic villagers. It is a box of my own making. What a comfort they are to me. I am an orphan on Okri’s famished road. I am Nabokov’s and Kubrick’s Lolita. And soon I will be forgotten like breath. The moveable feast of sex, romance and death. Damaged, damaged, damaged but I must not speak of it. It will be the death of me and I must live a while longer, sit on my throne, collect bones like arrows that fall from the sky. I must collect bones like dust because curiosity has killed me but I have nine extraordinary lives. I am left smiling like the Cheshire cat. This is the brother who I am supposed to love. I do not admire him anymore. I feel nothing for him. When I remember that night from hell. If he had a gun we all would be dead. I cut up the onion, seduced by its layers. And I cry for what has been lost, gems every one. My youth, my youth, my youth and there is no ring no ring on my finger, all those chronic wasted years. Now he is Lucifer manning.

The gate to the wards of hell. My boy what has become of you? Water. The secrets that we keep are committed to memory. They’re lessons in the needs of people around us, a lesson in obedience, sometimes even wisdom. And it takes bold work for us to realise that the future is bright when sometimes we are challenged, when we have to mine glory. And make a ceremony out of it. There are profound ingredients that goes into making a spaghetti bolognaise. Family is of course the first priority. Next the butcher, mint from the garden and limes for the cocktails. Footsteps on the stairs and laughter scribbling in the air. With the advent of avocados and mangoes perhaps they were the first fruits. Food for thought in the Garden of Eden even before Eve was made from Adam’s rib via the maturation of a human soul and a vortex in flux. Young woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I cannot live in water forever. My mother is outside in her garden working in the hard ground of winter dragging rose bush after perfumed rose bush. One side of the house a vegetable garden, the other filled with the seductive theory of fruit trees.

And then as if woken up from a dream the day begins.

Illusion written on the body

Nature, climate change –
Those great, delicate things.
Much like the depths
Of the unsaid between
The woman who is a lover
And the female who is a mother.
The haunting tones of both.
The anxiety in the symphony
Of both. Her mother a bride
At twenty-five. Albums
Full of photographs.
People (some long dead and buried)
Captured on camera that still used film.
She taught her daughters
That although the potential,
The fabric of truth was there.
That love, married life, and
The sexual transaction
Won’t always triumph in the ways
That illness in the world would.
Ted Hughes’s winter pollen
Has descended upon the chilled earth.
For every blushing bride
There is a flushed groom.
Nobody speaks about
The difficulties of married life.
When does love torment?
When does love become winter?
Angels. The children sprout
Wings of rain as they run through
The sprinkler. Innocents.
What the adults who live
Vicariously through them
Would not give to experience
Childhood once again.
Memory, memory, where art thou memory?
Stems tearing themselves away
From the root, making their
Way towards the sunlight.
It is the most natural feeling
In the world for any woman
To want to have a child.
On her infertility, she is mute.
It never comes up in interviews.
The fact that she is also
Not married. Also not in love.
So all people tap dance their way
Through life and childhood.

Sleeping Woman as a Prophet

I will not smile because that is not what attracts you to me. Instead it is fire. Instead it is sitting in the school benches once upon a time, breathing lessons, celestial navigation, driftwood, and a forest of winter trees, the force of the night swimmers, the beach and making each one in its exclusivity sound poetic. Sound the most exquisitely poetic. What is the first memory, the first desire, the primitive attraction and separation anxiety of the magnificence of creativity in the origins of the organisation of feminine intelligence in contemporary poetry? Is the proper voice not the voice of the lover, the voice of the child full of jubilant innocence?

The voices of mother and father in unison giving their child their first standing ovation, grandparents in attendance looking on priggishly mere caretakers of the illumined situation? How quickly pasts are mended, futures are healed and mended? Here is the beginning stages of the organisation of the origins of feminine intelligence. She is schooled in thoughts of culture, a masculine wisdom, vision, and educated by an otherness in luminous stream of consciousness thinking, writing. We need to be drenched in both perspective and identity. Our winning power (that which will never cease) lies in trying not to destroy everything that is above us, and that we believe in. Even our failures must inspire us. For the woman who can’t have children her infertility must inspire her to greater heights.

Whatever was taken was the brightness from the air that made up the shine of artistic genius and it was given to me like the besotted Milky Way, the tangled fabric of the stars from the universe at night, the moon and stars inseparable intuits from the beginning of time. Both pulling down the shine of artistic genius a veil as thick as a tapestry. Is the sanity of a female poet as graceful as a shipwreck left to the gracious mercy of being the bride and bridegroom of nature as we think it is? Aren’t we all, aren’t you just a little bit at the mercy of the creativity’s elusive artistry. Its ravishing blues, the breakdown to end all breakdowns, the be all and end all of the nervous breakdowns? Is it just chemical?

