Brittle fulcrums

The year is 2020, and i’m beginning to believe i was born asleep and I'm still caught up in my slumber, or haven't quite had the day dream where your name is the answer to all my questions about the universe. I've seen much of the world. Its joys and its cruelty. I'm scared to live now, everything I touch breaks and every move I make turns into a catastrophe. I've asked for forgiveness from those I've wronged, but words are just words, they can never undo the damage. You're somewhere in the world living your life, and looking back to this moment I'm sure you would've never thought that miracles do come true. By all means, conquer the world, and when you're done you'll find me in the woods and tell me all about your travels while we sit around a bonfire. I'll be writing books and teaching my kids how to unlearn all these social ills. The pain that people carry in their eyes and the Colgate smile on their faces confuse me,  so I need to get away. I don't know why people always try to hide their sadness when in reality they fall apart as soon as the crowd clears the room. I've learned that love is beautiful, but also love is a muscle you need to build from inside. That while some relations never make it till the end, the love remains, and that while some relationships survive the test of the time, the love dies along the way, in the end all that's left is tolerance and duty. People love you you know, but you'll never know this if you don't love yourself first. Sometimes I feel like explaining how it is being in love is a lot like making the sound people make when they're explaining to the mechanic what's wrong with their car. We walk around with price tags on our heads, moving from one relation to the next looking to wear others down in order to fill the void in our hearts. I see a lot of messages about how "love lives here", but you'll be shocked to know how much love leaves here on a daily basis and we never get to know about the ugly parts because we never want people to know when our lives are falling apart. The lies we buy, hoping that the truth might come on sale. I know this is weird but I use my left hand to *******, because, someone in my teenage years told me that using the left hand makes it feel like someone else is doing it. My hands hurt, not from *******, no; but from the things I hold on to when I shouldn't, and things I let go when I should be clutching . My knuckles are bleeding. I've knocked on some doors for far too long, I even set up camp outside, like my fellow Africans outside home affairs in search of identity. Like my homeless friend Baldwin who made a home of the pavement outside the convenient store. One day we spoke about life and death and I realised how much knowledge can be attained where others see despair. My shoulders hurt, cos lately I feel like I've been carrying my people's ignorance for far too long. This Valentine's day I wanna wear a costume that looks like you when you still loved and valued yourself and show up on your door step.  I wanna tell you how I never used to take much notice of abandoned buildings until I became aware just how much I resemble one. The only apology I want from you is an explanation of why some women would want a bouquet of roses on valentine's day when they can have bottles of rosé instead. I think the only reason I love the history of Vikings besides the character of Ragnar Lothbrock is the fact that the men were equally bold when it comes to expressing and sharing their love openly and when it comes to taking a life; which oddly reminded me of my obsession with swing sets when I was just a young boy. My head aches, I think life has been knocking some sense into me and sometimes I'm not sure if it registers. And to the people who've ever pushed me away, I wonder if you used your left hand so it would feel like someone else did it. I know global warming is real but my life feels like it's been snowing forever. I am cold and fatigued. The kind of tired that cannot be fixed by sleep. Albeit I've survived much of winter's doldrums, my heart still rests on brittle falcrums.

W.M. Zimbiri

While you were sleeping

The miles we've walked are far greater, harder than this trivial trial we face
But somehow we're down on our knees.
You see, I don't believe in a God that demands his subjects to kneel before him
Perhaps that makes me a non conformist
But I never did take pride in anything except being an artist, dissolving what remains of me into my craft

I saw a stranger yesterday
The homeless man who made the street pavement next to the convenient store his home
He smiled at me, and from a spasmodic reaction, I smiled back and waved at him like I would an acquaintance close enough to greet but further to stop and engage in small talk
He didn't have lines on his face, it's as if he doesn't frown, but laughs and smiled just enough
To dilute the benign darkness in his soul.
It occurred to me that at that moment he could've been as free as a bird
Here I am, surrounded by all these walls
And yet I feel so far from home

Melancholy poisons us all
Don't ask me to heal, as if you don't have scars from going against the odds
The other day you were talking about death, and I got reminded of how we were never quite the same after my car accident on your birthday
You suffered my scars with me
But every jab reality threw
The truth cut deeper;
That perhaps this whole time I was the cinder block that hugged your ankle tight
Down to the fathomless depths of an unfinished novel about fate

