TheBluntKnife

Soft whispers of pixels of light floating on the will to shine bright

Hang precariously on the hope that begins to rise when silence lays deep in intensity

Waiting for that moment

When the cage is accidentally left open

When the guards forgot to lock the gate

And the safetypin was off; and the gun too, and when time moved and then it didn’ 

The heart

The start

As in the beginning 

Shifting quite dramatically , quivering with lip

Vibrating in deep

Fluctuations of movement of sound

The art of chords that pierce

When soft tissue, muscle, bone have marinated long enough

In the same silence that inspired the Creator to Create 

The Maker to Make

The Baker to Bake

The paper to break into pieces of carefully written script that hits you with

Everything that knows how to hit 

Nails on backs need scratch, need match 

To light a big enough fire to need maps

Because we can finally see the road

Along with frames that make the bigger picture whole and a key

And a door 

And four walls that need five minutes to be ready

To bar hearts, passion and purpose

But we’re already here 

With bags books and whole verses

And urges and yearnings that introduce broken twigs to inner fires

Burning sensations like tingles from hands that clap and fingers that grab ears

And lips that whisper slowly

Exactly what the soul needs to be connected to the place with waters where all souls meet and knives are sharpened along with teeth

That have been taught only how to eat when fruit from fires inside taste sweet, and fee

Stop running

And hearts too

And souls move in unison

It is only a small hole

But it makes the picture whole

It may only be a small whole

But it makes the bigger picture whole

I used to juggle finding myself with making it in the world. Got caught in defining myself through the world.

Then I juggled finding myself in the world with finding myself inside me. Got caught in finding the origin of the world and the reason man exists.

Now I am in my room listening

I feel no strings and no urges to be or do

I still do not appear as one who has found anything worth suffering for; worth boasting about.

Azanian diamond Created In a language not lost; but stolen then discarded In a culture hijacked, corrupted, its history falsified and its roots And any possibility of growth, evolution; continuity Burnt with the ashes of our stolen brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters

Ebony is the toughest, most unbreakable

Black is forever for there is no darkness in black, nor lack of light for black is colour and colour is light

Black is a blind man’s flawed perspective of ebony Of African, God’s favourite; the hated For being, by birthright, the greatest, the bravest The most loving, it’s written all over the scripts and codes of UBUNTU Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu “I am a servant of my people I live for my people”

Azania gold

Found in the earth the Creator used to mould The first Child of the Earth Child of mother Africa crafted in the crevices of the profound silence echoing in the gardens of her divine womb, you

Nguni Wena mzontsundu Ubusuku bavela nenyanga eyakhokhela abalahleka ngapha kwee nduli neentaba Ngapha kwamafu ngenqanawe zizintaka kwisbhakabhaka saphantsi sithi ngamanzi, you

Child of San You! AFRI  CAN do anything stand! Grip truth in the palm of your left hand and love on your right, fight!

For that which you have brought to life Your word, your work Your child, children

Unto your hearts engrave this phrase

“WE OUGHT TO PRAISE THE CHILDREN WE RAISE”

The old grey stared through the window, into the rain

A single drop

Hits her nose and she bursts into radiant giggling laughs

He grabs her hand, spins her to his comfort,  moving, they dance

Each sinking drop sending sparkling shivers, rests her hand on his chest as the rest of the world disappears

The bench, the bin next to it, the people, the grass and flowers and the tree under which they moved

Slowly

Inside each others reason for existence, soldiers and citizens leading them to thrones

“You are my everything”

One soul said to the other, smiling with Gods heart

The contemplated drop saw itself on the one falling down the old grey’s cheek

Except it felt a longing deep into its most sensitive waters

The old grey sees her daughter putting a rose on her grand daughters black dress

An echo of “grandpa’s resting in heaven sweety” hits her so hard her lower lip trembles

Her arms, her body

The contemplated drop felt peace

“Red: The colour of assertion, strength, romance, excitement, vitality, physical power, ambition and impulsiveness. It is a colour that flatters the skin and can make an excellent background.”

Rose reads a spread on colours in this month’s issue of Lifestyle magazine.

