Let self-esteem make you beam.
Make thick-skin your fort.
Have Belief in every dream
And hold that Positive Thought.

Paul Butters

Dead heads stare from the wall

one can't tell if their glassy eyes
hold the relics of past life
or the sadness of having lost it
to the fires of royal pastime

tiger eyes look pathetically pleading
for re-stitching the stripes on the bones
leopard head growls only in anguish
of his spots being soft spot for target
the open jaws of the croc
can't still swallow the stuck bullet
awed eyes of deer is yet to sense
the muzzle that ruptured its innocence
the jackals, birds, langurs, civets
all frozen in the suddenness of the ***** out.

The hunter's head peeps from a dusty frame
having got his place of pride
among his game.

A little while when I am gone
My life will live in music after me,
As spun foam lifted and borne on
After the wave is lost in the full sea.

A while these nights and days will burn
In song with the bright frailty of foam,
Living in light before they turn
Back to the nothingness that is their home.

Touch me; all without using your hands, I propose.
Strip naked without removing any of your clothes.
Show me who you really are under all the deceit and lies,
and you'll see that from the ashes your true soul shall arise.

A Sonnet is a moment’s monument,—
Memorial from the Soul’s eternity
To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
Of its own arduous fulness reverent:
Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see
Its flowering crest impearled and orient.

A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
The soul,—its converse, to what Power ’tis due:—
Whether for tribute to the august appeals
Of Life, or dower in Love’s high retinue,
It serve; or, ’mid the dark wharf’s cavernous breath,
In Charon’s palm it pay the toll to Death.

I'm like a bird, I want to fly away.
Wrapped in a billowing yellow silk scarf
which shines gold in the light of day.

Perched on a tree branch, face the horizon.
Hope and sunlight glimmer reflected in
each determined eye which widens.  

Ruffled feathers are my warm, windswept hair.
I will leap into the sky, stretching high
To glide through the air if I dare.
  
Music from Cape Town, a bird's song my ears
spread their wings and feel the song's lift beneath
and sing sweet as the horizon nears.

I am a  bird and as I fly away
wrapped in my billowing yellow silk scarf
I shine gold in the light of day.

Sometimes, I take a deep breath,
And my chest crashes like waves
Onto the shore where you bathe,
Your skin speckled with sand like glitter
Or dust on a priceless antique which nobody dares to clean