indigo passion
rose elation
cyan desire
salmon fire
azure agony
golden happy
and finally,
some crimson zeal
(these are the ways you make me feel)

no residue of the future
don’t know what to say
the contours of words
bear enough ambiguity
mama and papa have moved
their battle inside
my anemia

a reversible memory, you
you’re not a battlefield
with poppies
the blues had just hit the road
to the city
while you were busy to be born
in the quietness of fields

this desire today
with silver teeth
shouted at me in the street:
“you belong to him”

it’s something
to have learned
how to deconstruct
the power of love
it’s a different matter
by your side
in the depths of whispers
in the cage of time

you’re not a dehydrated dream
of my unshed skin
I so elegantly raging
keep up with this desire

my life needs a soul
not to play cards
past present future
heavy in my arms
undiscernable

I am a sentimental girl &
I am afraid of you
of the darkness of sleep
of the blue annihilation
of truth

let me tremble a bit
let me taste some light today
I am round enough

I am round enough.

A poem ran away from me
To catch, I tried in vain
It was swift and fleeting
I caught but the refrain.

I struggled with it mightily
And fought the best I could,
But the poem got the best of me
As I somehow knew it would.

For I am mortally infirm
And my poems, too, are ill,
A Doctor’s bedside manner
Requires he be still.

And listen to the patient’s voice
No matter what the words
For often, dying is the choice
When one cannot be heard.

“I’m fine, I’m fine”, the patient says.
I must go back to work.
But the X-rays show a shadow
Where the lethal cancer lurks.

And all the while I sing. I sing.
I commiserate my fate.
For I showed up at the finish line
A hundred years too late.

PwL 5/15/15

Surfer Grandson Smoker
Manager Traveler Father
Daughter Cook Teacher
Mother Reader Lover
Trainer Son Painter
Volunteer Exhibitionist
Santa Claus
member of a fishermen club
tomorrow
or you name it
if you still have air

we left ourselves outside
alone with these explosive days
blind witnesses
have buried their faces
into the desert of time
the concentration of pain
remains a universal constant
the world is a helpless arena
of master plan illusions
what shall I become
or what shall be consumed of me?

and these rupture faults
body-dynamite against ego-dynamite
culture crushing nature versus
nature crushing culture
the soul famine
in the book
of unknown faces

we were all just enlivened cells once

while we feast in our blood
the discreet continuities
remain hidden
identity encapsulated
in the wave length
of supernovas egos

poetry is left with this
apparent nonsense
camomile turns into laughter
and the pride of butterflies
deserves better

this rhythm consumes us
faster than the speed of dreams
the speed of thought
the speed of forgetting
how our mothers
were never healed

to be or not to be simple
that’s a question

I need to escape
The grave weight of my shadow
It always haunts me

My name is Queen Stuurman.
Not Queen Elizabeth,
or Queen Latifah,
but simply just Queen.

I am a unique being born and raised in the roots of Africa,
my culture and roots are proof of where I'm from,
I'm not made in China.
I AM PROUDLY AFRICAN!!
A representation of my country,
its war cry resides within me,
my rainbow nation skin colour,
the many stories about my beautiful country I have yet to tell in my head.

So next time you see me,
call me Queen Stuurman
that's my Afrikaans and isiXhosa surname,
made and bred in Africa,
I am the African Queen.

Let this start,
As many doth do,
Between the fires,
Of grace and anew,
Always I wonder
Of your loving Truths

Again I am asking,
Can we live again,
After the wars hostilities and more,

I call on thee Love,
Your crying call

Of devotion and justice
A guess of the times I see into you,
The nothing of this
Is something of you