She puckers her lips, admiring the just applied ruby-red lipstick brought to life by the glow of her smooth, velvety, dark skin.

She smiles; and remembers that her full lips, her smile is one of the things she likes most about her body. Surpassing her long, strong and thick afro, but trumped by her perky, c-cup breasts, which she has now cupped with both hands.

She slowly gets off her queen-size bed and walks toward the full length mirror hanging on her wardrobe door. She peels off the tightly clad t-shirt and shorts she sleeps in and just stares at her curvy body; admiring every single feature, every contour, every stretch mark, loving it. Taking it all in.

“Not bad for a junior manager at Strings and Whipman Marketing, stuck in a perpetually monotonous cycle and system where it’s

 Passed on from generation to generation

From hand to hand

Mouth to ear

The fear of not doing it right

The fear of not doing it how it is done

How we run

From when we can walk we are taught to step in line

One after the other

That is the most important lesson passed on to child from mother

Do as it is done

That’s how we come to run

At the very same time, sleep

And when the alarm beeps, rise

Wash, shit, brush your teeth

Put on your jumpsuit, I mean uniform, eat

 There’s no time to enjoy, I’m late for work and you’re late for school

Where we sit in the same position as yesterday, receive instruction in a room not meant to play and just follow the law until four, five or six

Whenever the sentence ends for the day, where we get out and chase the bus because we are always late

We HAVE to keep the schedule engraved, inculcated into our brains

 I do homework, you cook supper

We eat at the exact same time, watching the same programming that washes our brains but never cleanses any dirt, filth

Never quenches the thirst

The hunger for more, for real

We matriculate, go to varsity and experience something new, but only for a day

Then it’s back to routine, except now we are allowed to drink and smoke, so the weekend is freedom

 Until that, too becomes this thing that we do

This routine

While people in power are guaranteed money in the bank, for that is why all have to work, whatever your rank

To pay the ‘debt’

So that the bank functions

So that power remains in the same hands of the same faces you can trace this to just before slavery

Where it all began

 “Slavery”

She says, softly

Returning to the magazine

 “Blue: The colour of the sea and the sky, it has a quality of cool and expansiveness and openness. Soft, soothing, compassionate and caring, blue is an introspective colour.”

 Qhawe reads a spread on colours in this month’s issue of Lifestyle magazine

Bored

Of everything really

Of the same routine

He fixes his dreadlocks, styles them according to the mood set by the trendy clothes adorn his brown skin, on his finely built body which he exercises every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning.

Before he eats, before he leaves for his job as the head of events and promotion at ConFine Entertainment World at only 26

 Yet he still can’t shake the feeling that he dives into a pit

Every time he walks through the gate

 “Like a slave”

He says

 Preparing something to eat

Rose feels a longing inside her; deep

 Rose: I wish to fall in love; truly

Qhawe: Deeply, with someone who gets me

Rose: Someone who gets the things that move me

Qhawe: A being who understand the free I hope to achieve

Rose: Who will not only know why I feel so suffocated but will also have a solution

 Qhawe & Rose: A remedy

Qhawe: She will not remember me when I’m gone

       She will miss me

Rose: He will write me a song telling me how he craves, how he longs

Qhawe & Rose: For me

              Just the sound of my voice when words don’t even make sense

Rose: To run from the rain because we stayed too late in a place we never knew before today

 Qhawe: Not because we’re late

Rose: For the bus

Qhawe: Or a meeting

 Rose: He will watch me just breathing

Qhawe: Her chest heaving, rising and falling

Qhawe & Rose: I’m tired of crawling to these cages that come in all the stages of life

 Rose: I want life

Qhawe: Life lived right

 “That’s it!”

Rose exclaims

“Nobody cares about the spirit

The individual soul that dies in this lonely road to the nearest grave”

 “I am not a slave!”

Qhawe screams

Rose’s eyes beam with light and hope

Qhawe & Rose: Purpose!

