In a valley down by the danger,
surrounded by silver-naked-trees,
there is trust and there is dust
on plaid blanket, pressed by knees.

Where the orange orb floats through darkness
as midnight and finite as deathly intentions,
they surrender, known pretenders,
**** and pink, among green-glassed drinks,
living as common competition, in a silicon city;
living as voices-of-a-generation, in the pretty gritty.

transparent seeds
nest in winter hollows
the future reflected
in all-knowing eyes
an internal compass buried
in each golden heart

dappled forest light
on the natal stream
memories of salt
ingrained within
the latent lure
of open ocean

our destinies are silver
a return to clear waters
transformed revenants
glassy-eyed and gasping
on the gravel bed
that birthed us

it's cold in this motel
all the paisley carpet in the world
won't make the halls warm  

a faux fire is burning in the lobby
the clerk is long numb to it, and to the rest of the world
it appears--no guest has disturbed him for hours

I don't want to go upstairs, to a room
where my only daughter waits, curled in the covers
like chrysalis in cocoon

eyes dried from crying all the tears
eyes can make--still she dry sobs--still she aches
for a mother she believes abandoned her, in a motel,
like this one, a lifetime ago

we will attend the service early today--too late
for a reconciliation between mother and daughter
the tether torn a decade past

I will hold my daughter close;
her eyes will dart around the room,
wondering who the mourners are, how they knew
the mother she did not

until then, I will sit a while longer
by this timid flicker of light, before I don the black suit,
before I knot my tie in the mirror and see the face of the man
who could not forgive a transgression, a human misstep

and robbed a girl of her mother, until today,
when words will spill from strangers' mouths,
the only biography my daughter will ever have of her
and I will wish for short epitaphs, a quick return to the earth
while those words and truths haunt my soul

This waiting room is painted of pain,
featuring faces with mouths down-turned,
impatience taking up these empty seats,
of family members already lost,
we feel like the least loved
in the mighty grasps of almighty fate's
crushing hands,
we feel like the last patients
to be visited during the night shifts,
by nurses and doctors,
the times of day when the most dust
is swept back to the humble soil
by an unseen, yet not-so-invisible bashing broom.
the old fan - barely hanging -
is closing in full circle,
a whole life lived.
dull curtains, some unhooked and five minutes to falling,
alongside the walls' stripes
designed with a print of doctors' usual words,
"I'm so sorry for your loss."  

If life truly begins at forty,
then hers ended at the starting line.
this would be a misplaced and mixed metaphor
if it weren't for olympics silently running in the background on the tv
reminds me of my mute cries, surprised eyes bulging, gaping mouths with no sound.

It ought to be a preventative measure; just a routine operation
a possibly cancerous lump.
I am flipping aimlessly through these magazine pages,
each catching a tear-drop for the dog-ears
(whoever reads them next will turn the pages over better).
Some puzzled maze pieces fall out of a box,
my baby cousin tries to gather the cardboard paper of a family tree picture,
but the least important twigs are lost, and the last friendly branch found missing.
The many portraits that make up the landscape go away from time to time.
It was just a little, smallish lump.
these news are hard to swallow.
my eyes are peeling onions.
my throat is winter-hands dry.
mum says she saw her the most alive
a few odd minutes before time clocked aunt out.
Grandma's sister blames herself for suggesting, advising, and in retrospect putting "pressure".
neutral colours ***** the Scrubs' floors,
hypothermia lurking in the corridors,
but the coke from the vending machine is medicine lukewarm.

It was a game of musical chairs,
But when the seven trumpets sounded,
the stools remained still, they stood facing eastward in hexagonal formation.
An angel ascended, the remnants were six shadows now.
With a plot twist, it's less players each round.
Who dies first wins, I've tossed too much soil on dust, my hands are *****.
We wash our hands clean with this paraffin.
Open-casket, the last sight took my breath away - the whitened clay still one,
but with the breath of life taken away, by the One, who giveth and taketh.

It's also winter our hearts,
dips of grief, dabs of black clothing, grim-reaper the thief, we still loath him.
another weekend
another sad-a-day
another funeral.
And his life was a summary,
too brief a breath, as the contraction is.
No sympathy to bother saying
"I am".
Public or private hospitals, dark clouds gather above all.

Twenty-twelve was a scar,
for four years now we are still scooping our scabs, from the bottomless pits,
that fell from ever-fresh wounds picked at a tad too prematurely,
so very early.
Some of the things we will take to our graves
will take us to our graves, as we exhume our pre-mourning selves.
And hurt still drops in drips,
red-bottomed-sticky feet from the blood-washed tiles,
the pain and the paint in permanent.
Some matters you can only think about
when you are half-awake and half-asleep, because these nightmares
are too real to be dreams.

uThixo Ovayo unoNobantu, nabantu bakhe bonke ngamaxesha onke.

~ by New-Black-SoUl #NBS

the healed are chewing their hands beneath posters of fast food taken from the walls of god’s cell. poetry is dead. prose the bone placed in the bowl of a frostbitten dog. nothing burns. not like a baby’s ears at an oyster farm.

It all began with a cry in the night,
a slap on the ***, a blast of bright light.
The world unfolded like a dying rose,
a palette of joys, a whisper of woes.
The years slipped by, they crawled so fast
until you found yourself old at last.
A man with a cat in a silent room,
who’d laughed at death and courted doom.
The piles of drugs, the nights of loss,
the laughter, the money and all the dross,
that led you to this lonely place,
this weary body, this sagging face;
the years spent longing for a rainbow sign,
the nights of lovers, the nights of wine.
And what can you do now it's come to this?
Keep hoping for the holy kiss
that might redeem your broken soul,
and make you wise, and make you whole.
You've left everything that you ever knew,
listening for trumpets that never blew.
Now life has come down to this lonely place
with mirrors of memories and that sagging face,
and no real hope that anything more
than the life you've lived remains in store.
Forget the future, it's fled at last,
your days run backwards toward the past,
until you let out a cry in the night
and accept the dying of the light.

it never occurred to him,
not even late in the light of day,
he had paid scant attention
to birds

he heard the mourning doves
and saw a black ****** of crows scavenge
for crumbs at his feet at the outdoor cafe;
a crimson cardinal caught his eye, once

but most days he looked little
to the skies, and couldn't tell a wondrous warbler
from a fine finch--vultures and eagles were the same:
carrion eaters, high flyers

this, his avian compendium complete,
save hummingbirds he recalled outside his kitchen window
as a child, when his mother would bake bread
and fill the feeder with sugar water

the buzzing birds had caught his eye, until
his mother passed; then he failed to feed the tiny flock;
where they went he did not know, for he had little
wonder where winged creatures go

Poems are
the deeds of language,
but meaning
dances in the silence
between the lines.
Listen hard.
Take up the dance.