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