Archives for February 2015

Bough Down (a poem in experimental haiku)

Aloes from Bethelsdorp –
The green world’s-majority is not my home.
Only Goethe’s throne.

Mum’s June wedding lace.
Dad’s glove was lost at the church.
His Mrs. Dalloway.

There were her roses.
Granadilla hands in earth.
Ice lungs frozen. Night.

Dolls in childhood – dead
Things. Once attached to slippers.
Church. Girlhood friendships.

Origins of wives –
Daughters, girls. A dramatic gulf.
Ruined geraniums. Roasts.

The Rural Countryside

The rural countryside
Has its own welcoming committee.
It has its own encyclopedia.
It has its own dictionary.
Every year I throw a parade
In my honor. Why not?
Why is family always hurting family?
Describing matters in the system.

Do they not have anything better to do?
Like make love, instead of war.
Stories about family life
Will mature you in old fashioned ways.
Sickness depends on culture.
Maturity depends on your mother.
Great poems are meant for the dark.
For night swimmers. For viewpoints.

The rape of the lock is found there.
At the end of the world.
The halo of the laughing carcass.
Ghost stories and erosion.
Birthday girls and photographs.
The dodo bird and the rhino’s horn.
Excuse my blood, my church hat.
While I visit the museum.

Fragments of summer
Ravenous village of stone –
Sadness is wasted in youth
A wilderness history of it
We are on a path walking
To meet each other on a road –
A road filled with studies
I have a wounded body

So we meet in a rural forest
Or on that sunny road –
You have a wounded body
I was scared of that vision
In all of its sacred glory
We are lovers of the Arctic Circle
If it still exists. We were family
Once. Daughters and sons.
Before we were poetry.

The Dark Heart

The dark of night never quite leaves my heart

Always heavy, always shrouded beneath grey clouds

The light now dim, I find the night terrors circle in

A splash of lightning illuminates the demons

Horrid, sullen creatures, the demons in my dark heart

Tender rain falls, washing the ruins, flooding the crevices of the deep

Alone, I wander the wilderness of the dark landscape within my dark heart

Doors locked and chained, windows shattered to the floor of my dark heart

Bare feet treading the fallen and lost dreams of the dark heart

Empty soul passing forgotten hopes

The dark heart quiet, the raging soul silenced

This is now forever, the dark of night welcome to always stay here with me in my dark heart

Survived the storm-2

Friends dont steal from each other but the one i had was an absolute the opposite,We would share anything but mine was for a big catch for her, I remember telling her about my new man and she was laghing hardly at how ugly the man was but i loved him anyway and i was not willing to sacrifice losing him for my single friend who would joke of him everytime we were out for some fun.It is crazy how this particular friend of mine felt deep down inside about this man,she had the hearts for him and was willing to do everything in his power to sbatch him from me,so one day i was on my way home when i accidentaly saw my friend and my man together laughing their lungs out and the fact of the matter is they never saw me.That very moment i pinched myself hard because i couldnt believe my eyes,I was shockely terrified.That day i knew it was over for me.

I went home,tried to call him and when he answered i said ‘Are you in love with her?’ and he said ‘yes so wat?The begging of good things was now the end.I thought i was somehow reckless but then i remember the words my mother told me ‘good man cant be stolen’ and that menute i was strong again and i was willing to move on to better things and forget the bitter past.

Two years later i met someone and i wasnt sure if i wana be more than friends with them ,i didnt wana experience heart ache again, back when i comprehend the words,which had sailed through my ears of the man i love,that rejection was somehow strangling me to death and i have never felt that in my intire life.It was clear he was leaving me for someone else ,he was leaving me for my so called friend…

I had dreams like everyone else but mine were so hard for me to fulfill because of the friends i keep.I had hope that one day i would meet someone who would make me forget every sad chapter in my life and speaking of who:There was this Martin guy one hell hotty a girl would want to have ,he was the who purchase and we met one day.I felt the connection there,we would chat for long hours,text each other daily and the was no doupt in my mind he was the one but i had to be sure first.

