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 Nov 2017 Tshepo Ngobeni
Limpho
I love how our souls connect
I love how we are mirrors of each other, how I see myself in you and you in me
How my thoughts become yours and yours mine
How we make sense in this whirlwind of chaos

I love how I can communicate with you via a look
How you hear my silent screams.
How you are not fooled by this facade, how you know there's more beyond the glistening tears in my eyes.
 Nov 2017 Tshepo Ngobeni
BR
This is not a beautiful story.
This is about you and me.
This is about two common thieves who could never see the forest for the trees,
and every word we breathed to one another in the spaces in between,
choosing to believe that we were anything but sinking vessels,
rending holes in the other’s heart-
this is about you and me in the dark,
sinking to the bottom of the sea.

See, this is not a beautiful story.

But the narrative you crafted was of two lovers in a romance, and you said that it was best that we keep it in the darkness, under the ironic promise that it was in the name of honesty to be fostered between us-
I suppose I wanted to believe it.

I was yours, and you were my secret.

But no heart ever knew a secret that didn’t grieve it, and it grieves me to think of unveiling my beauty meant for another man beneath the wandering of your hands,
and you said you didn’t understand why there were tears in my eyes.

Well neither did I,
but it still keeps me awake at night.

And I didn’t know it, but every time we parted you went home to finish what we started

alone in the dark with your computer screen.

This is not a beautiful story.

You used to say that we were more than the chemicals responding in our bodies,
like what we had was more than lonesome, broken misery masquerading as intimacy,

but it wasn’t.

You just needed a warm body
and I needed to be enough for somebody
we could never alleviate the pain we were trying to escape,
and If I could see you today, I would tell you that I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.
I smoke **** just like you.
Money gives me greed just like you.
******* makes me wonder just like you.
My parents kicked me out when i was 17 just like you.
I died inside when i turned 13 just like you.
I saw life for what it was a 7 just like you.
I want to die everyday just like you.
I think about killing myself just ljke you.
I don't like money just like you.
I love the moon just like you.
I love the idea of love just like you.
Most important im not alone, just like you.
For everyone younger than my 23 years that's ready to go i feel your pain.
Happiness is lived in snatches
It dares you to steal a bite of hope
It pushes you to relish it.
And by the time you swallow
It will vanish.
I'm not pretty

Not like the other girls
I'm not pretty, not in this world

I'm not beautiful*

While my friends exude this aura of supermodels
I'm stuck, cursing myself for not being invisible

I'm not pretty

While my friends sit around the table
Sharing, yet again, their *** escapades and those fables
I realize that not one single guy has taken interest in me
I know I shouldn't live life with this attitude, with this constant self-loathing
But it isn't just a sudden thought
It's in the pit of my stomach, like a knot
It's the foundation to all of my buried epiphanies
It's the root to all of my deepest insecurities

I'm not pretty

And I don't know if I'm meant to be
comes a time to turn   to put the feet of the heart
forward    step at a time   each foot shod in time lessness
and space lessness

comes a space to hold    to place the hands of the soul
around    the body’s tabernacle    each hand soothed and
soothing

comes a view to see    to cast the eyes of the being
beyond    the mind’s walls    built by No without
Know ingness

comes a time to cluster these     in courage and trust
to move away    from the air lessness of shallow being
Toward

to step off the craig    onto Love



c. 2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater
I want to feel
feel so deeply
until I feel so full
I want to run
run so fast
until I cannot feel
as long as it makes me whole.
I just want to feel whole
I just want to scream life
I just want the emptiness
for once in my life
TO LEAVE ME ALONE.
 Oct 2017 Tshepo Ngobeni
mi
The best poems are all about
loss and pain and suffering.
It feels more natural to write a poem
about a long lost memory,
Or a love that never worked.

Poets aren't allowed to be happy.
They’d run out of material to write about.

The words
content and happy
in the same sentence as the word
I'm,
feels like your tongue
never sitting right in your mouth,
like teeth getting in the way
when making out
like an itchy throat,
not going away even after coughing a fit.

The phrases
You are and my boyfriend
can't be a real sentence
like how
unicorns and fairytales
don't exist.
They just feel like
two jigsaw pieces
from different parts of the puzzle
forced to sit beside each other.

The word love
just doesn’t resonate
with the beat of my heart.
Maybe because
my heart stopped beating
a long time ago
and my brain had to carry the workload
so I think twice as much as I should
synonyms?
I overthink.

I may be the only poet
who doesn’t want to be happy;
a ******* clinging to heartbreak,
and loss and pain and suffering.
because it’s easier to let heartbreak
wrap myself in its familiar arms
than to experience an adventure
with happiness wrapped in mine.
i don't know how to love

-d.j.
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