  As the sun peaks on this beautiful, new Monday

The two strangers decide to breakaway from this enslaving routine and decide to hit the park instead of work

 Rose: They’ll find another mannequin to replace me

 Qhawe: That’s how the system works, this girl

          I think I’ve seen her before

But before he approaches her he decides that it’s going to be different this time

Qhawe: Hi

My name is Blue, and I’m looking for something different you know, something

new

 Rose blushes, then smiles, thanking her creator for providing this opportunity to live life

Rose: Hi

      My name is Red

      Before you showed up I could swear I was dead

 And so it begins

 Qhawe: I am lost in Red –

      lipstick, my lips lick

      the quick wink

Rose:  The dash in a blue shirt and navy blue coat

         You disappear into the crowd

       Yellow

       Green

       Brown

       Oranges, apples and sweets and airtime, Blue!

       There you are

       The other side of the street

       Waving, I breathe, I leave the pavement, I reach

       You

       But not soon enough, Blue!

         But still you run

          So I follow quite close behind

       I run too

Qhawe: Turquoise nails, fingers, arms around your body, Red

Rose:  You kiss me – deep breaths

        I’m breathing, you grab my hand we’re leaving, black!

          It is very dark in this corridor, dim light to our right

        Music, bouncers, password, what the? – ‘You’re in’

        Neon pink, neon blue

        Navy, Blue!

        Hey my dude, wanna buy me a drink?

Qhawe: Sweating gold, white foam, draft is cold, pink drinks, tequila gold – two

        4

        8

        16, now the room’s spinning

Rose:   Blue’s spinning, blues singing lady in the background

        I’m spinning, mind spinning

       Hips swinging, sip swigging, this shit is, tip hitting

       Heart stop, maybe breath too

       Blue

Qhawe: Black, blinking

       Kissing red lipstick

       Hips swinging

       Feet moving

       Walking

       Doors pen

       Bouncers, music, dim light to our left

       Bright street lamp black background

       White cab, black leather interior

       Cigarette smoke twirling and swirling about the car that stops

       We’re here

           This is my place, hi

       I’m Qhawe

 Rose: Hi Qhawe, I’m Rose, “how fitting!” ‘Qhawe exclaims’

The strangers getting intimate just by sharing their names

Rose:  So this is what living feels like?

Qhawe: Yeah. Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?

Rose:  I’d love that

 Over two steaming cups of coffee with the tv adding background music, the two go deeper still

 Rose:  What do you think?

 Qhawe: Of what?

 Rose:  Of this life and its systems, you know

       What could we possibly do to escape this?

 Qhawe thinks for a moment

  Qhawe: We can only hope to be ourselves

         So that whatever happens

       We’re ok with it because we chose it

       Because we knew that it would go that far, and if not

      We’re ok with it because it where we got ourselves

       Because we chose, for ourselves, from knowledge gathered by us

         So we can only hope to be ourselves

       As we fashion ourselves to be

       Because when we demand answers, we will get them

       To the point that we won’t even demand answers

         Because we were there in the beginning

       During the planning stages

       We okayed every step

       Every move

       Every intention

       Every decision

       Every thought

         So we’re ok with what we see around us

       Because we know everything that is around us

         We got it for ourselves

       By ourselves

       From ourselves

         So

             We can only hope to be ourselves

             scratch my back

Rose: Create a map that leads from my longing need

It’s deer caught in headlights doe knead, bake my curiosity with this glowing heat in a whisper of screams refusing not to be heard

Sheep

 To the slaughter, willing

A chilling sensation where ice come to be buried, ushered by these kisses

Making wishes in fading candles, breaking handles holding on to sheer will by sheer will

This little kid from somewhere inside on a fieldtrip of own body, tour-guided by hot, exploring hands, fingers, lips, tongue, teeth, steamy sweat shhh…

   I lost my breath for more than a second there

Lips on lips not for cpr, it’s impossible to die in heaven right there on the floor of the gates to entrances and exits

Entering and exiting, existing only as sounds, even vibrations, riding a raw wave of slave freeing, sauté bleeding, still beating heart in lost words hark!

 This is not in the dark, time slowed down, time stopped and time went back to the exact moment after the creator summoned the light and it was there

In front of Him, bare

To run with it without a care

Right there

     Laying naked in Qhawe’s bed, the two kindred spirits go even deeper still

 Rose:  So; what happens now?

 Qhawe: What do you mean?

 Rose:  To us?