But who was i kidding because i ended up with him anyway now the very same girl who stole my boyfriend had kept her distance but not for long.He came to my place begging for forgiveness because she finally saw i had moved on and she wanted to know what she was missing and because i am a happy soul i forgave her and we were back at being friends.This time around she was acting all innocent and i was convinced that she was indeed changed.we started hanging out together as we used to.Trust me when i say some people never change and my friend was one of them…

My friend was heartless and didnt care for other people but only herself,she made my life a living hell.This time she was flirting with my new man on social media as unknown until my man asked her who she was,she told him and when asked why she was doing that whreas we are friends: she told my man that i wasnt a woman enough for my man and when Martin refused to play along she decided to create false stories about me and that lie had a huge impact on my current relationship.

Men are so complicated sometimes because instead of confronting me he decided to fade away ,he was distant,he stoped texting and his silence was killing me until one day he decided to tell me ‘baby you are beatiful and smart im sure you are happy with your current man so leave me alone and concentrate on your man and a baby’.What a fat lie he heard from my so called friend and again this time i had lost him for no reason.

I Thought to myself that happiness was not part of me because it didnt last,i thought i was meant to live a lonely life and that i deserve to be hurt.Thathat very moment i chose to live my life with no friends and i decided that my friends will be my mother and my siblings until one day i came across i very motivative ,it was answering all my questions and i was ready to start a new chapter of my life.

I was happy and i thought common now the man who deserve me happiness is this one i have friendzoned all this time.
You how free you are to tell your friend(man) about the man you are dating and he is always there to listen and sometimes its funnuy how they able to hide their feelings knowing that they would lose you if they ever tried to tell you how they really feel.And it funny how we started and emmedietly he swa me crying he hugged me tied and told me,its gona be ok and then we kissed ,Thats how i survived the storm bacause he was not planning to leave anytime soon he was there from the begging through thick and thin,Today we have a beatiful daughter by the name of Hope and our love is still going strong.

Affair

1
James O’Connor
AFFAIR
Edna Braithwaite was a slim, dark haired woman, intense, very much inside herself. Outwardly she appeared conventional and fitting into the desired norms of her social circle, but inside she was different, seething with unexpressed desires and feelings.
Now, as she stood on the long veranda of her High Constantia home, looking out over the bright lights of the Cape that lay like sparkling jewels on the black velvet of the night, she thought to herself that she had the things that most of the people she knew desired and yet she was not satisfied. She craved something, she did not know what. Excitement perhaps, perhaps fulfilment of some sort.
This dichotomy caused her to be irritable sometimes and moody and her husband would wonder what had got into her. He was more straightforward and uncomplicated and this showed in his candid manner and blonde, open face, which was different from her slightly sharp features .
“We’re so different, Edna and I. That’s why we get on so well,” she had once overheard him saying to a friend.
Her inner conflict caused her also to rebel and was part of the reason for her taking a lover. She was at a time of her life when she was particularly bored with her married life and dissatisfied with the conventional ideas of their friends and acquaintances.
It was a hot night and Richard, her husband, sat nearby, sipping a gin and tonic. His blonde hair and the light complexion of his open face gleamed in the light from the lamp above him.
“You’re sure you won’t have a g and t?” he asked, repeating the question he had asked when he had poured one for himself.
“I told you no,” she said over her shoulder in a snappy tone and then a moment later regretted her rudeness. She knew she could be as spiky as the hedge hog that had wandered into their garden one night.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound so rude,” she said, turning to her husband.
He said, nothing, merely nodding his head in acknowledgement. How good natured he was, she thought. She had always admired him for making a big success of his business without being arrogant or pushy. The furniture business was pretty cutthroat, yet he was not hard, as some of their friends in business could be. Although a shrewd businessman he was honest, straightforward and uncomplicated, she knew.
“Don’t forget to go in to Stevenson’s tomorrow to have a look at that BM cabriolet I’d like to buy for you,” he said.
“Thanks. No I won’t forget.”
When he had finished his drink they went inside, locked up and went to bed.

