Rising sun reflects
beaming straight into my eyes
sunglasses missing

The Inferno devours the infant,
Blaze towering the callousness,
The envelope of Innocence innate within,
Collapses under the Wrath of Hell.


The Son of the Divines fails to rise,
Wobbly and tiny are his limbs,
All alone in the cruel world,
His snivels muffled, by the Hands beneath.


Years into the Netherworld,
The Phoenix reduced to gruesome ashes,
Screaming scars donning the lad,
Made him stronger in spite the cracks.


It was time for the Sun to burn again,
For the ten steps of Hell would be torn apart,
The Bloom of the Phoenix from the ashes burnt,
Would quench the Blaze and obliterate the lust.


And so did the Phoenix rise,
Darker than Satan, yet brighter than The Light.
Breaking hell loose on Hell itself,
Wrecking the cages of the Living Dead.


He spread his wings, embraced the warmth
Born of The Light, raised by The Dark
But as time passed, people forgot,
The Legend of The Dark Phoenix.

How can you remember anything
when you’ve turned off your mind
How can you experience anything
when your heart is silenced?

How can you know who you are
when you’re a people pleaser
Smiling fasley
Averting your eyes to conceal your truth deep within

My words pour through me like clashing symbols
Desperately trying to make a statement
Seeking to grab my attention
But I’m elsewhere
I’m never here
Sometimes I subsist in reveries,
But mostly I suffer through nightmares
with eyes wide open

There is a sickness growing silently within me
But I’m not here to tend to it
I sometimes peel back my armor
and re-enter my body
when I’m with another person
whom I believe might be able to receive me fully,
Someone who could possibly see me and love me
But I’m left stranded
After courageously revealing my tender soul
I guess they were simply too blind to see
My pure, childlike beauty
So I stuff my real self down again,
Down underneath my false representative
Below the surface of my fake identity
Is the only place my real self will ever belong

But I can’t accept that,
It’s not my truth
Maybe social conditioning
tells me I must follow the rules
to fit in
But I don’t want to fit in anymore

I feel something rising within me,
Something latent that I’ve dismissed within me for so long
It is my battlecry,
It is my truest song
I just won’t allow fear to hold me back anymore
I’ve got this one life,
And what is it for?
I may have hit countless rock bottoms
But I’ll always rise,
For with every time I rise
I become stronger,
And wiser
And kinder,
Softer, more weathered
But humbled
With every instance my heart was cracked
It opened
Wider and wider

So you see,
I can’t be what you need me to be
I can’t go back to who I used to be
I must answer to this new life beckoning me
I must rise once again
To invite this process of becoming everything I am meant to be.

The quiet hours stack like parts of blocks in "Tetris."
The one they took less "seriously" as the "dying Joker"
Has a powerful and energetic heart
What it has shared was out of beauty and loving creation...
Every time he stood back up to start creating "Interruption"
His fists are clenched with rage and anger
The "Chernobyl" ready for it's "Fatal Nuclear Eruption."
Right at the most inconvenient of moments..
"I want this and you are not getting that"
"You are spoiled and without a conscious"
That's not it..
"Where are you at?"
If a question is asked to the days interrupted
You get the punishment and are forced to fore fill to their "fall"
as they wish for their "rules to be iron clad"
Not based upon Rational "Movement"
Universal "treatment" scars rather than heals..
and you are the Joker "rising" who they refuse to listen to or fail to see that he does "Feel"
Trying to be "real"
He returns to this moment of thought and quiet
where he yet "fights onward" for what he knows is truly what he needs
"can these people meet you half way"
before forcing you into their music
like a broken reed
on a wind piper
can't this world see that this is far from what is right..
it's too far down "wrong"
I cannot say
For I've been silenced
I laugh to myself in my silence
waiting for their next movement to force...me to have to become more insane and fight
all due to to their "beliefs" and "works" in which they force in "vain?"
I know..it's insane.
As I put this pen down.."At least my voice is the stain..."
Maybe another face will come along
that will walk with me instead of in front
and we both can live with each other
"in equal confidence?"

The black southeaster peaks
Mothers rain down on dead kids
Criminality and gangsterism rule
In this crack infested cesspool
Blood moon's rising on the Cape flats
The tide must turn or the place
Will burn

your mother told you fairytales
but she didn't tell you this:

when the suns sets and the wolves run
you will find that sometimes
the princess and the witch are one
and red riding hood will eat the wolf

there is a fire in your blood
a forest building in your veins
don't try to lose the moonlight
you were meant for this

between dawn and dusk
you were made for miracles
and you can run all you want
but in the light of the day
the wolves will always call you back

I have written poems about rising.
It’s a good subject for poets.
Isn’t a poem itself a rising?
We spend much time revising
what we write and what we do.

There are so many good words ending in izing.
I could write a whole poem
using words symbolizing
so much of life -
it’s absolutely tantalizing.

I watch and read about all the polarizing.
It is a cool oasis lingering here
synchronizing
my words with my feelings and thoughts
realizing the heart of who I really am
comprising ways of saying my truth
without moralizing.

At times it is agonizing -
all this analyzing
how I belong and how I don’t
if I’ll join others or if I won’t.

I look at that guy Jesus
and how so many obsess
about his blood and sacrifice
all the while not recognizing
it’s not so much about our sins
and his need to atone as it is
about the good he did
who he sat with and loved,
the seeds he sowed
who he stopped to touch
on the side of the road.

I find obsessions with power
really unappetizing.
I’d rather spend my time rising
from darkness into light
or embracing my sadness, exercising
and emphasizing what is energizing.  
When I do that, it is quite surprising
how creative my muse is helping ME
to also rise.