      We can never go back

      We can never “wait”

Qhawe cuts her words unfinished

Qhawe: I want you to tell me how this feels

       Tell me what happens when I look into your eyes

             When I hold your hand, my fingers touch yours, inside our eyes wars are waged, armies       digging into souls they want your whole

 Tell me how your knees shake with every absent breath that shrivels my heart, my chest quakes as my body shakes, as I hold, tighter onto your now numbing hand, how does that make you feel?

 Can you survive the need?

 A thirst

Not for lips that drip

 But for the essence your spirit has honed through the years

Building with tears, fears, scars, disappointments, smiles, laughter; grass caught in hair – all the games played

Childhood memories, plans scribbled and scratched, character traits picked up and attached, everything!

Even the nothing that’s left when you pour your all into my cup

My solar plexus

My holy grail

 How does it feel when my tears transform into rain, as I release all my suffering and pain at the door step of your temple as with quivering lips I pray I say!

  Does the goddess knows she is all I serve?

 Does she know that the fire in her eyes is what fuels the stars in my universe, in my dark skies?

In cold nights I hold myself with the memory of her hands holding tight

Part One: The Miseducation of Fear

 In this life

I learnt that family is a six letter word that means absolutely nothing if you don’t do what they want or tell you to

I learnt how to blend in at an early age because being different hurts so much

I learnt how to blend in at an early age because when you move to a different city every year, it becomes your greatest tool

I learnt to be my own best friend because when you move to a different city every year, you become your best ally

I learnt to rely on my instincts from the times I ran away because my father beat me too hard

I learnt that you pay for the consequences of all your actions, I spent many nights under roofless skies learning this lesson

 I know how to down a beer quick, been in pits where you have but minutes to black-out or scar your memory for life, couldn’t risk losing sleep

I already couldn’t sleep

 I learnt that insomnia is a result of excessive stress

Panicking too much about the future

I’ve felt anxiety sixty seconds into a lecture so deep I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sit still, couldn’t keep

Couldn’t..

Fuck it! I was gone

 I learnt that some parents hate weed so much that they would strangle their child with their school tie just to get them to stop

Make them break-up with their girlfriend because “you’re too young to know love”

 I learnt that at park station, passengers boarding buses the following day, for whatever reason, have to leave waiting rooms at some point after 10pm

So they put you in this dingy ass place near their dumping site, horrible nights I

 Learnt that time only heals all wounds not when you let it

But if you are capable of it

The ability to let go

 I once found myself staring a young, beautiful coloured girl at a house party in Auckland Park dead in the face

Frozen

Unable to answer her question

 “How do you un-know all you’ve known?

How do you let go of all you are to hold on to something else? What something else?

If all you’ve ever been is not the way to live, then what is?

 I learnt that if you give too much of yourself you end up with nothing

 That people love you as long as the way you live, the things you do agree with their lifestyle, life choices and their perception of how life should be lived

That when you step outside their boundaries (and you always will), they discard you quick

Or try force you to change

That they never let you walk away but still insist and persist on your “need” to change and live the way they live, fuck how you choose to make yourself

 I learnt that addiction can lead you to pick up stompies in cold, dark nights just to supress the edge long enough to sleep

 I learnt to keep

Secrets inside

I learnt to keep

Pain and suffering inside

I learnt to keep everything inside so much that I no longer drink too much in case the dark spill out

Beyond my control

 I learnt to roll with the punches

To take it like a man

 That nobody really accepts you, somebody always questions something however weightless their opinion

 I learnt how to genuinely hate my father

                                 Father Please Write Me a Lovesong

                                              a poem within a poem

Father please write me a lovesong

 That I may know how to love

 Inject in the lyrics instructions on how to love me

 Paint pictures of self as wealth, a child on mothers’ breasts in nests on mountains

Not lost and falling to my death

  Tell me why you beat me so hard

Why you were never there for anything else

What I meant to you, because it means nothing now

 Father please write me a lovesong

 Maybe wish me happy birthday on the bridge

Maybe it will save me from jumping off of this one

 Make it poetic and paint a picture of what it is to love

Maybe in the embedded emotions show me how it feels to be loved

Lord knows you never did when I still thought of you as a figure

 Not just a number amongst

 Father please write me a lovesong

 Telling me it’s ok that I hate you

 That if you die in the next ten years I won’t go to your funeral

 I won’t cry

 Let the lyrics tell me that it’s ok that I can no longer cry

 Father please write me a lovesong

 Promising you’ll stop popping up every once in a while neither drunk nor sober, professing rotten love, promising change and better futures I no longer need you, you hurt the most

 I would be a fool if I went back to the same blade that drove me insane, found myself contemplating residence in a grave, I am no longer a slave so father please write me a lovesong

 Letting me go

  Love

 A man in the streets.

