5 | 31 Poems for August 2017

I’ve become well-acquainted with these streets – from University Road all the way down to Park Street.
My heart skips a beat when my words touch hearts like Alex Panttiere and that’s why these hands keep writing.
You left without saying goodbye, you could’ve at least told me why.
You easily detached yourself like there were no feelings between us.
Like I didn’t love you hard enough, soft enough or even warm enough.
For weeks on end, I began hating you for leaving me the way you did.
Yet here I am writing all these words and somehow still missing you.
I’m slowly finding my way back to myself again no matter how severe the pain.
I’ll pick myself up and finally find the strength and courage to love again.
Maybe in your quiet time at exactly the right time, I can be your true valentine.
Sometimes jacarandas fall with no intention of lighting up the streets with their purple blooms again.

Dreams are made of chocolate huts
With burgundy windows, cherry **** doors
Sweet icing on cream layered roofs
Almond -walnut -caramel floors

Dreams are made of iris and jasmine 
Jacarandas lined in purple rows
Tree blossoms in clustered cobs
Petals that dance like a ballerina's toes

Dreams are made of fern green forests
Oakwood trees  that cast a spell 
A  gossamer web of magic and charm
The music of clinking coins in a wishing well

Dreams are made of cerulean skies
Contrails of clouds in ivory snow
Violet mystic misty mountains
A  tangerine orb riding a rainbow

Dreams are made of romance laced nights
A golden peach vanilla moon
Venus lighting, igniting,love's fire
The silhouette  of love in rain soaked June

Dreams are made of turquoise seas
Calm waters stroked by gentle waves
Or enticed by the charm of a midsummer night
Waters that heavenly Cynthia craves

Dreams are made of silk and satin
Dappled with reds, greens and blues
But the dreams that I love to dream the most
Are all the dreams made of you

1976:
black boy, black boy,
we shot you --
nothing left
in your small, shiny black shoes;
your tidy school uniform

2013:
white boy, white boy,
we will not shoot you --
nothing right
in your big, broken black shoes;
your untidy school-form --

instead, we will not teach you

white boy, we will not teach you:
English is for black schools --

Madiba, Madiba:
the jacarandas of Pretoria are dying;
the mimosas in the bushveld
have taken the Acacia tree's name
and beneath the soil,
the roots of South Africa are still
growing, exactly the same?

Along the far wall
beneath the outstretched
limbs of jacarandas
I see him walking
each morning at
his constant time
even when the sun still
half asleep hides behind
overburdened clouds

Sometimes he
waves and
sometimes he
smiles but
mostly he just
walks on looking
down the road to
where I wonder

And I only
watch him briefly
now and again
on days when
I am able and
on days when
I am not I know
that he is there

Until the day when
I look out and see
that he has reached
his destination traced
by constant footsteps
beneath the outstretched
limbs of jacarandas
along the far wall

Te he comparado con un golpe de suerte porque llegas sin avisar y eres una bonita casualidad; con la goma de mascar en un salón de clase porque te mantengo en secreto y te quiero en silencio. He llamado a tus manos una cornisa porque me aferro a ellas para no caer al acantilado; a tus labios les he dicho océano porque me provocas unas ganas inmensas de ahogarme.

Te llamo arte porque aún no te conozco del todo y cuando creo conocerte te encuentro más gamas de colores, porque siempre tendrás algo nuevo que enseñarme.  Voy a empezar a decir que eres mi mar muerto porque evitas que me ahogue y sé que nunca me hundiré cuando estoy contigo.

He hablado del color de tus ojos refiriendo al color de la tierra donde quiero echar raíces y yo ya he comparado al amor con las jacarandas porque haces que todos mis cimientos se estremezcan y que mi primavera quiera pintarse de colores bonitos. Soy alérgica a las flores pero podría aguantar este jardín tan bonito que estás haciendo crecer en mis pulmones y todas estas mariposas caníbales que me revolotean en el estomago.

Terminaré por compararte con la ciencia ficción y con la magia porque aún no me puedo creer que seas real; y sí, la magia existe, pero tú no puedes verla porque nunca te has visto los ojos brillar cuando hablas de algo que te gusta, ni reír a carcajadas hasta que sólo quede silencio y lagrimas de alegría en tus mejillas.

