The Spot Light

The Blank page accuses me
Taunts me of my inability
Anxiously waiting
The burning glare of the Spot Light

My imagination strains
Running into empty walls
Still words appear- lifeless, black and white
Simply, to please the Spot Light

Outside this confinement
Words run, jump, sing and befriend me
Every occurrence a melody
Every thought an adventure

But under the Spot Light
Nothing

Sick

I am sick so sick so sick so sick sick
I feel the way I feel to feel that I know I don’t feel
I cut myself to cut away to cut to stay to kill
I eat all that I eat to eat to feel less, so I eat
I talk this way to talk I say I talk you see I talk
I cry away I cry to cry I cry and then the crying doesn’t stop
Then you bleed away my blood your blood you bleed
and
I am so sick so sick so
Help me make it stop.

The Homeless Heart

So I’m alone again. And sometimes I wonder how many people out there are lonely. Is it wrong to be lonely? My loneliness has a kind of comfort. It is the comfort of not being seen, not being noticed. It is the comfort to disappear within yourself to where nothing matters. Not your weight. Not your achievements. And all that makes you significant is... the next breath.
Is being lonely a bad thing? Do we all really have the busy, social, hectic lives so easily portrayed in films, magazines and books? Sometimes I have nothing to do. These are the times my fingers start itching and the fist grabs my lungs and tries to push me into the space that I spend all day trying to forget. What really matters? Going on and pushing through. Sometimes I feel that I am the only person. And I stop and look at the world around me and it’s fucked up.
Today a homeless girl was selling flowers. The flowers, I won’t know what they’re called, were still dripping with soil and their roots were curling out. And, as you do, I avoided eye contact but I chose that moment to light my cigarette. The smoke pulled into my lungs and, as I sat down, the girl sat next to me. Despite the smoke of my cigarette I could smell days’ worth of sweat, vomit, dirt and urine on her. She was wearing a large red sweater inside-out and back-to-front and she looked at me with... hope. I held to her the key to something bigger, something she wasn’t a part of.
And then she started talking as I smoked. Her front tooth was chipped and I was thinking that it’s so strange that her hands are a darker black than her face. She spoke but I could not make out her words. I sat, listening without hearing, blowing my smoke into the air. She had no place to go. This much I realised. I gave her two cigarettes and a twenty. And then I walked away.
I wonder if I could have made a difference. I wonder what I think makes me so special that I have the power to determine where someone’s next meal is coming from. And I probably can’t change her life. I probably won’t be able to save her. But, sometimes, I wonder about the acts of kindness in my life.
I remember that a stranger once bought a scared little girl a chocolate after watching her world crash down around her. Such a small thing. A KitKat. And yet, I remember that every day of my life. So, as I walked away, I wish that I had enough courage to do ... something. Even if it was just a hug

I'm not mad

I keep a hammer in my head
Sometimes I use it
Until you’re dead

Accept

When I accept myself
For who I am
I find it strange
That nothing changes.

And when I think about
What thinking does
It never seems
What I am changes.

Finally I look
And squint and pinch and scratch.
At the flesh of my reality.
To mark
the nothing changes.

Breathe

A cloud fell to the earth
To cover the sins of a
Broken shadow.

With a pitter-patter
Conundrum
Skeleton trees poke
Into the air and
Suffocate the night.

From the bud in my breast
I call the sound
Of the root.
Which plants itself
Within the unseeing eye
Of wonder.

It is so hard
To breathe.
It is so
Hard to breathe.
It is-

Reality

In the light
Not dim, not clear
Your skin is earth
Which warms and rubs and gently
Smothers.
Till I, gasping,
Suck the juice
And spit a desperate breath.
Vying for attention
Your seeking fingers
Curl up in my soil
And rip
Away debris.

Now alone.
The dark sky hovers
To my realisation
It was only in my head.
Reality
Is sandy dew drops
Stuck between my toes
Washed away by
Thoughts.

Poets Who Blog: How to Join

Hi,
This is a link to a wonderful online poetry community which is worth checking out.

Poets Who Blog: How to Join

Monsters

And in this life
There is no meaning.
But the one I found today
A cloudy day, cold as monsters, fresh as breath
Bustling and shuffling along my life
And what it is that hurts you
What is the ache that aching spreads like dust
Which whispers upon
The futures and you try to
Shake and shake it off
This hurt that is too much.
The nothingness in all of us,
We acknowledge with
A smile-
A wink-
A missing life-
I know you hurt
No.
I know you die.
A little.
Each day.
From monsters, dust and pink peaches
Gasping at its innards
Spilling
From your mouth.

The Shadow of My Life

I often feel as though no one notices my existence. I run through life, aching and screaming while others pass at a distance, their eyes glazed over with the effort of seeing only what they want to. I wonder, sometimes, what would happen if we all said what we're really feeling and whether the pretence that we base our lives on is pure stupidity or survival instinct. Never discount evolution.


I am the shadow of my life.
I am the flesh of the naked,
the dirt of the poor,
the heart of the dead.
Wherever I go, a piece is ripped
Away and left to grow with you.
Alone, I close my eyes.
I cry for you.
I cry for You.
You are the purple of the bruise.
You are the taste of tears,
The waste of words.
I am the shadow of my life.

A nowhere kind of thought.

I suffer from clinical depression and the following poem is just a piece of what depression sometimes made me feel. The turning point in this poem represents the first time in years that I started to feel happiness again. It was a scary time and I still do not trust the emotion completely, I rather see it as some kind of blissful invasion.

The eye is closed, it will not open.
It has locked me in my mind.
Where troubles are woes and woes are nothing.
Where I am blind.
My skull is just an empty cave, waiting for display.
Come little words, digest me quickly.
Look
That is where I lay.

I do not always shower,
I leave the dirt to fester.
The sun beats down and a film of sweat
Upon sweat
Embraces me.
And forms shallow pools,
In the hollows of my thoughts.

But
A tiny bloom is hidden in my heart.
A foreign, strange kind of flower,
Lazily
Unfurls a leaf
And stretches my mouth
Into a forgotten smile.
It caresses my worries
And puts them away for later.

The White South African

As a white South African I have mixed feelings about how I should relate to my country. Underneath the guilt, shame, anger, indignation and resentment lies the clear and simple bond a person born into a country who does not seem to want to have her.

I inhale this earth,
Where I was bred
and
hide between stone walls,
To murder the fear.

Which is part of me,
Which calls the tears
Where a used girl lies.

This land owns me,
I am strangled,
By my belonging.

No one can know,
The shadow’s fist that holds me,
That shows a way
To stop.

Yet we walk on,
Because a frozen moment
Is permission.

I am drenched in this soil
From which I claim no love.
I am naked,
In this mud of shame.

This is me

I wrote my first poem when I was 11:

Crying is a pain you feel
Like waters of blood
And flashes that's bright
You taste the sweetness
You taste the guilt
But most of all
All the other side
There's light