   I learnt that repeatedly forgiving the same “mistakes” by the same person is draining and I am tired

 Because I can’t let go of this darkness

I hold on to this pain, maybe even look for it because it is the only emotion I can still feel and I don’t want to feel this way anymore but I know no other life

 It’s like there’s this thick, hard layer over my heart, I no longer feel anything

I don’t want to do coke because I know I’ll be lost forever and weed no longer cuts I can no longer feel

 It’s all logic

I only interact with people logically because I only know pain and anger I could kill someone

             Part Two: The Unbelief

                                 I No Longer Believe In God

Because he doesn’t exist

 Not inside me

 Not how I need him to

Like how his word says it would be

He doesn’t speak to me like he did with Samuel

I don’t run to my masters room not knowing it’s him all this time

 I pray profusely

I write prolifically

But I only hear pins drop

Not angels, not the Holy Spirit, not the blood of the lamb who died on Calvary for me, pins

 And needles and scalpels that dissect and judge for the fuck of it

 He doesn’t judge, he doesn’t give justice to those in need, he doesn’t protect those who choose him you just hear shit like prayer is an art and God answers in his own mysterious ways, yet when David cried out

When David opened his chest, took out his heart and poured its tears unto his lap, he gave him his kingdoms and rulership over all his people

But my heart

My open, broken, bruised, used, torn, shattered and cold heart has become a tattoo on the skin on His inner right thigh where its tears never dry, as they pour out day and night and all I hear are pins because prayer is an art and he answers in his own time and mysterious ways

And all I want is the pain to stop

But it doesn’t

Because he simply does not exist

 Not inside me

Not how I need him to

Where I need him the most

Where it is said everything exists

 Except for him

 I no longer believe in god

 People hurt me, people ridicule me; people call me names

People prosper while I rot in graves

 I work hard and push and after I pour out my all

Still, everything I touch turns into shrivelled up darkness, no success, just fucked up relationships with every human being I interact with

I clash with everybody I live with so I no longer have relationships because it’s always me

 So I am alone

Though I meditate and pray everyday

 So I no longer believe in God

 Because I’ve never felt more alone

 It then defeats the purpose

              Part Three: Freedom From Fear

                           Out of Understanding

Out of understand someone stems every form of love

 Understanding the next person as they are

 Allows you to truly love a person; whoever he is

Unbound

Pure and true

 As unravelled by the fibres that enable the flesh to perceive the breath as flesh

 Out of understanding comes acceptance

 It is because we have not accepted our own flaws that we point out and ridicule what we perceive as flaws in others

 Out of understanding comes acceptance of self

 Of the world in and around us not as we want, hope, wish, need, pray it is

 But as it is

 Understanding requires openness

Openness requires surrendering, a lowering of defences

 Openness to challenge

  The challenge of you, your core beliefs

The tools with which you navigate your map of life

A challenge and test of all you know

 Out of understanding stems trust

 Being ok with wanting the things you want

Being ok with loving the things you love

Being ok with needing space and privacy sometimes

 Trust with your heart

With your heart

 Trusting in everything that moves you from inside you; your individually experienced and felt truths

 Out of understanding comes listening

 Knowing

 To hearts, to clear voices inside

 That your mind fights you so you can fight back

By the time you’re done battling your mind

By the time you’re done conquering your mind

 You are ready for anything for there is no opponent far shrewder, far crueller, even far superior than your own mind

  Out of understanding comes control

 The power is in me

I am capable of feeling only pain and darkness

  But pain and darkness cannot feel me

 I can let myself only feel pain and darkness

Or I can wake the fuck up and let everything I want in

 But it’s not that simple

Everything takes time

I can teach myself how to feel the positive like how I taught myself to be better at poetry

 My father never taught me how to love but I can now teach me how to love

I am capable

I can raise my own children now

When I was a child I could cry

Now I can raise the parts of me whoever I once blamed failed to raise

Now I can write my own lovesong

                                                   Fly my Sorrows

                                                a poem within a poem

 I release you

 So fly my sorrows

 I breathe through my nostrils and mouth, I exhale – get out!

