funny how
a year ago tonight
we danced
to summer wind
and outside songs,
looked at clouded
navy skies and pretended
there were stars.

how young we were,
that summer.
lived and loved
with firey hearts
and wet lips,
shadows holding hands
under street lamps
and fluorescent walmart lights.

fell for you like a stumble
off a cliff and when I
read the freckles across your face
by the light of the moon
and we argued over the existence of
aliens,
               look, they're right there

soco amaretto lime,
the anthem of our night time
wanderings through the streets
where we grew up,
tripped over my words
like the curb I couldn't see
in the dark, never been out
this late before.

same time next week?

If I said that you were perfect,
you'd just shrug it off again,
but that's what springs to mind love,
whenever I hear your name.
If I told you how much I like you,
you'd laugh and just say 'cute',
but never the less I like you,
and it's a feeling I can't refute.
If I asked you to be mine,
your no would be nothing new,
but I'll still forever know that,
my heart belongs to you,

17 | 31 Poems for August 2016

I understand the fact that I am not always easy to understand.
Loving me is complicated and maybe that’s the beauty of it all.
I never really knew how to handle this beautiful thing called love.
So I always thought that someone would be able to show me how.
“You’re not easy to love” are words I’ve heard too many times before.
My hyperhidrosis is evident but how long will you keep on looking?
I know that my smile is flawed and crooked but it’s worth the picture still.
Let me write my wrongs until I’m right within but where should I begin?
Walking through a graveyard littered with my ideas and thoughts.
Littered with my endeavours of trying to be someone worthy of your love.
You don’t believe in me so who am I to tell the world about our story?
Just another spoken-word poet from Pretoria trying to attain his glory.
These words are written with great effort but you never pay attention anyway.
You know that I’ve got hyperhidrosis but I try not to sweat the small stuff.
I never really knew how to handle this beautiful thing called love.
So I always thought that someone would be able to show me how.
“You’re not easy to love” are words I’ve heard too many times before.
My hyperhidrosis is evident but how long will people keep on looking?
I know that my smile is flawed and crooked but it’s worth the picture still.

I tear at the flesh and cut the skin away. I pull out my life's blood and let it drip on to a page. I pour my being into the words I speak. I let that which lives in me give rise to imagination. I bear my soul to the paper and pierce my arm with the quill. I let the blood become my ink and let the pen do it's will. Putting the essence of myself into each word and phrase. I give from my beating heart that which courses through my veins.

At the basic stage of learning a language comes pairs of most commonly used antonyms,
words meaning opposites of each other like the earth and the sky,
far away and close by,
love and hate,
metaphorically speaking even you and me.
Except, sky begins right where earth stops,
so if you really think about it only the soles of our feet are truly grounded,
while our heads have always been in the clouds.
Distance is subjective, so depending on how fast a ride is or the resolution of a lens,
sunsets and full moons are that much closer than a lover's touch.
Love and hate are not two sides of the same coin,
or the extreme ends of the same spectrum,
but rather the same side of the same coin,
exuded by the same people at the same people for the same reasons,
interdependent,
coexisting,
one defining the other.
Well, I suppose that leaves you and me.
As in it literally leaves you and me out,
metaphorically speaking,
figuratively speaking,
theoretically speaking,
you and I aren't antonyms after all because,
as it appears we do not define each other or anything in between.
Like the ocean and a bumblebee.
Here I am calm and blissful with sunlight bouncing off of every wave,
dramatic and roaring, heightened with emotions soaring,
bearing an infinity of life, continuously giving, nurturing and upholding,
but all you want is honey;
metaphorically speaking.