You are here: Home / Archives for Writing Categories / Poetry

Slaves

Beneath these dark waters rested my past
Proteus calming the ocean’s barks at night,
Every animal screaming from Noah’s Ark;
Mate us how, when it’s only one kind of us?

In these present times, cannot swim no more
To surfaces where stiff corpses turned pale,
Thrown out the ship, relatives on board gone
Voyage underwater is travelled with no permit.

Black yellow and brown was the colour shot,
Unjust laws enforced, human right fought for
In 1994, thought to be mourned and thought of
Statues of slaves installed in concentrated Malls.

Presently, one should not proclaim to herd pigs
A group of gods consented to slay eaters of pork,
My hands stretched, horns growing under armpits
Pain piecing my skin was another Apartheid born.

Intrepidus

For the future that awaits me
Bright as sunlight and dark as the pit
I give homage to all of life’s experiences
For my crafting

In the face of melancholy and terror
I have not lost hope nor succumbed to pity
Under the dire circumstances of age
My vision is blurry but untainted

Beyond this place of utter misery and anguish
Appears but the nightmare of a dream in ruins
And yet the consequences of the decisions and traditions of my ancestors
Finds, and shall find, my audacity unmoved

It matters not how challenging life gets
How unfavorable the situations
I am the author of my destiny
I am the concluder of my kismet

Sylvia Plath’s Lady Lazarus

This image
Is just an image
Lines from a poem
That I have

Come to know
To love so well
In sickness
And in health

There is no greater
Love than the flight
From madness
Of sacrifice

A lament,
A hospital bed
And so I come
To her London experience

Her Ted Hughes
It was Sylvia I reckon
In the end
Who was Lady Lazarus

When you’re hallucinating
Reality is a snake park
There aren’t any ducks
I’m afraid

You can’t make
Lemonade out of lemons
There’s a show
And you’re the star

The spotlight
Is shining on you
You become Hiroshima
A kroeskop duchess

You become
A mountain lion
You become famous
Known for psychosis

And then overnight
You become a stranger
Nobody calls anymore.

David Foster Wallace

The cornfields
of Illinois are pretty
Where David Foster Wallace
grew up

His childhood
was made up of
bonfire anecdotes
Shark teeth

Infinite jest
He was the pale king
Sitting on an earth-throne
The so-called psychotic

Bewitched by libraries
by the halls of Amherst
The Midwest where of-all-things
Genocide took place

Murder and speeches
His dream songs
They came from space
He gripped his pen

Left behind
An alphabet
of vowels and consonants
Supernova writing

There were monsters
hiding in the closet
Monsters under the bed
The room is smaller

Than he remembers
When he returns home
From Amherst water
and lobsters pouring out

of him as he evaporates
America offers shelter for some
Worms, holes, the dark, maniacs
Hooks already programming him.

Ted Hughes (eight haiku)

Weave your poetry – shamanic-wisdom
And not by accident it will prosper long-after-you-are-dead.
For-all-the-raw cutting edge of-the-world-to-see.

She slipped – she didn’t fall-like-a-body-or-wreck
Could have been a striking pageant-beauty-queen-in-a-magazine.
Then an-anonymous-connection-with-men. Bewitched them.

Flame. Troubled. Gossamer-hair. Flawed-and-most-powerful.
Saint. Perhaps-she-didn’t-know she possessed daydreamer wings.
The tunnel-though-was-infinite – a contract.

Child-lost-forever-in-time she never grew-up.
She must have heard them screaming-badly-to-this-day-even-in-her-coffin.
Frieda-and-Nicky Kilimanjaro-and-Everest-forever playing hide-and-seek.

Little-Buddha-eating-cheese-on-toast. Eye-on-the-cauldron. Ill. Ill. Ill.
Rest your head, a bird’s nest, tomorrow-you-will-go-on-living-in-another-realm.
You have missed out on-nothing-of-significance.

I do not have gills-but-I-wish-that-I-did.
Like fish at-the-end-of-their journey in their-river-of-convenience.
There were slits and God.

Profit, lily, soul.
Purse, emptiness, hard-boiled egg.
So-do-Eden’s flowers wilt.

Weakened. Frozen. Sight-hurts-and-can-sometimes-be-most-earth-shattering.
My wonder, my lamb, my forget-me-not-and-my-yesterday-today-and-tomorrow
There is a great deal-of-envy-in-flesh.

The hallucination of North American poet Sylvia Plath’s Lady Lazarus

This image
Is just an image
Lines from a poem
That I have

Come to know,
To love so well
In sickness
And in health

There is no greater
Love than the flight
From madness,
Of sacrifice

A lament
A hospital bed.
And so I come
To her London experience

Her Ted Hughes
It was Sylvia I reckon
In the end
Who was Lady Lazarus

When you’re hallucinating
Reality is a snake park
There aren’t any ducks
I’m afraid

You can’t make
Lemonade out of lemons
There’s a show
And you’re the star

The spotlight
Is shining on you
You become Hiroshima
A kroeskop duchess

You become
A mountain lion
You become famous
Known for psychosis

You become
the doppelganger
of all ghosts
then overnight

In the snake park
You become a stranger
in your own hometown
Nobody calls anymore.

The survival-kit has gone to waste

There has been a flood
but everything that the child eats
seems to taste like snow
dripping like aloe sap.
Secrets can be earth-shattering.