Is the sexual impulse, and that drive just the glamourous rub of love, as glamourous as lipstick? Does the female poet promise that it, her words can never be more than that? Sometimes I catch myself saying those words without really meaning to say it, to say them. I try and detach myself from the glowing artful truth of them. Composing stillness, a courageous stillness, the stillness of intelligence, which is a feminine intelligence is poorer for having known the poverty of the world, and spiritual poverty. With all of the perversions that we discover in this world. With the intimacies, braveries, warriors we learn to let go, surrender if you will. We must or how can we live? We are all waiting for gifts. As a reward for futility or to take upon as just another responsibility.

There was a journal full of darkness in this most primitive of landscapes. Where winter promises snow, the harvesting of into the black, of one bleak and desolate landscape after the other the female poet projects herself into the canvas of her work. Her life becomes the poetry. Art mirrors life. Life mirrors art. The reflection of the female poet is a studious, effortless and conscientious project. The female poet only has to be wild and knowledgeable. She is an animal with a gull’s wings and fortitude. She instructs, she corrects, she astonishes, she admonishes and she knows that to live in this world she has to be the swan. She has to swim.

But she must also have the insight of the ugly duckling, the Cinderella phenomenon, the Plath effect. A female poet knows when to sing, when to be mischievous, when to be the swimmer, the bride, give in to the environment, nature and when to love until she can feel it humming in her bones, giving into it through the fabric of her skin. The female poet in love knows when to surrender. The female poet when casting spells knows when to surrender. The words are there for us to go back to like a complicated film of us in a breath-taking way. A female poet does not need the eye of the public to watch her every move to know that she has made a difference in the world. She only needs a child’s all-knowing eyes.

When it comes to rain it always dances like the gestures of imagination, and like the chilled earth in your hand that roses grow from, that fields of grass wrestle with themselves in, trees are not the interlopers but merely angels in another dimension with their branches acting like wings. You can tell yourself that here’s the breakthrough I’ve been looking for. Here’s the book of secrets my heart’s been longing for. And then you will realise that these are all gifts within the hours of your quiet desperation.

And that the vision of the female poet is in full bloom when she stands at the mouth of a river or not. When she’s hungry, whatever the origins of her beauty is, and most especially when she’s gone underground like some animal seeking shelter from the elements. There she stands. Blooming beautifully with her gift. Her poetry is fresh. It is her pound of flesh. It is her Renaissance. Isn’t the ancient dust under her bare feet delectable, hard won although it is a romance that is as good as dead, and she wants evidence of the cities, of life there because she doesn’t think she’ll make it if she’s plain? If she’s ordinary, if her madness is staggeringly ordinary and most of all if her poetry is not useful, pure enough.

Diary of a teenager

“HI, my name is David and I am 15 years old.
I am sitting on my bed wondering about why I was born into this family. Each day I ask myself what I have done to deserve a life like, that perhaps it was possible to choose your own family. My parents are away, not on a holiday or anything, but they work away from home. I think it is a thousand kilometers or so from home, and I don’t get to spend much time with them. I have a brother named Michelson and my sister’s name is Dora so it’s just the three of us here at home when my parents are not around. My mom and dad’s relationship seem to be pretty normal to me. However, my dad abuses my mom physically from time to time when they are back, and sometimes I just think that is how marriage is like. Even I, when I am in school I sometimes have that urge to vent my emotions on my girlfriend, more especially when she doesn’t agree with me about something, or if I feel disrespected by her. I honestly don’t want to end like my father but sometimes I feel like I am slowly becoming just like him.

Just yesterday my girlfriend’s parents came over at my house to warn me that if I lay my hands on their daughter again they will have her press charges against me. I know you’re probably judging me right now but thing is I don’t know how it all started. There is nothing I would love more than anything in this world than for my family to at least be normal. It is one thing to see your mother being abused by your own father and feel helpless, but it is another when all of you as a family struggle to sit down and engage in a civil conversation like any other normal family would. My father has always been someone who worked away from home and was never around. But all of us grew up around him then they decided to move us back to the village because they thought it was best to grow up out here than in the city. People say that my father murdered his mistress in cold blood and that case is still haunting him but he wasn’t found guilty due to lack of evidence. I have never told my mother about this and it led me to being terrified of my father because of what I had discovered about him. It makes me fear for my mother’s life whenever they are away together.