It's hard for me not to see the future when you're so ferociously in love with me
But we poets know how to stroke forever and dance on the edge of destruction
Sometimes i think we're tangled up in the lines we drew between us and I don't know how to set us free

Laughter does not visit us often as of late
Tears are starting to leave a permanent trail on your tender cheeks
But you know only pain replenishes my sinking ship, with tanks half full of empty hope and temperament I can only dream of, and I shall use it all to drive us forward

I wrote beautiful things about your eyes earlier today, like how they ooze light,
nonchalance and sadness at the same time.
Like how even after having lost one, I can still see our unborn children when I look into your eyes.
Sometimes your eyes make me think of how life is so much like a race,
to nowhere
And I'd rather be stuck in this moment with you
Now...here

I love you now and I'll still love you when you wake up many years from now
With snow on your hair and fog in your eyes and contours on your face
My mind is a forest of mischief and you were the little innocent girl playing with matches and now I burn ceaselessly just to keep you warm
my heart is a lone island of beautiful and endless discoveries and you're the explorer who landed on my shores
But no matter how dark, or how bright my reckoning; my adventures
The one constant thing, is you

I'm not the guy you're looking for
If financial stability and security
is what you seek
I have a lot of past errors to rectify,
Most of them not my own
Even all the lost hopes put together won't save me from drowning

If you prefer your man cool and trendy,
I'm certainly not him
I'm weird and socially awkward
People and their need to fit
into a social mould put me off
and I'm not proud of it
but I get bored quite easily

If popularity is what you seek,
Save your energy
I'm a nobody, and I prefer it that way
I'm the guy in the background
Chasing shadows of my own truth amidst the crowd,
Find yours, maybe then I'll find you

There is beauty in bars I'm sure
Night clubs jolting with music & ecstasy
But I've learned not try my luck
in places where luck is tested
With morning headaches, blurry memories and impending regrets about last night

I will not call you every hour to check up on you, you are alive and that's good enough for me
I'm a man of few words, I like my conversations short and concise
Better yet, let's have a conversation without words

I'm not flawless
And my scars are there to prove it, sadly you can't see the ones from within
I'm nothing but a raw idea
But I believe that time is the master of all chisel work
Soon my rough edges will be smooth and life will continue being a pointless struggle to be understood

I lay here dead
hoping that a caring somebody
Finds my decaying body
In this lonely bed
Only if I could place
This passionate heart of mine
Into a warmer chest

I would channel my thoughts
Once more, into the past
Step up to the challenge
And steer my most intimate encounters
Into the a tunnel
That breathes light
Instead of the darkness I sought to emanate

I would say all the sorries I never said
The thank you's
And I wish I were more braver
To say "you're my world"
More gentle and more wiser
To say "please stay"
Even though our plans went astray

I disregarded the signs
Now my heart breaks
Everytime I hear the hymns
Sang by the birds
My haven is darkness
And my one true dream
Is always to see the break of dawn

Albeit, I dreamt of a solid ground
That's more alive than these ruins
More stern, than these sand dunes
I cry tears unseen, heartbreaks unfelt
And I wish my heart holds a steady rhythm, if only longer
Than the finest jazz tunes

Saturate me with your passion
Fulfill me with desire
Serenade me with your longing
Motivate me to devour you

But before then. . .

Strip me bare
And promise me
That through all the pain and suffering
I had to bare
You will hold dear
All the life lessons
My scars have to share

She used to be your sun by day
And your moon at night
You never ran out of light
Your happy meal at the end of a long day
She never left your side
Not even for a single day
And when the night is deep
And you're short of sight
She became your extra eye
That kept you safe like a knight

She loved you with everything
She gave you everything
And gave up everything
Including her pride and sense of being
She gave you her heart
And offered her soul
But nothing she could ever give
Was ever enough to satisfy
Your perpetually gnawing greed and empty soul

You've lost that girl
Now you have to live
With this monster you created in her
You broke her fragile heart into a million pieces
And now you must make peace
And collect those broken pieces
And forget all about the beautiful morning kisses

