ilva
South African
I am a South African writer. Words are my passion and my profession. / / My relationship with poetry began when I fell in love with a lively Limerick at the age of five. After I heard how words can whisper age-old secrets and warn of times yet unborn, I accepted their invitation to play. / / Amid versatile vowels and constant consonants, I dance to the rhythm and the rhymes between the lines between the lines. Through the process of poetry, I have learned to know and understand myself better by better understanding that I will never know myself. / / And I am happy to be serving a life sentence.
Inside me
While you grew and grew
I never knew
Your heart was broken
And that there was one
Where there should’ve been two.
After you were born
The doctor explained
Your lungs wouldn’t last
You were breathing too fast
And growing too slow
Your blood flow was mixed
And you had to be fixed.
So right from the start
Your heart wasn’t whole
But your soul
Was a universe
And your eyes
Were comprised
Of millions of galaxies.
Your body was strong
And your cry was a song.
I named you beloved
And through you, I discovered
For the very first time
I was whole.
Please always remember
You are far more beautiful
Than broken
You are my ultimate inspiration
And I’ll always consider you
My most perfect creation.
Mar 9, 2015
Mar 9, 2015 at 3:02 AM UTC
Transfixed, I watch the worlds
In your eyes transform
From blue to brown to green
From sea to ground to tree.
Framed in wisps of orange flame
Your face alights, your cheeks glow bright
I sing a song about your name:
“Aim far, aim high
Aim star, aim sky
Aim you, aim me
I’m you. You’re me.
Aimee…”
My darling daughter
You are my Sun
And around you, I’ll revolve
Eternally turning –
A maternal merry-go-round
On your playground
Of seas and trees and ground.
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 8, 2015 at 7:31 AM UTC
If I could recreate reality
I'd soften the finality
Of your forced farewell.
I'd make it so
That I can peel
Your every kiss-shaped memory
From my skin
And keep them in a tin.
So that when I miss
Your goey lips
Against my cheek or chin
I'd simply take them out
And let them kiss themselves
Onto my skin again.
If I could recreate reality
I'd lessen the enormity
Of my endless emptiness.
I'd sew a song
Into the you-shaped hole
Of longing your life left
Imprinted on my soul.
A never-ending
Heart-mending singsong
To fill me and
Fulfill me.
But wait...
If I could recreate reality
I'd have no use for tinned kisses
Or pointless paltry poetry
Or stitches in my soul.
Because you'd be here.
And I'd be whole.
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 8, 2015 at 1:24 AM UTC
I am waiting for the stars to lead me
Away from this late night double-feature
But I just can't get these scars to leave me
Our time was too short
For me to realise
That a five-star last resort
Was all I was to you
I should have been the wiser
I should have seen the womaniser
In time to stop myself from
Building you inside me
I fell in love with the beauty in the bridges
And the richness of the ridges
Connecting you to me
Can't you see
How this poetry
Is defined by everything I've ever laid my heart on
Every race I've ever had a head start on
Every game I've ever played a part in
And every end of a new beginning of mine starting?
How can I wake up
Into a new day
When all I have left of you still belongs to this one?
How can I be redone
When I can't even say
The sounds that make up the music of my name?
How am I supposed to move on
When everything still looks the same?
I've bid farewell to the vows we'll never take
And I've said goodbye to the children we'll never make
Yet I will wait for you indefinitely
And like a dream that's blown apart
I will wait for you
At the bottom of my heart
Apr 28, 2012
Apr 28, 2012 at 5:42 PM UTC
That night in the streets of my city
When I was alone
He appeared to me in a whispered memory
And, like fireflies, my exposed suppression was revealed
Time had bound me in the threads of misery again
While the aching in my chest for forgotten company
Lured me into madness
It recreated my sadness
And he hadn't even said my name
Mar 14, 2012
Mar 14, 2012 at 12:15 AM UTC
Storms will come and go
Sometimes they will heal the earth
Sometimes they'll destroy
Mar 13, 2012
Mar 13, 2012 at 8:25 PM UTC
I wrote a poem for you
The day before I met you
When I didn’t yet know a soul can be shipwrecked
Or that the sun can have secrets
When I hadn’t yet learned to look for symptoms
Or dreamed you could become my weakness
You entered me like a sickness
From your first ‘hello’
You whispered my world red
And smiled it yellow
You came to me; a sonnet
A decorated soldier
Dressed in sentences and statements
With which to catch a schoolgirl
In succulent surprise
Your eyes kissed me
Long before your lips did
And under the spectrum of your splendor
My heart bloomed a blushing orchid
I was a slave to my sweet-tooth
You, a dulcit daydream
That knew just how to turn me
From still life into story
And in so doing, you cast me -
A shapeless statue -
Into your private purgatory
You created a planet
With just us living on it
And a snakepit, a sinkhole
With which to swallow me whole
I wrote this poem for you
The day after I met you
I thought it worth to mention
Why I started to regret you
So please pay close attention
(As I’m trying to forget you):
My innocence
Though far from inner sense
Was no less common
Than the unoriginality
Of your sugarcoated sin
Mar 12, 2012
Mar 12, 2012 at 9:25 PM UTC
With a tracing of my dreams
I’ll draw for you
In the shapes of streams
And the sounds of seas
A lucid doodle
The colour of waterdrops
To show you where my world stops
And my bones begin.
I’ll take you to the place
Where my poems sing.
Feb 19, 2012
Feb 19, 2012 at 3:54 PM UTC
I am not depressed
I’m just deflated
Out of style and over-dressed
At second-best, I’m overrated
An old birthday balloon
(Out of breath, somewhat bated)
I hum my jingles out of tune
One-hit-wonders soon outdated
Like a song without sound
Mourning a muted meltdown
I’m at the point of no concern
For my inability to yearn
I am -
Whatever comes after
The past, the future
The cries, and the laughter
I remain –
Whatever came before
The purple rain, the midnight train
The ****** and the *****
I am a pixelated painting
Understood by few
Inexplicably containing
Little drops of you
You’re my middle C
A sepia photograph
Of my mundane eulogy
And my previous epitaph
You are my bitter half
The gall in my bladder
My nervous laugh
My endless chatter
You’re my history rewritten
My once shy, twice-bitten
My state-of-the-art
You’re the bottom of my heart
The top of my lungs
You’re my talking in tongues
The motivational quote
In my suicide note
And although I’ll never be free
From this heart on my sleeve
I’ll always wish you to be
The Adam to my Eve.
Nov 3, 2011
Nov 3, 2011 at 2:18 AM UTC
I wanted you to sit
On a park bench
In the middle of the city
And watch me sail away in the sky
Like a kite of many colours
Wondering what happened to your band of brothers
I first saw you in a cloud shaped like a man
And in the wingspan of an eagle
Feeling the grass moving between my toes
I flowered and froze
To become the shape you chose
I wanted you to grow me
Like a tiger lily
I wanted your hand to fit
In the small of my back
But instead my bones turned black
And I blossomed and burned
When your back was turned
I should’ve flown
Before your eyes caught me
And turned me into stone
In your shadow, I am never alone
In your echo, I’m a semi-tone
The history of our love
Like a mystery, like a dove
Is written in graffiti
Where our harboured street
And the moon’s reflection meet
And I’ll always wonder how
You manage to make me feel so tall
And at the same time
So incredibly small.
Mar 18, 2011
Mar 18, 2011 at 12:24 PM UTC