let me

It’s a chilly night and the city lights

make me want to twirl and dance in circles

you may not be with me

but it sure feels cosy.

.

I imagine it’s snowing stars

the ones we picked out while we were at the beach

and it’d be like christmas everyday

except it’s reality.

.

hope it’s you on the phone

that I’ll have a home with you

with days we can live out endless possibilities 

I’m allowed to dream, let me.

.

As I lie in bed before I sleep

and it’s quiet and I come alive

of coloured walls and cutlery

and plans for eternity.

.

I’d pick your clothes and you pick mine

tighten your tie or wish you goodbye

and know that you’ll be back at the end of the day

you’ll be home.

.

pray we’ll always be together

held up in each other

with days we can live out endless possibilities

I’m allowed to dream, let me.

Gone all quiet

It’s really, really quiet and it’s almost close to morning

I turn the blankets inside out and creep out to go running

Coz in the silence all I hear

is my own breathing

and it’s easy again, so easy.

.

For the people fade from reach

I’m alone and all I want with me is my own footsteps

Even shadows disappear.

And my mind is clear

I’m looking for home,

gone all quiet.

.

 

by chance

The smell of roasted coffee beans and the gentle hum of friends catching up with one another.

Messages in handphones from long-time-gone.

Behind the mind, in the shoes, keep in sight the one on the loose.

The fray.

gone too soon

between life and death there lies a fine line

that shimmers and shivers and tempts.

beyond the wilting rose and its falling petals

I see its thorns remain.

in the cold I expose my skin

for Mother nature to cocoon me in her love

and as I bask in the trembling silence

I see my thorns remain.

you know me, not.

I chucked my five cents on the counter and he gave me my money’s worth.

The coffee was merely murky water, thin as hell, but all I could afford. Sauntering out the glass doors that were started to look like they were half made of wood, from the muddy fingerprints covering it’s middle, I spit in the cup of a homeless man and he blessed me with a curse.

It was a handsome Sunday, as the dusty air was darkened with impending rain, like the tophat of a gentleman. Tossing my empty paper cup onto the road, I rubbed at the inside of my elbow to get at the dirt as I thought.

“I’m an intelligent man, the world just doesn’t seem to appreciate my talents,” I said to myself, as I fished a wallet the back pocket from a nearby gent. Keeping pace, I flipped it open, took out a note, then closed it and tucked it back where it belonged.

A pretty girl passed me by, in a small red thing, the neckline almost meeting the hemline. With a low whistle, I turned right around to follow her behind.

Like the pious man my father had been, I aimed to do one good deed a day. Just yesterday, I had chosen to water a roadside plant when all I wanted was to make water. See the considerate man I am, and the ladies, they all shrieked, but still they looked with gogling eyes.

At the street corner, I saw dear Mrs Coleby, bent in half over her walking stick, in a pretty flower dress. She should have died six months ago when she got a triple heart bypass. I watched her as she folded up more each day, and I always wondered if she slept sitting up.

She was a cynical old lady, this Coleby, always suspicious of everyone, ignoring the words of the young. Still I took it upon myself to help her. As best as I could, I shouted to her : “Manhole to your right, do watch Mrs Coleby.”

With a snort, she turned her wrinkled face to me and raised her stick at me. “You’ll never get me Skites! I know there ain’t no works…” and stepped right defiantly.

I didn’t stay to witness the commotion. Pushing past the glass doors, I slid the note across the counter. “Give the good man a good cuppa will’ya.”

Sunday: good deed – check.

i stole the daisies

The white field had a smattering of yellow and they reached my very shoulders.

I remember celebrating my sixth birthday just two weeks before she fell ill. Then the doctors came and went, each one leaving a few bottles of pills, that my dad threw in the garbage the moment they left. “Absolute quacks,” he always said of them. And then a month later, she was dead.

The day she died, I swallowed a piece of bubblegum accidentally in a bet with my brother. I read about my mother’s death in the papers the next day. Her obituary was simple, next to a full-page colour one for a minister’s son. “Departed 13th May 1994. Will be missed dearly” it read.

That day, I went for a long walk behind my house. It was the place my parents had met as children, when they played hide-and-seek amongst the trees with their band of gollywog friends. The place my grandparents had met when the land had been barren and they drew figures on the ground with sticks and rocks. Now, there are daisies.

I hated the place. Why couldn’t there be corn, or barley, or big, bright, bloomin’ sunflowers like the fields in the other villages?

It started drizzling, then it began pouring and lightning lit the sky. In between the flashes of bright, I saw her.

That day, I stole the daisies.

lit

the formula was there

and I was familiar with what had been writ.

through the foreign symbols and signs

I read them like my heart’s voice.

.

I’d dreamt the past few nights

of the light you threw on my path

but didn’t understand as I struggled to figure you out.

no more than the silhouette

of my wooden crafted beauty

in the haze against the horizon.

.

today with my siphoned memory

again I read your note

and with my life,

you’ve kindled.

.

To my kindle.

Entry for the Dirty

I stood at the door
most unworthy of entrance
When all the pure and cleansed had left the house
I searched the high ceilings.

I carried a bag, filled and overflowing with
none of it offerings.
for the hours i hesitated,
I healed at the doorstep.

behind the velvet curtain,
He called me into His home, and I stepped in, with my shoes on.
through the tear I saw The healer
and in the corner my tears collected.

Behind the wood,
penance was found without ‘hail Mary’s’
the I found beginning with the Alpha.

untarnished

like rusted metal the stains

they left evidence to my thoughts

better spoken then i could voice

where others have called me dumb.

.

I gave it one straight all the way down

just to watch it part

and the ruby liquid that flowed off my arm onto the floor

.

then with all the sadism in me,

i lit up a match

and placed the tiny flickering flame

to the center of the gaping wound just so i’d feel it sear

and then i moaned

and then i smiled.

.

all this madness

to give and take

They gave her the pebble, pressed into her right palm, and she stared at it without curiosity.

It was cloudy and the children had come out to play, enjoying the lack of sunshine. The place was silent with constant movement and Kieri stood on the number 7 foam tile. She had tucked her hands into the pockets of her men’s pants and heard nothing above the constant hum she was making. She felt like being a machine today.

They closed in their circle about her, and  she turned in circles quicker and quicker as she tried to face all of them. Shayna moved like a dog that didn’t know his numbers, her feet turning faster than her body which moved to the tune of a mind stuck at 1.

The machine stopped and one by one, the children stopped to look at the girl with flaming curls. It was unusual that the song had ended and their friend was now a mere statue. “Kick her! She’s useless!” and so the boy with one leg went over and punched her.

In her whirlpool world, she saw smudges of their faces and thought they were really pretty. When she finally collapsed, they spat on her as a sign of respect and took back the stone, laughing to express their sorrow at her departure.

Kieri crumpled forward and wished she could feel her Shayna bleed out of her again. At least that would mean she had lost her from inside her, that she didn’t need to see her little girl’s last breath. The day the machine stopped.