I identify with a book on the wooden shelf collecting dust
In an unoccupied study with immaculate furniture
No dog ears, coffee stains or marks
No one has ever read it
Or dared to browse through the pages
They walk past it

It's content is filled with haphazard revelations of the self
With splatterings of philosophy and *******
The more you read
It gets darker
An absence of transparency
An enigma grows
No one will ever know
It remains closed

Like a deceptacon
Visually appealing from afar but as they walk towards it something repels them

Though heartbreaking
A fine read it is
No ending written
The author is still evolving
Faultering and changing the conclusion as she treads the treacherous terrain of life.

Sometimes

Clutching the guts of life
Burning an effigy of former selves
All this raw fervour pulsating
Through and through
To want the blood dark
The alchemy of madness

Sometimes

Delicate, illuminating
Neither gentleness nor fragility
But grace
The unruffled color of pearl
How are you both these women?

You traverse this world
In search of the one
Who might be your redeemer
The bringer of light and calm
There is no enduring refuge in others
You have to start your own fires

After all is said and done
And the inspirational excerpts
Have been read and absorbed
The cognitive dissonance seeked
The cheap thrills and the sharp edges
The exploits to distances
Far from home
Nothing can save you from yourself Except you.

Athirst for stillness
Is my turbulent heart
Swathed in ice.

He is pain
He is light and love
Cocooned in his sublime presence
Hazel eyes that glimmer in daylight
I feel as though I'm to depart from this life
He possesses tenderness
in the way he moves and talks
A delicate man
He is pain
He is mine.

The fatal revolting emotion called feelings
That insert and lodge themselves into your unsuspecting heart  
Which if left to fester will turn acidic and devour you from the inside out
Bury thoughts of an unreciprocated or lost love lest they bury you.

Deleted poem

Halation stretched
As the sun melted into bone
The sound of waves
Murmuring in the distance
Where like whispers
Falling on ears eager
For reassurance
Soothing, forgiving
Mending the very fabric of existence
Once shredded
Beyond repair

Mother nature had just
Birthed Spring
Along with the rudiments
Of designing a new
Dawn

Hey staan stil vir een sekonde. Mamma kyk na my wonde
Dis nie wonde nie my kind
Jy mag dalk net so **** maar
Baie meer het al baie meer verloor
As ek haar meer kon mis.
Het ek gedisintegreer.

Hey, stand still for a second
Mom looks at my wounds
It's doesn't hurt my child
You may just think so
Many more have lost much more
If I could miss her more

Did I disintegrate.

Sinking in this shred of light
Intentions laid bare
Dragging the tremble of a jilted lover
I remain vaguely haunted
All I have ever embraced slips from my quivering hands
It's the obvious approach
This matyring
These are the bones I am made of  
Incessant heart's roar
The violence it wrecks on the senses

Long stretches of weary silence
Laboured sighs
Devoid of concrete
Lost among the stray remarks
Certitude becomes magic
Feigned ambivalence
My desires tucked behind my teeth.

As the dark shadows chant sacrificial hymns
Unfazed, a psychotic smile planted on my face
I drink from the cup of death
Cold steel claws rip out my innards and my soul

Yours, just one more for the fire.

I stopped writing about love
When I realised  
I am incapable of
Discerning between people who love me
And people who lie to me.

Tonight I felt this wave of contentment hit me

Though fleeting
It uplifted my spirits

Offered momentanous     restoration of hope that remains wedged at bottom of this skeptical heart

I inhaled
It felt as though
I was breathing in sulphur
I exhaled and ached
Forever

I pondered the elusiveness of hope
How what remains of it
Flickers and fades
Always
I witnessed the castle
I built in the air disintegrate
Into a million particles of matter
Dreams do turn into dust

Swirling in a vortex
Of hopelessness and discontent
I cannot free myself from
In the centre of something mightier than who or what
I could ever be in any lifetime
I questioned the incomprehensible nature of life
And how I lost reason
In my feverish chase for excellence

I reached the finish line
Of an arduous journey
The applaud ceased
Eventually
Then everything
Was riddled with silence
I wept.

Wilting:

October roared in
With a cold embrace
It burned inside of me
The leaves decayed
Earth sank to grief
I could feel the sound of death
Humming in my bones.

Rooting and blooming:

March sashayed in
with a gentle breeze
These flowers
of my becoming
Blooming, blousy
Unrestrained
Bending in time
Towards the sun.

The apathy that which she harbours has rubbed off on me
And we are bleeding into each other.

When it falls apart it does not fall into pieces it turns into dust
And I am left with nothing to hold on to..
Nothing to re-assemble

I've grown weary of starting again, what's the point?
Nothing ever changes.
My mindset never changes

This chronic stagnation is more than I can bear.
Haunted by ghosts of irrational thoughts and emotions

I am standing in my own way.

Everything is leaking from the cracks of this sick foundation.
I've failed to contain my so called life..
I get back up and land on my knees and not on my feet.