Humanity is not meant
to keep secrets. Secrets can kill.
So their bodies flowed with the water and its carcass
Became two, and there is an obsession
That they carry with them to the grave

Hearing voices, even in spirit Assia steals.
There is potential in its metallic caress
But also nausea, paranoia, insanity.
My skin is a wall, a hellish ruin.
A home where I do not want to be

The child Shura cannot wail anymore.
She cannot be held in Assia Wevill’s arms anymore.
This happy ending is washed out.
They both met the wolves at the door.
Her last words must have been, ‘Beg.’

But then again she held
No more power over him.
Ted Hughes’s addictions will never die.
And in his poetry there are shades of sirens
But Shura and Assia are also there, ghosts.

Time was just pretend. People, women
Growing older around him
While Assia and Shura stayed forever young.
Tucked in a filthy grave made of earth
Both with their beautiful

Dark exotic hair and foreign air
But they are still in a homeless space.
Assia surfacing a grown up in a maze,
An experiment and in the end
She has won but where is her speech,

Her perspective, her poetry?
Everything cannot have been destroyed.
What would she say?
If she was still alive today.
Ted said, ‘Heal Assia.’ When he put

His hands on her body and wrote
Love poems, loose translations
Naming the abandonment of body parts.
Assia was both an adored survivor
But she loved to wear disguises.

And after all the were damages done
Hughes said, May all their souls rest in peace’.
Forgive me Saint Maybe.
What is there left to salvage
She wears a scarf around her neck

One of my own and now Shura is an
Eskimo pure through and through
I am less forgiving of you cheater
Our foreignness appears less so now
You can be more bold now indiscreet.

Now I live like a cloistered nun
Oh I much prefer it that way – that life
I was dying before but I never
Had the words for it or the strength
To say it when pain conquered everything.

No more cold and no more talking
No more waking and aloof indifference
No more stupid winter London sky
Unstable water, pathetic people sitting
On park benches feeding the ducks.

You’re as frozen as the earth
We’re covered in. Your atoms are
Merely biology, plenty scientific.
But here is where we say our goodbyes.
At the opening of the graves.

A kiss for a kingdom – just a taste.
But it is far too late for that. It’s salt.
Don’t ridicule me. Your behaviour
Has been far from exemplary. You see
In the end I was not so tough.

That list, my recipes keep them.
Hold onto them, save them for the keeper.
I’m not a complete hard-hearted fool.
Just wounded. I know you’ve been
About town and made no secret about it.

Still Do

I miss you and it’s so obvious to see;

Even if I still pretend that you me nothing to me;

I have my heart but you own the key;

If only you knew how I really feel;

 

I go out every night in hopes to forget about what used to be;

Only to find that I’m still bound by your endless beauty;

She tries to offer me peace as she lays by my side;

I act as if I feel the same when I know it’s all a lie;

 

You’re on my mind all the time;

Wondering who’s loving the girl I used to call mine;

The one I thought I’d love for more than a just one lifetime;

I never planned to be without you that’s why it’s so hard to take;

 

I thought this was true love when it was just a mistake;

I thought this was real when it was all fake;

I subside my pain with alcohol just to get through every day;

You took my soul with you when you walked away;

 

The rise with you was worth the fall;

I dial your number but before you pick up I end the call;

It’s childish I know but what else can I do;

When all I seem to do is think about you;

 

Maybe I should just try harder to let go;

But how can I if you were the essence of my soul;

The only love I’ve ever know;

It’s not as easy for me to do;

 

Finding someone else to replace you;

My love for you was true;

I can pretend I don’t care anymore girl but my heart knows the truth;

I’m only lying to myself when I say I don’t love you, when everyone knows I still do.

 

Back With You Again (20.09.90)

The only one on my mind is you;

Girl I thought you knew;

Wasn’t it obvious by those simple clues?

That you own my silly heart and still after all this time you do;

 

I’m surrounded by models and angels every day;

They try but they fail to take up your place;

You made my heart your home and that will always be the case;

I love you so much but I don’t have the words to say;

 

Even if my pen writes the truth you can’t see the tears upon my face;

While I miss you but surrounded by fortune and fame;

I’d trade it all just to have you back for just one day;

No matter how I wish or on bended knee I pray;

 

Nothing seems to change;

You still hate me when I still miss your face;

Trying to wipe those endless tears that never seem to fade;

Reminding me of the angel I let slip away;

 

I was too blind too see;

All that I ever needed was right in front of me;

I can’t change the past what’s meant to be will be;

That still doesn’t change how I wish you were still with me;

 

I got your eyes on my mind;

Reminding me of better times;

Like that first day we met;

Or that first kiss that I still can’t forget;

 

I know I broke your heart;

And we are so far apart;

But know this fact to be true;

If I had only oe wish, my only wish would be to be back with you.

 

What I see

A little smirk a sharp edge of a cynic
A wanderer an observer a bona fide critic
A sigh- exhausted chuckles
Cleaning old blood from blistered knuckles…
What do you fight for what do you believe
When the truth is a bubble made of personal satisfactory
So hush my child don’t speak so loudly
They’re watching they’re judging
Hiding behind what keeps them safe
Blindly seeking truth within misplaced faith…

« Previous Page
Next Page »