 You have borrowed, took over and used up my body long enough to brave the world on your own now my love it’s enough

 Fly my sorrows

 You were just walking by and I brought you into my life, you held tight

I felt warm and complete

 But now I’m torn and I bleed on knees a slave to need

A need to not feel

The pain come with life now it’s the only thing that I feel so fly my sorrows

 I can no longer breathe without a high they die, my tomorrows so fly my sorrows

 I can no longer live without the feel of warm thighs, dark, light, big-boned, thin, thick, beautiful, “ugly” you wear a skirt?

 My hurt hurts

 I don’t get drunk, I blackout so what’s the point?

 I, too, played a part so goodbye resentment and anger

 They could never have hurt me without my consent so so long revenge

 Nobody knows me like you do darkness so you know better than most it was temporal

Our union

 So to the dark

I say leave my heart

                                                   A Letter To My Heart

                                     a poem within a poem within a poem

My heart

 My beautiful, loving heart

 Oh how I have hurt you

Sold you out, traded you for artificial living and feeling

For cages and whips it’s no wonder you no longer speak

 “The world” hurt me, but I hurt YOU

I failed to protect you

I was weak and I failed to see you leave me every time I refused to heed

Your warnings and now you bleed

 Oh my beautiful, loving heart

  You’re the one who introduced me to Poetry ten years ago

 I remember how you moved when I first heard those words

How you jumped for joy

How free I felt because it was one of the most important things I was waiting or searching for in life

 I remember the life coursing inside

I remember the words

The name of the piece was “While Smoking My Pen”

Thank you Andile Skhakhane

Thank you Khosi Mthimkhulu

 I remember how warm and complete I felt when you had decided that “fuck it, I’m going in”

And you plunged into the depth of Amanda’s heart

Love

Ten years later and we’re still together in a time where love no longer exists, but I put you in pits

 Dance, Rap, Sound Engineering, the art of moving lip

I found those things by listening to and following you

 Sex, weed, alcohol, fear, doubt, anxiety, failure not of life

 I found those things by forsaking you and look what I put you through

As you suffered the most

 I apologize my love

 Today

I return to you

I return to you freedom

 I return to me

 Today

 I return to free, a holy trinity of soul, heart and me.

 So fly my sorrows

 The force thanks you for your service

I relieve you of your duty.

 A king has returned to claim his rightful place.

This is the master piece

Controlling scroll-less owners of gifts to write

You have to earn this

The art of finding perfect matches for letters and a safe neighbourhood for their families

Hand-picking friends who accentuate their depth, their best, you can’t jus swing a pen!

You have to go through initiation and be regarded as one amongst men

You have to understand that pain can be a good teacher if you let it, not let it control you

You have to go through you from stage one, through all the bonus rounds until the boss and defeat you

You can’t be moved by your unwillingness to fail

It is there you find keys

To open cracks on the earth, fall to the deepest parts and find a familiar feeling root

Pry that damn thing open ‘til your fingers bleed and find your God-damn self!

 Then proceed to write

But you do not write

I lay back and close my eyes

I go to a place

I go to a place in my mind

A street

With lamps and brick-roads and old-school buildings – a window

Through which I view

Time un-move

Un-hurt and un-heal

Un-feel and un-love

Un-know, un-think

Un-become

Bare of all but essence

A presence move Adam behind bushes, it pushes, questioning your very existence

Takes you

Grabs you by the back of your head with full, thick-fingered hands

Takes you to the pool of life and knowledge

Where you stare right into the core of your eye, with an open mind, open palm, open hand take spirit microscopes and see your soul; look her in the eye and tell yourself with an open chest

 “I

Can do ANYTHING!”

