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"Back from vacation", the barber announces,
or the postman, or the girl at the drugstore, now tan.
They are amazed to find the workaday world
still in place, their absence having slipped no cogs,
their customers having hardly missed them, and
there being so sparse an audience to tell of the wonders,
the pyramids they have seen, the silken warm seas,
the nighttimes of marimbas, the purchases achieved
in foreign languages, the beggars, the flies,
the hotel luxury, the grandeur of marble cities.
But at Customs the humdrum pressed its claims.
Gray days clicked shut around them; the yoke still fit,
warm as if never shucked. The world is still so small,
the evidence says, though their hearts cry, "Not so!"
Die ou kniee knak en kraak
en maak geraas
, maar sal sukkel-sukkel teen die rand
hou om jou te dra.
**** *** ek kriekbeen,
in die laatnag na jou vra.

My ribbes is marimbas,
uitgehonger vir die hokmaak
van 'n antieke snaardrom hart.
Wat nou met mening elke been
se noot raak slaan en hammer
asof opnuut gevorm en gespeen.

En tog die kop raas soos
basyn geskal en bomval,
want binne woed die stryd
van goed teen kwaad.
Ek speel vir jou 'n simfonie:
Die lirieke dalk af, maar tog op maat.

Ag ek's sommer simpel,
dis die liefde wat so praat...
Ek sien meer sleg as goed in my raak, maar jy verf als nuut en ek word hergebore in die pragbeeld wat jy van my skep. Daar is interne struwelinge wat my laat twyfel, want *** kan iets wat so goed en eg is, dan deur die kosmos as verkeerd bestempel word. Tog met al my fisiese, emosionele en geestelike wroegings... is dit onvermydelik dat jy oor my hoogste mure geklim het en my saggies vertroetel, terwyl jy my herskep met oe wat ook eventueel sal leer om die mooi in myself raak te sien... dankie Snoekie! Lekker kuier vanaand. Liefe jou!
Chaotic Melodic May 2012
Be still,
not quaking..
These insistent
drums
that bleat
and bleed out
these nervous
clock floggings,
beating their orphaned
shaking fists
against your ribs.
(Manic marimbas)
Insufferable
electric
wind chimes
plucked by
cricket fingers,
chipped to their
clinking joints,
to a st-st-stuttering collapse.
Each second,
a grain of salt
gathers its sour contempt
and slips
unnoticed
from your rusted eyes.
aj Jun 2014
I.
i kept my eyes off.
turning to face away,
as if god might have tapped me on the shoulder,
and told me to let my love smolder.
my eyes followed the distractions,
as they beat on marimbas,
and as i kept his gaze,
it started to feel like
they were beating
my ribcage

II.
heartbeat altered,
i began to falter.
moving my sight from the dancing mallets,
to my lukewarm palms,
that seemed to tear in passion.
in a sudden fashion,
i raised his head
and looked straight at it
with its wary eyes closed,
and i thought,
that i might have heard,
with a rush of raising concerns,
a heart shatter in shallow nearness,
like a shaky hand might have dropped a crystal.

III.
after the shatter,
my heart began to patter,
at a faster tempo in spite of the latter.
it is because of this,
that i promised to never looked again.
Watched someone while attending a percussion ensemble showcase...
Vat ń slukkie verdriet
En ontnugter jou verstand
Tot dit niks meer
As net ń spookdorp is
Wat tolbos oor
Jou silwerdoek-lewe nie

Jy voed op energie
, maar in ń moeë wêreld
Teer jy jouself uit
Totdat honger straatkinders
Jou ribbes speel
soos marimbas
Vir net ń laaste trek.

Dalk is vandag
Net een van dáárdie dae
, waar jy my sou red
En jou skouers
my vertroosting sou wees-
Jou lippe my spiersalf
Vir ń hart wat seer
geklop is.

Een van daardie dae
, maar jy is nog een van
Dáárdie mense...

Een van mý dae...
Iets wat jy nie is nie-
Myne
Haylin Jul 2019
I step through the door
of the place which feels
more like home than my house

My ears fill
with sounds of drumsticks on drums
mallets on marimbas

My eyes fall upon flutes, clarinets
trumpets and tubas

I look up at my family
none of which are related to me
yet they
make
this
place
home.
I just joined band this year and it's only been 6 days and I already feel at home.
Kirstin Crawford May 2019
She started with the dirt.

and so it began:
salty dreams dripped like rain water from her heart,
sounding like bass drum parade when
they bombarded  
the seeds below.
Boom, bang.

and her symphony began.

Her eyes only rested softly on the peach petals and
green she wished to see one day,
trying to line them up in her mind.
Finding order in the colorful plumage
one could grow and

Row by row
She began to sow
Her own
beauty.

Every day spent, relentlessly push-pulling
with the thorned roses and monsooning
for her scars. She’d bind their branches and with scarlet
fingers, she’d bless each white petal she found
with blood across his white flesh,
so that he too, would not be taken for some
innocent fool, so easy to
pluck apart.

She lived this way for many years,
routinely carving out her heart for the
flowers in her garden.

for this notion
of keeping something pure

in a world so filthy that the only
place a flower has to grow is
in the mud and
the only way a flower is supposed to be able to grow pretty
is with“Fertilizer”.
Then one day,
she finally realized that all fertilizer is,
is ****.

That very night she built herself a greenhouse
with her bed at the very center of the garden
and she threw out all the fertilizer
she’d bought at Lowe’s on sale earlier that week. She began to
practice sleeping with her thoughts and her cultivation,
the smell of fresh mud and potpourri
tormented each other the minute her head hit
her grassy green pillow and she would let her garden fester,
foliage bounded by her fear.

Once her fingers began to wrinkle and her voice no longer
bounced back at her from her fortified walls,

she found herself

tangled in the freely flowing vines she had once
kempt so well. The peach petals and green
made her heart squeeze as they grew lovingly,
between her toes
to her chest
and around her neck.

As she dreamt, they did not suffocate her
like she believed they would, one day long ago. The
dirt felt water-like beneath her back, soothing her bedsores and
sounding of the bass-drum parade from many years ago,
when she listened closely. Her eyes fluttered with
every bang and she found her peach petals again-

all so chaotically contained, their colors
stifled by the jagged walls she built for herself.

Taking in their unique passions and thorns
in one steady breath, rainwater fell for her
flowers softly this time. With every drip-drop,
each rose played his own sweet note.
Triangles and marimbas and strings
serenading her into bliss.

We can only dream that she found beauty
in her cultivations, just as they
found
in her.
an older piece for my grandmother- feedback welcomed <3

— The End —