Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
There is a voice that shouts to my heart,
"You won't succeed; just don't start."
But there is whisper from my brain,
"If you fail you get a chance to start again."
Both these voices are mine
It's true.
Believe in yourself;
your greatest enemy is you.
Write a garden into bloom.
Write a romance in the room.
Create, create, create
Life is short; Life won’t wait.
Shift, shuffle, sort, sift
Try and try your spirits to lift.
Do whatever is not writing.
You and your inner critic always fighting.

I am scared.
The first week of NaNoWriMo 2015 was when I had to write a novel for the first time. It is easy to say, yes I can write a novel, but will you? It was a challenge to allow myself the space to write and to, perhaps, fail at it. The idea of jumping off the ledge and then building my wings on the way down was terrifying and I found all sorts of excuses not to write. Procrastination and the inner critic are in cahoots I tell you!
For a time we exchanged lives.
Many a trait, from you derives.
Then no-one, no-one, no-one
could be you: The One.
Our secrets filled each other’s ears
spoken in a second; lasting years.
It hurts my mind remembering We
for you are now a part of Me.

Sometimes I wish we hadn’t solved our woes.
The saddest part to part as foes.
In my memories you’re still my best friend;
Moments show a friendship with no end.
In those snapshots we never grow a part,
Yet it is those memories that tear my heart.
Although but a fluttering butterfly kiss,
our carefree laugh is one I’ll miss.

As life changes so do We.
In the end we is anyone + me.
Because we changed as we got older,
so our laughs got fewer, our looks colder.
We may not make new memories together,
But our shared time will last forever.
Our contact now may be none to few.

I am glad I was somebody + you.
I wrote this about a very dear friend, who I miss terribly. Often those we love become a part of who we were, but not who we need to become.
Let me dance this life away
Let me care not about what I say
Let me feel alive and whole
Let me feed my starving soul
Let me squeal and shout with glee
Please oh please, self; let me be me.
Death you are seen so repugnant.
Death you are sensed so vile.
Death you are deemed so untimely.
“Death can’t you wait for a while?”
But Death, aren’t you Life’s true redeemer?
Making everyone think well of the dead.
Death aren’t you Life’s other half?
Death don’t you tuck us to bed?
When our wanderlust has faded,
your embrace remains unjaded.

Death you are humble in your infamy;
Life the glory claims.
Yet sickness, accidents and war
are all Life’s macabre games.
That which kills you comes from Life.
Life will push to make that sale;
living organs mere currency.
Cannibalistic Life - advertising as a fairy tale.
Death you are left to clear the carnage.
Death – the coloseum’s sand –
innocently soaked in the blood of Life’s cruel hand.

Death you are Life’s psychologist;
motivating each step, each trial.
Making us get up every morning
to make each moment worthwhile.
Death you employ Time’s creation
to set a deadline to Life.
Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring
Death you are a scalpel; Life a butcher’s knife.
Famine, plague, disease, beast,
Without glorious survival, why feast?

Death your work with Time is inspired,
for we created it to understand your course.
With Time we can learn Life’s seasons
and record it’s length before it’s divorce
from our fragile clay.
Death you make us frugal with our Time,
yet generous with our Love.
For to each heartbeat’s rhythm and rhyme,
we fervently dance to give.
To make another grief-stricken Death.

For if Life is filled with meaning,
it is Death’s boon to us all.
Life becomes exhilarating –
A race before the fall!
Death remains a wallflower to the very close.
Death only wants to meet us;
a gentle lover with a rose.

Encouraging, yet terrifying.
But if we fear the Darkness, it is Life we fear not Death.
How often has a blinding Light been reported on a final breath?
Darkness pervades; an empty whole.
Tears fill this broken bowl.
The nectar too salty to quench the thirst
A brutal reminder of what came first

A Blackness, a Void. God illuminated into being.
Beauty, Belief, Faith - a false way of Seeing.
The futile attempts to make the hole whole,
but it's Loneliness that resides in our Soul.

In every being sprung into existence
the Romantic effort of Man's resistance
is Love, hailed as the Cure.
But ask yourself, "Are you sure?".

At a life with Loneliness by our side
Love's importance becomes amplified.
But Love is just a wishful lie
it is Loneliness that embraces us as we die.
Clamp the red march onward!
Cut the winding trench!
Mask a visage for protection
from the visceral drench.

Light the forge in battle!
Keep the battlefield alive.
Hear the laborious drumbeat
of a heart trying to survive.

Stainless steel and knowledge
in the forge are fired
Gone are human needs -
Death is never tired.

On each second rests a lifespan.
Each minute gambles years.
A surgeon only has two hands
and no mortal fears.

The battle surges forward
as blood is forced right back
from the heart it came from;
a heart still under attack.

Even as the battle ended,
with blood, tears and sweat,
the war raged ever onward,
Death remains a threat.

Every day a battle.
Every life a war.
Against Death and the ethereal
survival is the score.
This poem was written after meeting a heart transplant survivor at the museum dedicated to the first successful heart transplant (at Groote Schuur, Cape Town)
Next page