The BM was sleek, silver grey, a honey. The salesman was attentive, keen to sell the expensive car, especially now that sales of used cars were so bad. He was in his thirties, fairly good looking, in a slightly disreputable way, his hair greased and combed back and she noticed that as he looked at her his eyes seemed to narrow slightly. There was something sexually suggestive in the look. This irritated her, she was not used to car salesmen being familiar with her, they normally adopted a respectful attitude, and yet she was pleased by it.
When she left she told him that she liked the car but hadn’t made up her mind yet.
“You’re welcome to test drive it any time you like, Mrs Braithwaite,”
Back at home that afternoon she worked on her roses a bit, fertilising and spraying them and found herself thinking of the salesman. A picture of him with that slightly insinuating look would come to her. Scornfully she said to herself that he was just a cut-rate Casanova. Yet he excited her and a certain tension gripped her loins at thought of him.
She tried to put the thoughts of the salesman out of her mind, but two days later she was sitting in the lounge reading Vogue when suddenly she stood up and walked to the bedroom to get the handbag in which she had put the business card the salesman had given her.
David Jordan it read. She picked up the phone and asked for him in the confident tone of a woman of her position.
There was a moment’s wait and then his voice came over the phone. For a second she felt uncertainty, almost fear. Then she said who she was.
“I would like to road test the car. Would you bring it out to my house?” she asked him.
He brought it that morning. From her window she watched the casual, skilful way he parked it, like a man obviously used to all sorts of cars. She wondered if he handled women that way, but although his eyes still held a trace of that narrowed look, he spoke to her in a businesslike way. Perhaps he was short-sighted and narrowed his eyes merely to focus better, she thought, but she noticed he had not worn glasses to drive or to read from the sales pamphlets he had brought.
She drove through the quiet, tree lined roads of the area, noting that the car handled very well and conscious all the time of his presence next to her.
“Would you like to take it on the Blue Route? Open it up a bit?” Jordan asked.
“Yes. Good idea.”
On the freeway she drove fairly fast, the top down and the wind beating in her hair. It made her feel young, driving with this man in an open car. The words of Peter Gabriel’s song about the woman driving through Paris with the wind in her hair came to her. She wondered what the salesman, David Jordan, was thinking.
When she pulled in at her gates she felt flushed and invigorated and her normally slightly dull complexion glowed a little. If Richard had seen her at that moment he would have felt a slight unease, even if he had not been able to pinpoint exactly why. Turning in her seat towards David Jordan she brushed her hair out of her eyes with her hand. “I like the car, but I’ll think about it.”
“I knew you’d like the car once you’d driven it. Let me know when you’ve decided, Mrs Braithwaite. You’ve got my number.”
At times during the week end she thought about him and ways to go about meeting him. This was not something she had done before. She had to be very careful. It was strange, she had had fantasies before of meeting some charming, handsome Richard Gere look-alike, a leading lawyer perhaps or a surgeon, but never of a rather seedy car salesman, and yet she found herself pulled towards this man. It would be a big risk. Her friends wouldn’t like the idea, but she would have to see that they never found out
On the Monday morning, after she had eaten breakfast on the patio, she brought her laptop out to the table and emailed the address on his business card.
I want to discuss buying the BM. Can we meet somewhere not too public?
She felt on edge after she had sent the email and a couple of times she checked her laptop to see if there was an answer.
That afternoon when she checked again there was an answer:
My flat, 7 Cranbrooke Mansions, Adelphi Road, Claremont, would be the least public. 5.15 pm tomorrow. Try to park behind the trees in the car park.
Her stomach trembled slightly as she read the email. She was nervous about betraying Richard like this but it was also sexual excitement that gripped her. She hadn’t felt like this since the early days of her courting by Richard. The nervous feeling stayed with her and she had to try hard to hide it from Richard that evening and the Tuesday morning.
That afternoon she drove to David Jordan’s flat. It was a nondescript block and as she drove in to the parking lot she thought she would hate to live in one of these boxes. She noticed that the trees hid her car from the view of passers-by.
After a few minutes David drove in. When they entered his flat she noted with slight distaste the drab vulgarity of the furnishings and the gaudy print of the woman on the wall, which looked as if it had been bought from a bazaar. She wondered if it was indicative of his taste in women. She had a moment of doubt but as he took her in his arms that quickly began to fade away.
David Jordan was obviously not of much class, but the way she felt, that perhaps added to his attraction.
Because of the nature of his work David was able to move around fairly freely and she began to meet him at his flat regularly. There was no question of his coming to the house, that was too dangerous, there were the servants and the CCTV cameras, the neighbours and the friends who visited. Also, she would not have felt right, betraying Richard in his own house. She was careful to keep up the lunches and teas with her women friends; to discontinue them would arouse suspicions.
She realised how much better a man Richard was, how different they were. David had fewer scruples, was less responsible. Even his looks were very different. Where Richard was a little stout, David was a little thin, where Richard was fair David was dark. And, of course, David was younger.
It was risky but it was the best of both worlds, a good, stable marriage to a successful, loving businessman and an exciting relationship with another man. And she deceived herself by thinking that she was not really being unfaithful to Richard, after all she didn’t love David, he was just an adventure to her. This was one of the oldest clichés in the world, she knew, the older, wealthier woman falling for the physical attraction of a younger man socially beneath her. She smiled slightly at the irony, he might be beneath her, but the way things were nowadays she was often beneath him.