Anyway, I am writing in my journal at the moment and thinking about my life. My sister barely sleeps at home and my brother and I always fight. I despise everything about my family, from myself to the very same people that gave me life. I have a friend who doesn’t have parents and I feel like me and him are alike because I hardly see my parents. I think they come home once or twice a year. Financially my parents take good care of us, they send us money for groceries and toward the end of the year they send us money for clothes. I know they take good care of us financially but they are never here like normal parents should for their children. I have been living like this for years now and I feel like I don’t even know my own parents. My mother is the strangest woman I have ever met. She doesn’t say much to us, she would talk only when she needs something or when she is asking us about school, which barely last for a minute. You know, I sometimes feel like they didn’t plan on having us or perhaps we are not their children. At some point I had the impression that we are not their children. Maybe we are my mother’s sister’s kids. From my mother’s side of the family I only knew her sister who visited us once and never came back. I do not know my cousins or my grandmother and grandfather. My siblings and I don’t ask a lot of questions because we do not understand what is happening. I think my sister knows. However, women are very good at keeping secrets so Michelson and I will probably never find out.
I have a few memories of me as a child; I remember when my mom used to walk me to kindergarten every day. She would give me an embarrassing kiss on my cheek and then tell me that she loved me. She was an affectionate woman, and I wonder what happened to her. My father is worse! He doesn’t seem to really care if we’re jumping or limping. He hardly asks us how we are or know which grade I am in. I remember back in 7th grade when I went to fetch my report card and found that I passed and by then they were home, so I ran home so excited to share the news with them and when I told mom and dad, the only thing my father said to me was “you still have a long way to go, so relax.” I was stunned. I was just a little boy and I expected my father to at least say “congratulations son, I am proud of you.” But no! Not my father. When he said so, mom looked away and didn’t say anything. However, my brother and sister seem to have gotten used to it, I mean they hardly tell them anything. You know, my sister is repeating her 11th grade for the third time now and she didn’t even tell them that. They never even bothered to talk to her about it, so she just let it be. As for my brother, he dropped out. When I asked he told me where to get off, which ended in a fist fight between us. My sister tries breaking our fights but recently she doesn’t bother after I accidentally punched her, and as a result she doesn’t talk to me anymore. It then became apparent that my parent showed a great deal of neglectful parenting because they did not know anything about us and how we were. When they came back it seemed like we were invaded by strangers. As years went on my father became a money machine and my mother was an image of someone who was once our mother.

It is winter now and I think my supposedly parents might be coming home over the weekend like they promised. I am not looking forward to it. Sometimes I just wish they can stay where they are and never come back. One time my dad upset me and I shouted “I wish you die on your way back to work! Life would be better.” Man, he beat me up till I wasn’t able to move. I spent weeks in my room not going to school because of the bruises. Nothing hectic though, I’m used to getting beaten from time to time. Lord I HATE THAT MAN!!!! I did mean it when I said I wished he died because I really wish that he dies. There is no point of having them here when they don’t even notice us.

Here’s a little something to give you an idea about me. I am 15 years, in my 9th grade (yes I fail a lot) and I am sexually active. That’s what happens when you have freedom around here. My friends are older than me, they get to hook me up with a couple of girls and some alcohol since they are allowed to buy. I’m an African boy staying in a rural area, South Africa. Well we have established the fact that I hate my parents and my life in general. I am the last born and my sister Dora is the first born, Michelson the second. I am the only one that was born here in the village but I was raised in Johannesburg where my father works. Dora and Michelson were born there and judging by their childhood photos they were happy. We never get to talk much as a family but there is a great deal of psychological problems affecting this family. I wish I knew the source of it but I don’t.