 And when you wake up in the morning

It’s ok if you cry as you did as a new born child

 Because then you believe as you once truly believed

Now go out there and plant this seed

YOU

The situation was pretty deep

So the Virgin Mary lit a spliff

The thing is this

She was telling me how he was still too young when he left

How much she missed him

“You know, he is my only son too”

She says between tears

Telling me how she fears for him

Heir though he is; a son he also still is

Hers

“And still very young”

She emphasizes, adding spices to the boiling pot set out to battle munchies

It was gonna e a long night, the bong lights, so we go again

Hearing the rain, she starts laughing

“I remember when he didn’t want to wash 

How he’d move the water to the furthest side of the tub

Like “Jesus, you need to clean up though”

“Crazy times

Very lovely child

Very energetic too”

She says softly, slowly

The smoke rises, dancing with the light

With the night refusing to grow up, I roll one as I listen to a mother talk of her son

My brother

Her father

Mine too

Minds move in unison as we glide through picture of the little baby

As she drops tears

Maybe

I say

Maybe you ought to celebrate the fact the he found and followed His purpose from a very young age through to its end

At an age where means and ends meet in the middle glaring at each other

Maybe celebrate the fact that, worried though you were, you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that He was safe

At an age where mothers age staring at the gate

They are never late

They just never make, We 

just never make it

Nothing

Before she takes another drag

She looks up, smiles

Frowns, and it hits

I looked for you in the colours

 I looked for you in grey but was met by sadness and confusion with a dash of something’s not clear here

 I looked for you in hues, in blues brought by strings that carry notes that learnt to ferry souls across all the dark clothe the world, to a land of little hope

Where old women laugh a little at jokes

 But they still look into the distance

 I searched for you in cat eyes that have watched over families through the night, through the years, over time

  Maybe

 I looked for you in shades of pink

In thick rose cheeks vibrating from the warmth of thick fingers that used a beautiful face to applaud a huge mistake

Once

 These are the ones that beat on drums

 The neon lights

 Said the moth looking a bit drunk

 Or I was looking at myself in the waters of his eyes it had been a long night

  I looked for you in fading sneakers

 In socks

 In hurting feet

 In running legs

 In numbing drugs on hospital beds

 In drunken giggles inside the pill with

 Hearts and sparks and fireworks and spinning rooms

 I looked for you in blindfolds holding paint brushes that only paint black I looked for you in black

 I looked for you in black

  I found a lack of enthusiasm and I don’t want to be the essence of something

The dash is finished and something is coming so I looked for you in shadows

Found fear, anxiety and self-pity, withering petals

Falling feathers

Looked for you in cooked meals, spices, salt and pepper

 I looked for you in black

 I found a lack of enthusiasm and I don’t want to be the essence of something, the dash is finishing and something is coming so I looked for you in shadows

Found fear, anxiety and self-pity

Withering petals

Falling feathers

Tethers

So I looked for you inside

Red waters golden

Red autumn moments

Bled all red blood cells left bare right there, stood naked in front of God, Jesus, His heirs and co-heirs, the cold air hugging tightly every inch of skin, every inch of sin frozen in a moment of deep contemplation

 “Maybe I ought to change my ways

Maybe I ought to brave life as one who does everything in truth and with love

     If sin can at least contemplate,

Imagine a flower sitting

Imagine a flower sitting, but now it’s thinking, you know

Considering

Strategizing more than anything

 How to spread the water to the petals, the buds, the flower, the whole

Thinking of ways

Imagine a flower thinking of ways to love itself

Taking in the sun loving it too, feeding it food, feeding it light

 It’s quite a sight when you sit comfortably in your mind

 The things you find when you’re true to yourself?

A collection of letters that form words that form sentences that form images that tell a story

Paintings depicting the rhythm of moving souls, dancing

Frozen in a moment paused by a moving mind, taking time to lay each layer of ink on the piece of the puzzle

I Rapunzel release each piece of my speech so now you’re connected to my dome, I want to leave home

So I can base my journey on the weight of my balls, wait there’s a pause

    Take with your all what I tell you here tonight

 You are everything