She had from the beginning felt the prickings of conscience but in the heat of desire had put them out of her mind. After a while her misgivings began to plague her. She tried to shake them off but they stuck like the burs in the fields near her house. Eventually she resolved to give David up. She did not visit him or even phone and wandered around the house, bored and distracted. After a few days her thighs almost ached with desire for him. Sex with her husband was not unpleasant but it was not the same as with David, there was not the same dizzying excitement as she had felt when riding pillion on a motorbike in her student days. With David she felt as if she were diving into a sea of ecstasy. Having the two different kinds of men and sex, the reliable, pleasant calm and the wild, almost wicked, stimulated her. She felt that she was a highly desirable, attractive woman, wanted by two men. Lying in Richard’s arms she thought of David and lying in David’s bed she sometimes thought of Richard. And this excited her even more.
David, she thought, had no qualms of conscience. Basically he was not a very decent fellow, she knew. But then, she supposed, she wasn’t perfect herself, was she?
One cool autumn day, after an afternoon of lovemaking, she lay on David’s bed thinking that she knew so little about him. She raised herself up on one slender arm, the sheet falling back as she did so, to reveal her pale, naked body with the slight looseness of middle age.
“Have you ever been married, David?” she asked.
He was standing naked at the chest of drawers, his body not well muscled but still firm, and turned to look at her as she asked. She seemed to see a slight resentment in his eyes at her question.
“Yes,” he said, “I’m divorced.”
“Divorced?” she repeated. “Where is your wife?”
“In East London.” He did not seem eager to discuss it and she did not ask him anything else about it.
The fact that he had been married before interested her though and the following week at his flat as they were drinking the good instant coffee she had bought, not liking the cheap coffee he usually bought, she asked if he had children.
“Yes, a boy.”
“You didn’t mention him when I asked if you’d been married.”
“You didn’t ask,” he said, as if that was all there was to it.
His answer seemed so uncaring and she wondered if he would feel just as uncaring if he never saw her again. He probably would, she thought, but the idea did not upset her.
The trouble with the relationship was she had to be so damned careful. Once, after, she had spent part of the afternoon with David, her husband asked her that evening what she had done that day.
“Oh, I did some shopping at Woolworths,” she said, and went on reading her magazine, trying to hide the sudden tension in her.
“Is the food still good at their tea room?” her husband asked a few moments later.
She looked up at him blankly. “Whose tea room?” she asked.
He looked at her puzzledly. “Woolworths. You’ve just said you were there.”
“Oh,” she said, almost blushing, “I didn’t have tea there. I just shopped.”
Fuck, she thought, I hope he doesn’t ask what I bought. But he didn’t question her any further.
Sometimes she said she had been with a woman friend, and often this was true but there were times when she left the women early to be with David, who worked irregular hours. She knew she could get caught out if the women mentioned in front of Richard what time she had left them. It was not very likely but it was possible. At times she felt the way she thought a spy must feel, leading a double life. She felt caught up in the deception, carried along by it as if it had a power of its own, like a strong river that carried you downstream to a soft, sandy beach, or perhaps out to sea to be lost forever. But when David spoke to her on the phone and she heard that slightly roguish sounding voice she could not wait to be with him again and all the scheming and the deviousness and tension seemed worth it.