Anyway, my girlfriend’s name is Stacey and she told me a week ago that she thinks she’s pregnant. I didn’t tell my parents this since it’s pointless and I don’t have any idea what I will do about that. I am not even worried about what my parents would say or do because my life is none of their business. Her parents don’t like me as they believe I am a bad influence and she should leave me. If they find out that I had impregnated their child they will disown her. I have no idea how we will take care of the child because I am still in school and very behind for me to drop out. If my father finds out I am a dead person and he might possibly kick me out of his house. Before I met my friends I used to watch my brother brings different girls at home and I found that really interesting. I couldn’t wait to be old enough so that I too can be like him. Around here 15 is the new 18 and if you are not sexually active by then you are considered an idiot. Now me and my brother compete about who brings more girls in a week than the other. Dora hates all the girls we bring over because she doesn’t know who she should get to know as she might be seeing them for the last time.
My father usually finds out about the events that take place in his house. There is a neighbour of mine named Miss Mnisi and I call her ‘Miss Snitch’. She tells my father about every even that takes place here and about every person that comes over. I wonder if my father asked her to keep tabs on us or she just voluntarily decided to add fuel to this already messed up family. I sometimes look at Miss ‘Snitch’ and her family and ask myself if she would appreciate it if someone told her about what her gay son whom she brags about in church that he is a good boy and will someday bear her grandchildren gets up to at the clubs when he sneaks out of his room through the window every weekend. She would appreciate it, but yet she has the audacity to ruin the little relationship we had with our not so much of a father. It frustrates me to see village people investing their lives into other people’s lives. The people here do not have anything to do besides gossip all day about other families. They are even tired of gossiping about us because there is always something “out of the ordinary” happening at my house. However, my mother doesn’t seem to like Miss Mnisi. I can tell by the way she reacts when my dad raises her name regarding what she had told her. All I ever hope is that my mother talks some sense into him that this woman is destroying this family.

“Babe, I don’t know what to tell my parents, you know if they find out that I am pregnant, they will freak out.” “What should I do then? We both know they will find out sooner or later, there’s just no hiding this. So tell them” Honestly, I don’t think me and my girlfriend would work, if that fool of a dad of mine finds out I will not get my allowance anymore. I don’t know what to do, he would probably use this as an opportunity to dump me at that handy work school like he always wanted to. He sees me like a lost cause, he doesn’t even believe in me. That maybe someday I will make it, although I am failing a lot but I do have a promising future. My girlfriend and I just happened, I wasn’t even sure what I was doing. I would invite her over at my house and she would arrive and then we would have sex. The person that introduced me to this life is my brother, he has always been sexually active. Well that’s from when I started being aware of such. Now that we don’t get along he doesn’t advise me about girls. He’s 4 years older than me and he doesn’t have a kid, I think he’s very careful.

Because my sister is hardly ever at home, my brother and I invite girls over and things get hot. Sometimes two girls would pitch at once and they would start fighting. In most cases it is the parents and the boyfriends that come by. The funniest thing is that, although my brother and I don’t get along most of the times, we have each other’s back. No one would insult me in front of my brother, he would beat the shit out of them. My sister jokingly said “you two are like a couple. There is a love hate relationship going on and you don’t like it when outsiders bully one of you but it is better if you beat each other up. It is just funny that you care about each other like that.” And she is right, we fight a lot but we don’t like it when someone else bullies one of us. I usually sit down and ask myself what is it that makes my brother and me to fight a lot and I can’t find the right answer. Sometimes I can see that he tries but I shut him out. I hope writing in this journal will help me a lot.

I think the problem with me is that I do not have any sense of remorse. I know my parents hate us and part of me doesn’t even care about that because I have managed to accept it. I get in a lot of fights and mostly it’s when I attach my teachers. I just hate it when they stick their noses in my business. I guess that’s why I hardly keep friends for long because everyone thinks that I am a troublemaker and I think it is silly having to put up with all the bullshit that comes with friendship, so I prefer just chilling with random guys. I don’t have friends at all, apart from the guys that get me girls and the alcohol. It is just one of those guys that I get to meet at their favorite sport and they would hook me up with some alcohol. Well I recently started smoking weed too. My brother does smoke from time to time and I sometimes steal his weed to smoke (which would lead to a fight about weed and somehow my dad would find out). Everyone on my street sees me as a trouble child. They don’t want their children anywhere near me, but can you blame them? Anyway I have no intention of chilling with their bastard children anyway, I sort of like the respect I get from all these fools on my street. When one of their folks sticks their nose in my business, I get to sit them down without feeling guilty because none of their children is my friend. Something I recently did with Mnisi. I went to her house and told her where to get off. I was tired of her being some sort of a neighbourhood watch that only focuses on how children of a specific household behaves. I hope she got the message; I would hate to put her at her place by proving that her children are not perfect.
You know sometimes we do things not because we enjoy doing them. You have no idea whatsoever how I am feeling inside. I have this anger that’s boiling and I sort of feel like a time bomb. I don’t want to blame it on my parents but somehow it kind of feels like they are responsible for my emotions. There was a time when my dad completely gave up on me and didn’t send me any money so I can buy a couple of things. I came across this other woman from town near the bushes and she was alone. I looked around and didn’t see anyone, I went up to her with a broken bottle and threatened to kill her if she screamed and didn’t give me money. She gave me a couple of hundred rands. More than I had hoped for actually and it felt so good. That adrenalin rush overwhelmed me. I wanted to do it again, I covered my face so that she doesn’t see my face and it was dark. Sometimes when I am with the guys I have that urge to tell them about what I had done, but since they are not my real friends I pull back. Something tells me that they get down to some dirty deeds though, I mean just the other day while with them a girl passed wearing a really short skirt and I heard the other guy threatening her that if it was dark he was going to get it whether she liked it or not. I don’t know but there is something fishy about those guys.

