morning

Waking up

With the memory of pleasure

lying thick in the body,

like a falling of fresh snow.

observations, in lines.

I'm thinking of you, she says.

And I am warm, awake, wanting again.

If thoughts are the things I feel in my body and heart then you're in mine too, I say.

And desire hums in me, a golden thread of light.

That's poetry, she says. And so I write. 

Out of Bounds

Sunlight on my skin.

It's unseasonally warm,

and time is snoozing. 

early Feb 24

I'm writing poetry in the kitchen,

Humming a song to my heart.

It's made of white roses

The scent and sound of coffee granules settling into the silver pot

It's flashes of blue luminescence, and skin, and shooting stars.

It's the tenderness holding the longing that pulls me from Cape town to Pretoria and back again.

I'm writing poetry in the kitchen,

The song I'm humming is you.

Sometime

Sometimes heat seeking,

Sometimes coiled in tight, pretend sleeping,

Sometimes I'm following butterflies and sunshine,

Sometimes I need more time.

Sometimes shining,

Sometimes a metaphor of clumsy trying,

Sometimes everything is melody and rhyme,

Sometimes I need to know it could just workout fine.

You're a memory, a fire,

You're roses and night power,

I'm wine drunk in my skin,

You tell me your secrets, and I believe you deserve all of mine.

homage

It's an angle of light

Touching that leaf

And an eye to see it

Breath coming

When you've always doubted

Your own strength

A caress from the air

That you swim in

Which opens your heart into joy

A world of mirrors and doors

Keys and mysteries

A world of comfort and a knife edge of tragedy

Bring me poetry, beauty, wilderness

I touch the ground

Glimpse belonging and benevolence

Again I am out of my depth

And in the darkness of my own limitations

But breathing gentle timelessness

Everything made of hope, threaded along the cloth, weaving, weaving we are, and woven.

Touching east, I lift my face. And then it's South, becomings beyond my knowing. Ah, the West, taking what must go. And North, pulling me home beyond home. 

Messy words and moments

There have been no poems-

No floating haiku, cherry blossomed through the sky,

To touch the green ground of the page.

Just mad harvesting of ideas, and semi-lucid eruptions of words for work, for deadline, for to do's.

There has been magic. But very little of my own. I'm knocking back other people's potions instead. I'm strapping others in for wild rides, but traipsing through mud and messiness to an empty hearth.

There is beauty. The life coursing through every element and conduit is as golden as ever. It makes my heart sing. But it's a house of cards I live in, and I know it in my gut. 

There is purpose. But a thousand failures and wayward aiming and, quite frankly, much impotence. 

There's the old labyrinth and a map and wet shoes. 

Now, at least, there's a poem- a rush hour poem, made of traveling words. Each one hustled off the train, platform overun. Home seems very far away today.