Now the Cape winter began, bringing its days of rain and cold and Richard suggested they holiday in England and France. The idea didn’t appeal to Edna at all, she didn’t want to leave David, but she couldn’t think of an excuse not to go. So they left in June, midsummer in England.
In London they went to the theatres and visited the Tower and the other historical sites and she thought of David and his lovemaking and missed him. Then they moved to a hotel in the Lake District and one beautiful day, looking out over the masses of daffodils, the calm lake shining in the distance, her husband beside her, she suddenly realised that she was no longer thinking of David.
Later they visited old friends in France and it was exciting and warming to see them again and remember the times they had spent together in South Africa when they were younger. It made them feel young again.
After a few days with their friends they left to visit Provence. They drove through the hot countryside, with its green vineyards and leafy orchards, thinking how it reminded them of the Boland of the Western Cape, and it seemed she had forgotten David altogether.
When they got back to Cape Town, though, and Richard returned to work, she began to think of David again. One day she phoned him and the next day as she drove to his flat she felt that stomach tingling, thigh tightening excitement of before. They began meeting regularly again.
At home sometimes she felt so excited by the prospect of being with David or by having been with him that she wondered if Richard could see it in her. She felt exposed, like a fish in a bowl. The effort of trying to suppress the signs of excitement in her made her seem cold and aloof at times.
It was the afternoon of a cold, windy day and she was lying in bed with David. Outside you could hear the rain dripping dismally down and it was warm and comfortable in bed. David was lying on his back with his hands clasped under his head. He spoke without turning to her.
“Do you think you could lend me ten thousand rands?”
“Ten thousand rands! What for?”
He was silent for a moment. “I’ve got a business scheme I want to develop. I need the money to help start it up.”
“Where would I get ten thousand rands?”
“Oh, come on, that’s nothing to you.”
“My husband may have a good business, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got money of my own.”
He turned to look at her. “Does that mean you won’t lend it to me?”
“No, it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t lend it to you, if I could. It means I haven’t got it to lend you.”
David turned away and lay looking up at the ceiling. After a while he said, “And if I went to your husband? You wouldn’t like that, would you?”
She could not believe that she had understood him properly. “That almost sounds like blackmail.”
“Oh come on.” His tone was hard. You can’t tell me you haven’t got ten thousand rands. It’s not as if you won’t get it back. It would be better for you to lend it to me than for me to go to him for it.”
“Why would he lend it to you?”
He smiled, a nasty smile. “I’m sure he wouldn’t want the whole of Cape Town to know about us.”
She was aghast. A coldness came over her limbs. She was by now sitting up, looking into his eyes and she saw that he meant it.
“You know, up to this moment I didn’t know what a shit you are.”
She rose from the bed and pulled her clothes on, feeling suddenly degraded by his seeing her so.
When she walked out of the door he was lying with his back to her. They did not say a word to each other. What a fool I have been she was thinking. Even the sight of the rumpled bed and the creased sheets as she closed the door repelled her. They seemed like the props of a porn film. To have given herself, her body and feelings to a man like this, what had been wrong with her? What had happened to all her fine ideals? What must Richard think of her if he ever found out? And now it came to her in an icy flash, he could easily find out. Or be told by this common little man.
When she got home she quickly showered and changed to get rid of the smells of sex that might betray her, but also to rid herself of the feel of him on her, as a woman who has been raped would wish to. Although she had certainly not been raped, she had freely given herself to this bastard, even chased him, she knew.
She was so upset that she could not think clearly. Should she forestall David by speaking to Richard before David got to him or should she say nothing? Perhaps David would not go to him. Thinking about it she ran her hands through her hair despondently.
When Richard came home he said to her, “You’re not looking well. You should go to bed. Perhaps you’re getting flu.” There was genuine concern in his voice and on his face.
“Perhaps. I’ll go to bed early.”
For the next few weeks she was on tenterhooks for signs that David had approached Richard, but she tried not to show it. The tension was wearing her down. One Friday evening after supper she was having a drink with Richard in the lounge. There was a Tchaikovsky piano concerto CD playing, the mood was relaxed and she felt that she had to speak to Richard now or she would never be able to. She would tell him that she had made a terrible mistake and was more sorry than she could say. Perhaps he would leave her, get a divorce, but she had to confess.
She had her back half turned to him, facing the Regency striped wall paper. “Richard,” she began.
“Yes?”
She could not turn to face him. The stripes seemed to converge and move in on her and she had to blink to clear her mind before speaking.
“Are we still going to the Grangers on Monday?”
“Yes, if it’s all right with you.”
“Yes, it’s fine. It’ll be nice.”
For the next few weeks the tension continued for her. She pedalled furiously on the exercise bike so that her T- shirt was soaked with sweat, but it relieved her only temporarily. Secretly she watched Richard for any sign that he knew of the affair but she was unable to pick up anything. All desire for David had left her but what he might do worried her.
She decided that she must try to find out if David had approached Richard or spoken to anyone else about the affair. About six weeks after she had left David she drove to his flat.
There was another name on his letter box. She knocked on the caretaker’s door.
“Mr Jordan left about two weeks ago. He went to Jo’burg, I think,” the little, elderly man who answered the door said in response to her enquiry.