My sister is the wisest person at home. It’s like she can tell that I am not coping well. At one time while she passed the place I hang out with the guys while smoking weed, the other one started mocking her and I told him that he better leave my sister alone, she saw me and appeared to be disappointed. The guys respect me, they just like the fact that I am not consumed by my parents’ achievements and I am not a brat for that matter. If only they knew how much I hated them, but I didn’t want to give them that satisfaction since they would suggest something silly. As I was saying about my sister, when I got home that evening she sat me down and started warning me about the guys. That is before I accidentally punched her, so now she is still giving me that silent treatment. She said to me “Little brother, I don’t want to tell you who to hang around and how to live your life but even a blind person can smell trouble with those guys that you are always with. There is something about them that is really odd, you know, whenever I pass that place I pray to God that those guys don’t touch me and I am really scared for you. There is a saying that goes ‘show me your friends and I will tell you who you are’ I just hope that it doesn’t apply with you, and being with people that don’t school while you do, will only motivate you to stop schooling since you will envy their freedom.” Yes my sister is wise and all but she doesn’t have any idea how I feel human with those guys. When I am around them, I feel like I belong. I don’t have to stress about my parents’ behaviour, the only thing that worries me is changing. I do want to be a career person someday, but the environment that I am in, scares me.”

David last left his journal here and never had the opportunity to finish it. A few months ago he and his friends went to rob a convenience store nearby and there were armed security guards that shot at them. I warned my brother about the company he keeps and he didn’t listen to me. Reading his journal made me see a lot of things that even I was not aware of. David described me as a smart person but he was. It is a pity he did not realize his true potential. Unfortunately my brother didn’t make it and the remaining ones were arrested and sentenced for 15 to 18 years in prison. My parents still don’t say much, however it damaged my mother that David is gone that she is now at a rehabilitation center being treated of depression. As for my father, he hasn’t changed. He is still the same old man but he is retired now. He spends most of his time working at the farm he bought to keep him busy here at home. We never talk about David as there is little change here at home but I can tell that my father has been thinking long and hard about how he missed out on a lot of things. Michelson is in Johannesburg looking after their house; he dropped out of school and is now working. I don’t get to see him a lot as he seems to be enjoying it that side because he hardly ever comes home, but it doesn’t surprise me because facing my father is the last thing he wants to do. I hope that the family will be able to unite as he had hoped because clearly the reason he started writing this journal was because he was hurting inside. My little brother grew up too fast, he had a bright future and I hope that his son Kabelo will take after him. Dora

My Dream

In my sleep I hear my heartbeat
At breakfast I still dream
She consumes me like the summer heat
At lunch I feel that dream

At times I feel like a child needing guidance,
Sickness in my thoughts is far from reverence.
I have a fast mind ruled by impatience
And a slow heart ruled by defiance.
Confusion defines my essence.
I dream to merge with her essence.

In my sleep I hear
At breakfast she’s near
She…
My dream.