Now she's nothing more
Than a collection of warning signs
And all the signals
You get in a danger zone
She's all the wrong turns you've ever made
And all the U-turns you never made

You ignited a spark within her
But that wasn't enough
You added gasoline to it in open air
A bonfire without stories
That's how lonely you left her
A bonfire that turned to a bushfire
She engulfs everything in her wake in flames
And you can't even take the blame
She's gone out of control
And you can't even call a fire brigade
She's the loss to every bet you've ever made
All the coins you've ever tossed
And she's all the lines you've ever crossed
And she's going to burn you
With the fire you started within her
Such is the beauty of a Goddess

You refused to see beyond her flaws
Now you're forced to see the beauty
She created out of them
And smell the fragrance
That oozes out of her pores
With somber elegance
And a tactful nonchalance
And embrace the fact
That you're not even worth a second chance

Perhaps you'll learn to find pleasure
In the mischief that lurks
In the dark sky of her beautiful eyes
And decipher the mystery in her smirk
But until then keep on scratching the surface because her heart is cold as ice.

Whenever you fall
And someone
Takes you by the hand

Isn't that nature's way
Of collecting the crumbs
And cleaning the mess?

The mountain Is an optical illusion
What we normally see
In front of us is a world
Of insecurities from a lifetime
Of forced perspectives
And a veil of fears obscuring
Our true faith & deepest potential
And when we attempt to rise
To live up to what's alive
within us, they say it's delusion
Ugliness planted so deep in the eye
All we see is the negativity
The beauty of our dreams is beyond
Recognition because it was buried alive

The mountain is toxic words,
So many times we've been told
How useless we are
How we were born not to make it
Even the most earnest of efforts
Cannot get us to the top
We've been repeatedly told
That the kid next door
Is better than us because he washes the dishes better and mops the floor
Now your confidence and self esteem has become so bruised because you placed it by the doorway like the mat they step on before they step on the tile floor

The mountain is society
We go to school & work hard
To get good grades but to what end?
Cause sooner or later
Society wants their servants
Who must heal the sick?
They convince you to become a doctor
Who must enforce law and order?
They convince you be a lawyer
Who must educate our children?
They force you to go teach the poor
Souls what you've been taught
So that the culture of conforming
To norms is perpetuated
And society can be at "peace".

But your soul dances to poetry
This they never told you
Your soul sings flawlessly
Like birds in flight in a cloudless sky
On a beautiful summer's day
This they never told you
Instead they keep on preaching about the endless cries on judgment day
You can paint a nation of beauty
All you need to do is just grab hold of a canvass and a brush
This they never told you
All they ever taught you was self-loathing and how to be harsh
On yourself but everyone around you.

The highest mountain, is yourself
You so often want to shift the blame
Because its easier believing
That someone else contributed
To your failure, otherwise admitting the fall would be a shame
For this I don't blame you,
Nor will I shame you
You see we've been told that the worst enemy is out there
So we go through life preparing for war, and spend the rest of our lives searching for HIM, and not find HER because she lives within us
We spoil her rotten because
You cannot conquer
That which you do not understand
And by the time we open our eyes to the real fight, we've already suffered a couple of blows and knocks from life
Grey hair and arthritic limbs cannot guarantee us victory over this fierce and lethal monster that you've become towards yourself

The mountain is nowhere, that's to say NOW-HERE
We look for greatness without
When true greatness lives within
Even the earthly mountain is not as high it appears, the real milestone to be reached, is the one within
So start today and climb this great mountain
To the pinnacle of the self
The climb is strenuous
But the view up there is priceless
All else is but an illusion
The real test is here and now.

Stars lost in darkness
Their twinkle too faint
To even try and paint
Imaginary pictures
Of a haunted pasts
Buried in pain

Their twinkle too faint
To even pierce through
The veil of night
A night so fickle
The sky disowned the stars
Perhaps ashamed
To call them her own.
"How could you even claim to be children of the light, when you can't even stand up for yourselves and shine bright at night?"

They were like invisible freckles
On her face, and they added to
Her wrinkles, the sky thought to herself,
When all she needed were crescent hickies
Delivered by the soft kisses
Of the crimson half moon
"Ungrateful little stars! I give them a home and in return they mock my glow."

