don't bother me
i am looking for Teej
in the pile of bitter dandelions i imprisoned
that she was so
fond of  
maybe she
is hiding there

Life can be painless
Provided there is sufficient
Peacefulness

For a dozen or so rituals
To be repeated simply
Endlessly

Your genius does not fail you
It allows you to understand the
Truth of the situation;
Which makes you--at times--
more tragic than ever

And your genius,
like all geniuses
Suffers periodic fits
of monumental
naïveté
Hi-**

Listen:
Where is Grace
When milk and blood
Are about to be added
To the composition of the
Stinking ping-pong
***** being manufactured
In Grand Rapids?

Schizophrenia
The sound and appearance
Of the word fascinates

It sounds and looks to me
Like a human being
Sneezing in a blizzard of
Soapflakes

This much we know:
You made yourself hideously
Uncomfortable by not narrowing
Your attention to details
Of life that were immediately
Important

And by refusing to believe what
Your neighbors believed
Hi-**

Let your imagination continue
To be the flywheel on the
Ramshackle machinery of the truth.

But not the ‘awful’ truth

The ‘beauty’ in truth

Because we are a part
Of a system that is very
Restless,
With people tearing around
All the time

Every so often,
somebody stops to put up
A monument

Ours is a country where
Everybody is expected to
Pay his own bills for
Everything,
And one of the most
Expensive things a person
Can do is get sick

Grace:
Because if we stay here
We’ll do one of two things
(or both!)

Build a Commune

Or do like Collin Heise did:
Make the main thing that we
do be this:
Move seventy-eight
Thousand pounds of olives
To Tulsa, Oklahoma

Even if we can’t
Improve the quality of our surroundings
We’ll do our best to make our
Insides beautiful instead

Piebald Roadtrip-writing, baby
Hi-**

You are the turtle
able to live anywhere
even under water for short periods

With your home on your back

A particular comfort in
Realizing that it so often feels
There is no order in the
World around us

That we must adapt ourselves to
The requirements of
Chaos instead

Remember:
We are healthy
Only to the extent that
Our ideas are
Humane

To you
To me
To ourselves
To We

I've read the words
left unwritten
between the lines
bye bye crocodile

You touched so many
with your words
and your smile
bye bye crocodile

You've seen so much more
than many in this life
bye bye crocodile

Born of two minds
balance is the key
reading your thoughts
but never feeling your pain

Felt the emotions
as days turned to nights
victories no matter the size
still extract a price

Wish I'd had the chance
to spend a little time
sometimes there's more in life
than meets the eye

I hope you've found the peace
you needed in your life
I'll be missing your words
while writing this I cry

bye bye crocodile

soft blonde curls around you
like a halo
warmest smiles one could ever know
from the heart


You said in your elephant grass poem
“peace is less than me
and more than you
but we are almost free”

I find it hard to accept
such bright light snuffed out
so soon

May your light shine on
Sweet Masikani
Teej-light is sorely missed here



will see you
in the stars one day*



S T, 26 July 2013

Teej.

God owes us an apology for this one.
It is a failure of the world.
If there was too much
hurt in the dark corners where
you were cupping your palms,
trying to light matches, then
there is too much hurt.

Jellyfish Baby, we could see
through your pinkwhite skin
to all the bleeding pieces but
not stop the suffering.
So you sliced a hole in the skin of the world
and leaked out. All the brightness of you
spilled like a slurpee on the sidewalk,
dropped by careless hands.
We should've been more careful with you.

We should've built warmer nests
in which to cradle your tender heart.
We should've whispered in your ears as you slept
that 'home' is not a place
in the sky but people around a table
and dinner plates for everyone
and no one going hungry
or alone.

It is a failure of the world.
There is
too
much
hurt.
And there are still dark corners but
we have
no matches.

i am thoroughly convinced
that the people who hurt the most
are the ones the devil is the most scared of.
and that though lights are bright
they are useless without
the contrasting dark...
Teej,
the world will miss your
influence
your poetry healed desert-hearts
i know it did mine.
you were like
a piece of africa-smile.