Being Average

I awaken to another chilly Sunday morning. The sun is up but the bones in my body tells me that I have woken up much earlier than what I hoped to. Sleeping in has become a luxury that even my internal alarm clock has forgotten about.
The house is still sleeping so I sneak downstairs. Heaven forbid if I share my curse with my husband and two teenagers. To my detriment, I have allowed my family to sleep in over the uneventful weekends. It is rather nice though to experience my house in utter silence. This is another luxury that has eluded me for the past fifteen years.
Downstairs, I open the drapes to let the winter sun in. The rays fall on our oversized sofa which is my favourite spot on planet earth. I intend to bask in those rays after I have fixed myself a cup of coffee and get the magazine that I have wanted to read for the past week now.
Coffee cup in hand and magazine in the other, I settle down and begin paging through the glossy pages of propaganda.
O crap. “ The average female will spend 4500 hours of her life in front of the sink”, the article says. As if I needed another confirmation about how average my life was. Average age, average looks, average height, average built, and now an average housewife.
Jenna Donaldson was sitting in her comfort spot. On her sofa in the living room which was the size of a single bed. Pillows were stacked everywhere to make the seat even more comfortable. A ruby-coloured throw was spread over her legs to keep out the cold and to soak up the winter sun. The curtains by the window above the sofa were drawn open to let in the morning sun. Now and then she would stare out into their well-groomed garden admiring all her hard work. It literally cost her blood, sweat and tears to get it that way. Now it only took seasonal maintenance and water. Fortunately enough they had no dogs that replanted her shrubs. Touch wood. Her son is hinting every now and again that he would love having a canine companion.
This was a Sunday morning routine: in her comfort spot with a good read. She alternated between romance novels or the latest fashion magazine. Not that the fashion magazines helped much. Those models on the covers have all been photo-shopped into oblivion so they were barely recognisable in real life. And the clothes in those magazines were for aristocrats and famous people. Who in their right mind would wear a flower motive shirt with an even more flowered skirt?! She felt sorry for those poor youngsters. One day, all the make-up and hair product will take its toll.
The kids were still asleep so there was peace and quiet throughout the house. Marcus was 13 years old and Carla was 15 years old. Her husband, Shane, was almost like a teenager. O gosh, he was high maintenance! Even more so than the two teenagers. Never cleaning up after him and constantly demanding to be fed.
“Mom!” The shout came from the hallway. “MOM!” The entire household will most probably be awake now.
“ I am in the living room. Do you have to shout like that this early in the morning?”
“O, there you are. Is the coffee machine on?” Carla asked. “I need to wake up.”
“Yeah, morning to you too. Maybe you can just go into the kitchen and check for yourself next time before you wake the entire neighbourhood?” Manners will have to be beat into that lady. Surely she must have picked it up at school. There is no way that she learns that at home.
Shane bellowed as he was making his way from our bedroom: “Have you made breakfast yet?” Count to one hundred and ten, she thought. This twenty-questions-routine this early on a Sunday morning will be enough to blow her top off. Thinking about it, this is where Carla picks up her manners: from her role-model-of-the-year-father.
“No dear, I have not. Good morning. What is wrong with this household that no-one can say good morning? Even a “how the hell are you” will do.” Shane was definitely not a morning person and arguing this early in the morning about the petty day-in-day-out things will ensure that the day to come will be a battlefield.
“I want pancakes.” Note that Carla issued more of a demand than asked a polite question.
“We had pancakes last weekend. I feel like omelettes.” God forbid he eats one thing two weekends in a row!
“Well I don’t feel like making breakfast, so help yourselves.”
A gasp filled the air. How could their dear and beloved mother abandon them so by not providing for a nutritious meal to start the day?
“Wash the dishes when you are done.” She was so lazy from sitting in the sun, baking in the heat, that not even their hunger and demands will get her up. She had to teach them independence and today felt like a good day to start. Jenna could just imagine the divine satisfaction of her children running around to attend to her needs. Bliss. Utter bliss.
“No fair. I don’t even know how to make pancakes!” Carla was trying to be brave.
“You know how to read, right? The recipe is in my cook book and all the ingredient are in the pantry. You know where that is too.”
“Is there cereal?”
“Go and look Carla! Do you want me to hold your hand while doing it?”
“Fine, be like that!”
“Don’t you dare take that tone with me young lady! You are millimetres away from having no breakfast at all and going straight to your room! Do teenagers come standard without manners? Damn, I should update the owner’s manual then.”
The pantry door slammed shut. Carla was obviously not going to acknowledge defeat before slamming something as she always did. It is a miracle that the doors in the house were still hanging after all the abuse suffered.