During the following weeks she felt even more mixed up and full of unexpressed emotions than she had been before the affair. Somewhere she had read or heard that it was healing to put your feelings down on paper and she began to sit down every day and write.
For the first few days she wrote about her feelings during the affair with David and after. She carefully tore up these writings into small bits, wet them well and threw them into the garbage bin. Then she began to write about anything else that came into her mind. Memories of her childhood in Kenya came to her and gradually a theme began to fall into place and the words took form. She wrote of a fictional white family in Kenya and used those childhood memories as background.
The writing brought her some relief and after more than a year she showed it to a publisher friend. He read a little of it at her house; said it seemed good and asked if he could take it home to read. She thought perhaps he was just being nice but he phoned to tell her that he was impressed and wanted to keep it a little longer.
Eight months later, and after a little revision, it was published, to some acclaim. She began her next book, finding that the writing was cathartic and gave her a sense of fulfilment. Her feelings of rebellion lessened, she no longer felt the need for a lover and she mixed with her friends and acquaintances more acceptingly.
She began to devote more time and care to Richard and he seemed healthier and happier. She too became happier and more contented.
However, she found that the second book was more difficult to write and that she felt more anxious about her writing, whereas she had written the first book with no burden of expectation, nobody to please but herself. Now doubts came upon her, there were times when she did not know how to continue. She confided her doubts to her friend the publisher, who looked through what she had written.
“Just relax,” he said, “and write as you feel. Don’t try to be literary.”
She tried to follow his advice. It was hard going. There were still some doubts and anxieties in her but finally she managed to write more freely.
The second book was greeted enthusiastically. Second book better than the first. Edna Braithwaite exceeds expectations, the Cape Times review headline read and the Argus and the Johannesburg papers echoed that. She continued writing and in the years that followed Edna Braithwaite became a well known and respected name in South African literary circles and Richard seemed proud of her.
He never mentioned David to her or gave any indication that he had known about the affair and years later she still sometimes wondered about it. Many scenarios crossed her mind. Perhaps David had approached him but Richard wasn’t interested enough in her to worry about it. Perhaps Richard had been having an affair himself at the time and had been only too glad that she was involved with another man, so that she was too busy to notice and he was therefore spared the constant vigilance and the lying and deception. After all, she had neglected him at the time. Possibly Richard had even been sorry that her affair with David had ended. Perhaps none of these were true and he would have been deeply hurt if he had learned of her deception.
There was also the rather Hollywoodish possibility that David had approached Richard for the money and that Richard had paid him to leave, but surely, she thought, if that were the case Richard would have mentioned it at some time.
Sometimes, as they grew older, they sat together in the lounge reading, watching TV or listening to music and they made a pleasant picture, a happy couple enjoying simple pleasures together. Unlike some people whose mild faults seem to grow worse with the years, she had mellowed and even her face had grown fuller and warmer looking as if to express physically what had changed in her emotionally.
All the years of her life she wondered if Richard had ever found out, but she could never bring herself to ask.
The end

For Mum

Pale feminist you.
Bliss in a vintage dress.
Under a potbellied sky.
With your rouge pots.
Your lipsticks that taste like cream.
Your comaed flowers.
They plant their halos.
You dig them up.
You plant them somewhere else.
Somewhere where there is sun.

She knows the world.
She knows it in the Biblical way.
English is not her first language.
She has two daughters.
Her son is the baby of the family.
The avocado tree is flowering.
It is being brought to life.
Resurrected somehow.
The pomegranate does not.
Something is in the way.