Me estoy proclamando funambulista porque estoy haciendo equilibrio en tus cuerdas vocales y en tu mirada que siempre tiende al infinito, pero ya no tengo miedo de caer porque me has enseñado que tengo unas alas muy grandes.

Verte es como desayunar jugo de naranja, la mejor forma de empezar el día, un agridulce "Te quiero". Eres esa cucharada de más en el café que nadie se atreve a pedir, pero que espera recibir. Eres esa canción que nunca salto en aleatorio y tengo que escuchar dos veces porque la primera no podía parar de sonreír. Eres la piedra más bonita con la que quise tropezar.

No sé si tengo una arritmia en el corazón o sólo es que ahora es más locomotora y menos órgano, corazón coraza, corazón correcaminos... Ojalá tú sepas escucharlo porque cuando estás cerca me grita en los oídos pero no es mi idioma, es el tuyo.

Ojalá ahora puedan entender que cuando hablo de ti hablo de esa mañana de sábado cuando puedes respirar y dejar la mente en blanco durante el desayuno; de esa canción de La Habitación Roja que suena cuando voy camino a casa y el trafico me hace pensar que estoy en el mundo ideal. Hablo de los días lluviosos y grises, de los libros de poesía, de los lapices de colores.

Ojalá algún día me entiendan que cuando hablo de ti sólo quiero hablar de ti y de lo bonito que es que te saquen una sonrisa cuando lo único que quieres hacer es llorar.

Do not abandon me,
No do not leave me,
To the wilderness of my mind:
A veritable tundra, a savannah,
Cold and dry and arid.
My soul pants and thirsts for a cool tall drink of somebody.
Give me a man,
Tall, strong, beautiful,
Let him hold me in his arms and croon to me
and sing of star-song and moon dreams
under the blanket of a velvet night.
Let the warm winds come with the salty whisper of sea,
of jungle-scent and overblown jacaranda flowers,
or snatches of arctic breeze
and the high keening cry of the albatross.
Only,
Do not leave me to myself,
For the scent of jungle then fades to mud,
and the jacarandas wilt,
and the arctic spaces chill me to my bones,
And I drown in the unfathomable darkness of emotion
In the lullaby-rocking motion of the sea.
And I cannot see you,
And I cannot find you,
And the night becomes a terrible blackness
And the stars intimidate
And the moon remains impassive.
No, do not abandon me.

The godless set fire to the redwoods
before marching us to the hills.

Black birds wake on jacarandas
without wings.

Their caws raise Lazarus once again.
A young girl's skin wrinkles into birch,

and suddenly trees surround me.
The eyes in the bark

denounce my flesh and limbs.
The mulch tries to swallow my feet,

but my wings lift me.
I'm dancing among fiery ashes

above the boulevards of igneous rock.
Particles of light halt into white heat,

cleansing me of flesh.
All that is left is spirit,

quiet and unknowing,
lost in whatever's between the stars.

♪♫♫♪♫

running fluid, flowing
like love, like life, like blood, like knowing
the living waters from the  throne of God –
it starts slow and it builds
equatorial storms, tropical sadness
as the guitars take you home
in reverberations of eternity
through endless repetitions of longing
through palm-branched alleys and red-dirt gullies
breeze caressing guavas and passion-fruit
past dictators’ mansions
past rusting shantytowns
over ditches running with sewage
into colors too intense to bear
colors to make you cry:
greens unseen in cold climates,
red earth, flowering jacarandas
women walking wrapped in rainbows
huge baskets on their heads
in the blare of traffic
in the madness of African cities
through the Congolese night that calls your name
and the smell of poor people’s food over cook fires
carried on the musical breeze
children smile and beggars crawl in the dust of the street
obscure wars are fought,  false peace proclaimed
while the bones are exhumed
as the Congo jazz rolls on, flows on
like silver sorrow dancing gold in the heart of darkness
past liter bottles of beer sweating cold
on the bar table by the flower’s starkness
lighting up the midday – when those horns come in
on the boat from Cuba, by way of Bruxelles and Paris
blaring triumphant and strong
like a shipment of diamonds and uranium
glittering in the drunken afternoon of a song with no end.