Jenna heard Shane and Carla moaning and groaning in the adjacent kitchen as they were left to fend for themselves. They were seemingly not happy with their predicament but Jenna could care less. She was physically and emotionally not capable of being house slave today. Her 41 year old body resisted doing anything but sit on her behind.
“You have been up since dawn. I don’t understand why you couldn’t have made breakfast.” Shane clearly couldn’t understand his wife’s demeanour. He was baffled.
“Drop it Shane. This is one day that I would like to myself. One day! Tomorrow I will be at your beck and call again, promise.” Jenna was fed up. She got up and headed for their room to get into the shower. Hopefully she could get some peace and quiet in there.
Their en-suite bathroom was as good as a safe-house. Where she could strip naked and nobody could judge her. Even the bathroom mirror would be too steamed up to be able to shed a judgemental light on her ever-ageing body. The wrinkles on her face: invisible.
She turned on the faucet and got under the steaming water, turning her back to the falling water. The pressure of the water was massaging her back and neck. This would probably be the closest she would ever be to getting a full body massage so she savoured every moment. She bent her head down to let the water catch the full length of her neck.
She must have been in there for a good twenty minutes before she got out and towelled herself dry. She brushed her teeth and didn’t dare wipe the steam off the mirror to get a look at the damage. It would spoil her day even further.
She got out of the bathroom and went to her walk-in cupboard to pick out her dress code for today. She pulled out her favourite pair of jeans and a pale pink fleece top. The underwear she picked out was just as unglamorous. Who would see anyway, she thought. It’s not like Shane is going to change his ways and rip her clothes off in the near future. He is no Christian Grey.
As her feet hit the cold tiles in the hallway she turned back for her slippers. There was no need for any other kind of footwear because she was adamant not to set a foot out of her front door for the remainder of the weekend.
She was starting to get peckish herself. She had an early morning coffee and biscuits but that was nearly 3 hours ago and it was not the healthiest choice either. And the heavens knew that she needed something with sustenance to give her energy for the day.
She walked past Marcus’s room. The kid was still asleep! It was past nine already and he was still sound asleep bordering on unconscious. She wished that her life could be as uncomplicated as his. Then again, the poor kid still had to go through puberty and from what she’s heard and read, that is no walk in the park for any young man. She left him sleeping and walked back to the kitchen to get something to eat.
The kitchen was filled with the aromas of freshly brewed coffee and toast. She was surprised to see her whole family with grins on their faces with a beautifully set dining room table. Even Marcus was standing beside his father. His hair was still a mess after just waking up. How did he get past?
“Happy mother’s day!” They shouted in a chorus.
“Mother’s day?” It was an absolute surprise to her and shame crept up in her stomach. How did this one get past her?
“I am so sorry for shouting at you this morning and thank you for this. It looks wonderful! This is… Wow.” She was at a loss of words and was very close to shedding a tear or two. She could feel the lump in her throat, the tremble in her voice, and decided not to make a complete fool of herself.
“No need to apologise dear. You deserve this. We need to thank you for all the hard work you do and keeping this family glued together.” Shane plonked a soppy kiss on her mouth and gave her a bear hug with his huge arms. They swallowed her entire average body. “Time for presents! Who wants to go first?”
“No, let’s eat! I’m hungry!” Marcus said as he pulled out his chair to sit down.
“You are always hungry!” Carla always has the last word but Jenna let that one slide. She knew this was her idea and her appreciation made her grin at the comment rather than lashing out at her daughter.
Breakfast was charming. They were a happy family once more with laughter and chatter filling the kitchen while they ate. Jenna completely forgot that today was Mother’s Day and felt so ashamed at demanding her off day when it was given to her (by surprise) on a neatly set dining room table. She couldn’t help but laugh at herself.
As they were eating, Jenna sheepishly shared her morning thoughts and doings with her family. They giggled as she told them the story of her mediocre existence and assured her that she was their super mom.
She instantly remembered that she had a mother herself and a mother-in-law who needed to be congratulated as well for being superb mothers. She loved both very much. Her mother had been a pillar of strength to her and her mother-in-law was such a sweet-hearted human being. She always welcomed any person into her home. Shane’s father passed away three years ago so Philippa was always appreciating any company she could get.
Jenna phoned both women and all members of the family had turns talking to both grandmothers. Each conversation lasted a good half an hour and she could not brag enough about how endearing her family was. She was so proud of their initiative.
The Donaldsons spent the remainder of the day chatting and laughing and being an average family. No fights and no frills. Just as Jenna hoped her day would be. She didn’t lift a finger doing dishes or cleaning rooms or running errands. She didn’t open the magazine she read that morning again. She knew now that her supposed average life, was indeed all that she could ever have asked for.
It was just an average Mother’s Day…