Nature’s bride.
With climate change comes an elegant mess.
Mum is nature’s bride.
Her hair is a halo. Tungsten.
I worship this angel.
All her trilogies. Her choir.
With her sibling rivalry.
She carried me in her womb for months.
She was there when I realised my dream.
My dream of becoming a writer.

She raised me lopsidedly.
I have forgiven her for that.
With a little bitter, a little sweet.
I admire people who live in the wilderness.
There is squalor out there. Cacti.
I worship the hills in her eyes.
The valley that covers her physically.
She experienced loss early in her life.
We never talk about it.
Our family is like that.

Ruined Geraniums

Chasing wild sheep and ambulances
An insomniac’s trick
I have discovered an empire
The empire of the introspective
I am a superwoman and actor
Dramatic and always being
Brought to life by it
Provocative and enchanting
Exotic and intimidating
How to stay calm under pressure
A wolfish din far away in my head.

Just Once More, Get Back That Moment In Time (20.09.90)

I have all I want and most of what I need;

But something’s wrong with me;

I’m living the good life, you could say I’m the fortunate kind;

But I feel like something is missing from my life;

 

I should be happy and wearing the biggest smile;

Instead I feel like I’m broken inside;

I look to the sky in hopes God can tell me that it’s all just in my mind;

But heavens keeping quiet this time;

 

I searched the confides of my soul to find the answer to this question burning inside;

Then your face appeared like a star filled night;

I haven’t thought of you in years baby girl, ever since we drifted so far apart;

Could it be that you’re still the keeper of my lonely heart;

 

If this is the case,how do I fix what I tore apart;

You’ve moved on and found someone new and left us in the past;

I knew from that moment our eyes met you’d forever have my heart;

I didn’t know how true that statement would eventually be;

 

Now that years have passed and you’re gone, the truth in these words I see;

God truly sent me an angel, I was just too blind too see that the answer to my prayers was in you;

What do you do when God sends you the answer but you were expecting something else, when the answer was always right there in front of you;

It’s hard to take it now that I know the truth;

 

Things I can’t change, mistakes gone too far to reverse or simply undo;

Calls I wish I answered but chose too ignore;

Messages I read but never replied too, it burns to my hearts very core;

Knowing I had all I had been searching for;

 

But let it slip by because I thought my prayers were being ignored;

I never made that mistake since I lost you girl, God only knows;

Our fall I never recovered from and it’s slowly taken it’s toll;

I wish I could get back that one moment in time and get back all those times I had with you just once more.

The Pain of Wondering

Into the night I will run
Run away from you and yours
I will run towards the scorching sun
My struggle was behind closed doors

But then you catch me and I fight
Still I get pulled under again
I look around, I can’t see the light
You are different than you were then

My love for you suffocates sometimes
But you look at me and my heart climbs
Your love for me seems like an act
Filled with everything I ever lacked

You say you love me yet I do not know
If anything you say holds truth
You have screamed and begged me not to go
I am slowly losing my youth

Sometimes your love really does show
And yet I am still unsure
Maybe your love and lust faded a long time ago?
Maybe being together was just a bit premature?

But still I am enthralled by you
I will forever be under your spell
You are permanently etched like a tattoo
And I’ll never be able to say farewell

Odd Love

The love I have for you is odd!

The love I have for you is like cancer;

It just gets more serious with every passing year

I’m sure our love is now on terminal status, fatal attraction!

Loving you is like a bad habit;

I do it with minimal effort yet so effective,

That’s why I’m convinced it’s like an old bed;

Easy to get into yet hard to come out!

The love I have for you is like an illegal immigrant

Because our love recognizes no barriers,

It jumps hurdles, leaps fences and penetrates walls

Just to arrive at its destination full of hope!

Our love is no different to how the public feels about the government

There are sometimes lies and empty promises

But because of the history we have, we never walk out on each other!

Loving you is like an addiction;

I’ll try to get to you by all means

Despite people advising me against you,

You’ve led me to lose everything and even gone to the brink of death

But that’s still not enough to keep me away from you.

We so in love should be considered a crime;

All the stolen kisses and we stealing each other’s hearts

We are like Bonny and Clyde; we’re having so much fun!

I’m really not sure what kind of love is this;

It could possibly be the strangest love ever

Because I’s like a rolling stone gathering moss,

We gain momentum with every passing day

As we roll over any obstacle en route to our destination;

Happily ever after!