The furious sky did not know
That those stars were shining,
Secretly still but they shone nonetheless
Perhaps the most beautiful stars
In all the galaxies
Brilliant in the own unfamiliar glow
But they needed attention
They weren't there for competition
For they understood that each star
Holds a peculiar uniqueness about it

They wanted to be gazed at,
Hours upon hours
Perhaps by a young couple
Helplessly in love with one another
Tracing the route to their unforeseen
But well anticipated future
In a world full of lovers
But with only a few
That make it through
To the finish line

They wanted be gazed at,
perhaps by a lone stranger
tracking a path to a long lost home
To hands that grew cold
waiting to hold him
And yearning to be held by his
Yet now he knew more than ever
That it was due time to get back home

Those special stars
Just like the most scared
Amongst us, longed for attention
A special kind of affection
One that doesn't care if the next star
Shines brighter or bolder
One that understood enough
To stay because affection heals
All our scars.

You said my fears were irrational
But how do you deem irrational
That which a person whom
Is deeply in love with you
Deems rational,
How do you deem
My fear of losing you
Irrational?

Look at us now
The mess we've become
We've become such a wreck
A train wreck,
That even the finest form of grafitti
Cannot modify

How do you live with yourself
Knowing that you're the one
Who sinked our love boat
Now we're just another superstructure
Consumed whole,
By the unfathomable depth
Of the endless sea,
From the brutal storms of life
We didn't foresee
We cried of pain from heart fracture
Is it love that you lacked
Or was your sense of reasoning somewhat hacked?

How do you sleep, knowing that
You're the one who ripped apart
The delicate petals
To this precious rose of ours
Perhaps you won't make it
To be in the running,
In the Oscars
For the best actor award
But you do at least, deserve a few medals
Like the paraplegic athlete Oscar
For the best disloyalty

I confessed my fears unto you
And all you could do was laugh it off
You brushed the subject off
As if it were a speck of dust
On your shoulders
Rendering your pride, a form of rust
How could you have traded
Unconditional love
For irrefutable lust

You were once my pride and joy
But now a stranger you've become
Another somebody, I used to know
Sad part is that your presence
No longer brings any joy

How could you say that
My fears were irrational
When you fell into the same trap
I warned you of
How could you say
That my fears were irrational
When you succumbed to the spell
And didn't get choked by the smell
Of our burning bridge
How could you just stand there
And watch, while everything
We've ever worked for
Is burning down to dust?

Look at us now.
A premeditated crime scene we are
No evidence left to prove how close we once were
Not even a chalk outline
Look at us now.

Slowly rotting away from the inside,
I wonder what is and what could be
For I played hide and seek with the world for so long but it is my heart at stake I so I must abide.
Cold and ashamed I tread on along these empty streets reeking with lies and grief hoping that in this boulevard of broken dreams somewhere lies refuge and ****.

Searching the echoing dome of my heart for fragments of truths I stumbled across ghosts of my former self, soul searching for a soul that didn't need rescuing and when I stopped to ponder I saw that it wasn't me I was searching for but the part of me that is more than what home is, more than what truth can give and more than what survival means.

Children dancing across the streets,
Melodies from humming voices so heartfelt and sweet,
I dance away to the symphonies of the night, love songs and poetry recited by spirits that finally remembered how to dance leaving eternal footprints in the hearts of fellow men and the Gods giggling for eternity to come.

One look into those blazing eyes and the nomad in me comes home,
Lost in that Galaxy of glow, I was star gazing in the dark sky of your eyes,
I finally connected the dots and made out a portrait of our blissful childhood days that never were but if this is the yoke I ought to bare for my sins then it is a story I'll live to share.

I wrote letters never sent and carried words never told but this I write because it's only right that maybe someday I find the might to be the knight of your life. Through dark nights of blinded sight you'll be that glowing light, ever shining bright and never dare to leave my sight because you strip me of my one true delight.

I may be off your radar but you're forever on my screen and if this is all a dream then maybe I should open the window, to see the reality strewn across my face as the streaks of light beams cuts through the brightest of mornings leaving an ambiance of perpetual gleam.

I shout the silent shout so you never sense my doubt but maybe with these bleeding words upon this page you'll know what I am about. I am the calming rainbow of love after a harsh storm, and I love you. . .