By Mari Geering

Masterpiece

At the hill top of no map, we stood with our eyes gazed upon each other,
As the moon stood witness to the beautiful presence of affection
Glistened in the light of passion, the two became one
Their heart exchanged magnetic eminence as their palms touched.
As he slid his hand from her palm up her arms, she became a prisoner of his passion. She clenched her fist and closed her eyes…as he held her wrist ,that moment in time was theirs.
The perfection of a moment was created when two strangers became one .
A soul mate…Oh no, A lover …no never……But a masterpiece they created
A masterpiece of a moment perfected because of love

COMMON THIEF

The bakkie came to a screeching halt, they had no choice but to flee on foot, the baby behind the back seat was happy as if nothing wrong was happening, she was full of joy if only she knew in what kind of trouble she was,
They got off the bakkie and the thief” as Miles knew the guy as, had no worry, no sympathy for the baby behind the bakkie; he searched the car and took all the valuables items. Miles tried to talk to the thief to think about the baby, but he did not care he took all the valuables in the car and fled, it was a cool summer day
As Miles was standing looking at the baby not knowing what to do, he heard a faint voice saying to him remember, remember , when he looked behind him he saw a young man he must have been eighteen years or so, he was dirty and his clothes were torn, Miles jumped in fear of the stranger, all he said was remember, remember, he nearly fainted as He fell down, the stranger came to him and held him on his shoulder as in like comforting him, he repeated what he said previously and said remember, remember
The hand on his shoulder did not felt as if the young man was a stranger, Miles felt a deep and powerful connection with this young man, Miles told the young man about the baby in the back of the seat and how sorry he felt for her and how worried her parents might be with regard to the baby, he told him how desperate he was to have a job and how it let him to commit this crime so that he could feed his daughter who was only four months old and that is was his first crime he ever committed in his entire life… the stranger seem to know all of this which was surprising to Miles, how did he knew?
The stranger said to him that, he need not worry anymore, that the baby was safe and he should go because the cops have tracked the bakkie and were on their way, Miles could not just leave the baby alone it felt wrong knowing also that he had a daughter himself made even harder, but it took a while until the stranger convinced Miles to go, the stranger kept on saying those words remember, remember, Miles heard the cops coming and he went away as the stranger had asked him to
As Miles fled the scene looking for the thief to get a share of the valuables that the thief took from the bakkie , so that he can buy food to feed his own daughter…. there was a police helicopter hovering about looking for two men who hijacked a bakkie and a baby inside. It was dark and it was becoming cold and one can see lighting striking from a distance, Miles knew that what he has done would haunt him for the rest of his life, he was not the type of guy to hurt anyone, but desperation has pushed him to do something that he said himself would kill someone if it happened to his own daughter.
The thief as greedy as his name meant was waiting for Miles at a place where they said they would meet, Miles was tired, scared and his thoughts were on his own daughter

The thief wanted to take all of the valuables and give Miles only a little, but Miles wanted to go fifty, fifty with the thief, the thief would have none of it……….. And suddenly Miles heard the faint voice remember, remember. With this voice Miles decided to let go of the share and let the thief have the entire share.
The police helicopter saw the two men on the ground and used the loud speaker to tell them to stand were they are, Miles lift his hands up in surrender , but the thief started to run, he did not take even five steps when gun shots were heard and the thief fell on the ground in a hail of bullets….Miles woke up and he was sweating, it was a terrible dream he just had, her wife next to him with their four months year old baby sleeping in harmony as he stared at them and those faint words came back and say remember, remember and it all made sense to him now, that his wife and daughter was more important to him and needed him……….
He went out his bed to wash his face……. After a minute the phone rang and it was the thief telling him about the plans they have made to go and hijack a bakkie, remembering the faint voice Miles told him no, that his daughter and wife needed him more than he could have realised, even if he did not have a proper job…….. the thief was angry and told him he was a coward and dropped the phone, it hurt him to be called a coward, but the voice kept on saying remember, remember and that give him a little bit of hope

After a couple of minutes when he was playing with his daughter, his wife came running to him, screaming with delight that he finally got the job as a chef at an international restaurant ……even today he never forgets those words……………….. Remember, remember, but this time only as your best friend. Today Miles owns he’s own chain of restaurants and is a very successful business man and not a common thief.

By Flanegan Thabo Ntshotsho

S.M.I.L.E

Simple
Many do it
In good situations
Letting go the negatives
Everlasting throughout the days of their lives

Soos n boek

Mense wat verby skuur
almal volgens die reels van natuur

Die chemie van ons wat bestaan
met alles wat ons veklaar
die onbekende spasies
van dinge….
wat ons nie verstaan;
met die aanhoudende dink van lewe
en wat ons daarin wil vind- laat my terug wens na die eenvoudige
denke van n kind.

Want soos n boek onderdaning aan my lesers
wat my hart beskryf op lee wit papiere, die fasiere dele van wie
ek is- my siel stadig oopvlek my hart ooptrek.

Gevorm deur die hand van my skrywers
wat daagliks n hoofstuk voltooi
my hart, my menswees my dryfs gees,
dit wat my laat bestaan , maar ook

dit wat vergaan..

J.C Jacobs

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