Begging for the beast in me to set me free.

I am afraid of the way need
Grasps my very bones
I cannot contain this emergency
Screeching through the fissures of burgeoning intent
These irretrievables
Release and tighten
The elusive alchemy of balance
The havoc it wrecks on the senses
All these feet can do
Is chase the wind
Frail hand's outstretch
In the static of melancholy

Leave that beer crack open my skull instead
And save the turkey carve me instead.

It shrieks in conditioned iteration
Then it turns inwards on itself
Satiated from absurdity
Fervour absconds
The faculties
I am done chasing ghosts

It went dark
Without warning
I blurred at the edges
From violet to blue to indigo
And black
It settled in modicum of
Sanity
And in it's place
There it was
Settling in my bone
This emergency
This terror
I descended along with it
Feel it now I said, be done with it
And be free
Grief flying away from your
Body
I am almost free, I think
Until the cold grip of a nightmare
Takes hold
Then there's blood everywhere
And this hint of madness
Lulling me into senselessness
I blur at the edges
From violet to indigo to black
These revolving doors of remembrance
Entraps
Somethings can never be escaped.

Mortality
is
such
a bore.

I haven't really laughed since 2009
He said,
He then divulged his struggles
As did I
We spoke of the mutual regret about not keeping in touch
But with conflicting schedules, relocations and studies
It is comprehensible we veered in opposite directions and lost contact

My estranged bestfriend

We reminiscenced about the time when we were school kids
In stiff shirts, massive floppy hats
And giant blazers we practically drowned in
How eager we were to go home
When the siren went off at 3:05pm
The shanenigans at the pavilion
In sixth form
When we were the lords of the academy

A strong grip on my giant mug as if it were the holy grail
Huddled in the corner of a cozy eatery

In his company once again
it felt as though I had arrived home where fire burns incessantly in the fire place
On a winter's night

We laughed about my truancy
And how he got kicked out of the rugby team on account of his rather lanky physique
He imitated our biology teacher and tears flowed down my cheeks
That kind of laughter
You feel in your core
And your whole body shakes

So captivated by the various discussions
We both forgot to sip on our steaming beverages

He narrated a few short stories about the events
that have taken place since we last conversed
I in turn narrated mine or lack thereof
He emphatically tilted his head to the side
God, I had missed those gestures of his
It all came flooding back
His mannerisms
The way he moves his hands when he speaks  as if he is trying to literally hold the conversation

For what seemed like a lifetime
Before saying goodbye
Dead-eyed
We stared into each other's eyes
Almost as if to telepathically say
Do you remember the time
When we were so alive.

I am afraid
Of what I'll become
When the darkness departs
If it stays
I am afraid
Whom it is
I'll run towards

River and the sea
Awash in brume
Transient collides with  perpetual longing
Pebble in a pond
Drowned out melodies
Devotion silently seeping
Into the dust
Endings and crooked vantage points
Anchor me to Forevermore.

She failed to hang onto that tiny remnant of herself

She hung on by her finger nails but it was all in vain

Her soul was never vibrant but it was still alive… only just

Now it’s shrivel and cold

Her ambitions faded in all their glory

The more she held on to them … the more they slipped farther away from her

She got weary of waking up every morning to see nothing had changed

She crossed her fingers for luck… she crossed them tight

She was falling behind

It hurt for her to breathe… the air was too thick

She was suffocating

She wanted more… she wanted everything… she wanted it all

She was fading into nothing

She never realised that she was not fading not even slightly

It was the light than shone upon her

That gigantic spark of hope and possibility

The peculiar
Transient  state of feeling
Visits at night
Under darkened skies
Tucked in the Velveret air’s
Warm embrace
Only then do I have
The audacity
To wrench away
All of my inhibitions

The dreaded daylight comes
Ever so swiftly
In it’s presence
I still choke
On the almost
Cowering in limbo
Waiting for salvation
Have mercy on me,
Give me the night.

I am sorry,
I could not catch
your breath before
your soul departed
from your body
Had I succeeded in doing so
These burning hauntings
Would not be embedded
In my fragile pyche
Perhaps your ascent
Would have been
More ethereal
Less troubled
Peaceful
I am sorry
I couldn't do that one thing
for you.

I can't function as a normal person and I don't know how or when that happened
I am fueled by nothing
It's a miracle I am still breathing
This was never my intention
I did not sign up for this, like everybody else

I feel a part of myself morphing into  that person I never thought I would ever be and now I can't even recognize who I actually am
I am afraid to face myself... face my reality
How much more of myself will I shed before I become someone else completely
Or maybe I'm shedding it all to become what is authentically me
However it is, I just want to feel comfortable in this skin that's apparently, mine.

I am afraid of ambitions becoming a memory
Time is moving fast... Much faster these days
I am scratching away relentlessly from sheer impatience
Waiting for that opportunity to reveal itself.