Corners

For we sold our sleep for dreams of having the ways and means

to do more than just survive,

Yet those days never arrive

and we're as broke as promises,

minor strokes on political canvases.

 

What of healing as time advances?

Troubled sisters selling culture in tribal dances

on pavements built on the backs of forefathers.

 

Brothers say 'place shackles on how you feel

For a heart here is an Achilles heel'

and we're born soldiers of the night.

 

We're raising giants of the past,

Striving to make old glories last,

In stories on corners to cope with the lows,

Stitched together as the coldest wind blows.

 

Image by somnio_insania.

Burst Apart

I cover the windows and wonder, In murky whispers, If all ceases to exist

Beyond these abstractions I weave

in daydreams scribbled on paper,

Beauty preserved in pristine fiction

as I trace old shadows on new walls.

 

For does my tenderness contort upon release,

Weigh heavy upon the ears of each muse,

Drawing suspicion with unveiled words,

Like an open door to an empty core.

 

There is much ache I spill to the ground,

By my own hand in its confusion,

Leaning on false walls of fortitude,

Deducing what love is not.

 

Where lies the art to burst apart...

With tendons too tired to move

From stitches sewn so long ago

and a yearning to be known.

Magnificent

  Magn

I've been grasping for the roots

of a timeless tender part of me,

Beneath the weight of masks imposed,

Juxtaposed against an arid earth,

Parched and pleading through the hurt.

 

Looking back through wiser eyes,

The patterns did repeat,

Self-fulfilling prophecies

built but an empty street,

With alleys of broken parts,

hidden and channeling rain,

To cleanse, to fill

a hollow habitat.

 

It percolates...

A barricade of fantasy,

Woven around a heart,

Is but a means to cope

with the ache of each beat,

when eyes trained to lack,

lock the mind in struggle,

a palette of demons,

reduce life

to survival.

 

To this place I have come,

Under the honesty of the sun,

To sense gain from every toil,

As old pages turn to soil,

Here my child does sow,

A grace I have come to know,

To shed the skin of a martyr

and feel... magnificent...

 

The thing about Birthdays...

My birthday has long been host to my swirling introspection. Mostly the morose, cynical variety that attacks ones state of being like the bite of a tsetse fly. For most of my life, a subconscious torrent of thought held sway. A storm that would likely confuse and infuriate others attempting to understand.

What is a birthday but some contrived celebration of my expulsion from the sanctuary of my mother's womb? What choice and part did I play in all of this ...save showing up? Was it not my mother who laboured for hours and likely coped with the anguish of  potentially losing another baby? Should it not be her that should be commemorated?  The need for actual celebration of this event was often a great source of confusion to me as I grew up, particularly when the novelty of themed cakes, balloons and presents wore off. For in my mind, a celebration implied that I was worthy of another year of life. That somehow, I was more than my reductionist portrait of myself at the time - a sniveling, navel gazing youth consuming far more than he contributed. A celebration would mean that I was of value to people, that I mattered. Perish the thought! It felt fraudulent to even conceive of it.  The extent of my privilege was clear to me, having been exposed to poverty in Africa and Asia at a young age.  Yet this existential guilt only fed the struggle. The painting of "Poor Shanil" relied heavily on a palette of low esteem and sarcasm.  Birthdays were often punctuated peeks at this insidious portrait I carried on my back.

I reflect on this now, not with the intent of showcasing my oddities, but rather out of curiosity towards the roots of this old perspective. Fundamentally, I long viewed life as something to be endured. It was an aimless journey of survival through a desert with but the amenities to survive from mirage to mirage. An unmotivated existence that almost begged for a fast ending for I was a pawn bereft of choice.

Alas the tides of experience and moreover, the sheer weariness of this way of being culminated in an altered perspective of life (a subject to which I intend to devote a novel to).  Had I not done this, I feel certain that I would have taken my life. This repainting of the proverbial self-portrait was no sudden development, but rather hinged upon  the gradual discovery of new colours and techniques to paint with. This marked the ascension of the power of choice, a previously impotent word in my rather unconscious vocabulary. The choice of colours, the choice of strokes, the audacity to re-imagine a learned vision of self. Now a pragmatic reality as opposed to a fanciful, conceptual dead-end. The desert has long made way for more fertile backdrops and I have a compass of purpose that serves me well - a deep intention to be of service. An intention birthed in my weariness with my perceived mediocrity. A shift from a resignation to my lack of utility, to actively seeking contribution in all forms.

Today, on my 29th Birthday, I do not sit here with some romanticized notion of life and its meaning. I see it as a finite time-frame for a myriad of opportunities and experiences.  I am alive to how time will see me changing this palette once again...but I shall speak of what I feel to be true in this present moment. I have long grappled with my perceived lack of choice in being born into a life dominated by suffering. I may have even harbored resentment towards my parents for this reason. My journey to date has been one of uncovering the possibility of me defining the meaning of my life ...even if I was bereft of a choice to exist. For is that not the most poignant choice we have? To wield the brush or to be coloured in by circumstance.

Thus far it would seem as if this active path is a rewarding one. I am blessed with relationships and opportunities I could never have conceived of in my younger years.  I could cite the extensive conversion of my guilt to gratitude but I have indulged in much introspection as it is. I see new meaning and purpose to this anniversary of my birth. I sit here so grateful for the struggles I have faced. The mediocrity I have felt in the marrow of my bones and the intensity of suffering that has plagued my heart to the point of collapse. For without them, I'd be unconscious of my beauty and lack vitality, passion and grit. The tools to seize the day!

Innocent Still

There was a time

when our laughter scaled those hills

that our little feet couldn't reach.

 

For we were giants of ambition

with senses tuned to wonder,

cosmic hosts to a million personas

dancing free beneath

a confluence of sun and skin.

 

Ah...

I remember those afternoons,

streaming through the canopy,

When David wove the clouds

into pillows for our thoughts and

I made a bed of Pa's endless lap,

our bellies full of ma's magic

as she sang of home.

 

No strangers to the tragic,

our tempers swelled and thundered

and tears in torrents did come,

But we were innocent still,

smiling by morning

after every bitter pill.

 

But there were no signs of warning

as our skin and bones stretched

and the lottery of life unravelled.

We found our hearts heavy

with an inheritance of woe

and our eyes came to find shackles

where they were none before.

 

And after years in a neon haze, I've come to see,

my pulse surrendered to machinery,

The monetization of our dreams

into a cold network of revenue streams,

Depleted wells of compassion

amid deep unconscious self-obsession,

Where our eyes are trained to difference,

Where war is a righteous path

and the earth a mere limitation.

As only the lure of distant stars will satiate.

this estranging hunger.

 

And I yet ask myself, if we are innocent still?

For is there not beyond the shadows

of our being, a glistening spark?

Persisting in our child's eye,

Still playful and loving, longing

only for the thread

to weave a fabric of hope

that all hearts can touch.

 

And tonight I wonder

If there will be a time once more,

when our laughter scales those hills

that our little feet couldn't reach

and sing as ma did, of home...

 

Borders

Under the soft gaze of the stars,

The border was of no consequence,

Malawian or Mozambican,

Like all avaricious lines,

Once drawn in Berlin.

The  might of these mountains

sing through the ages,

Into languid winds

that kiss the lakes & oceans

and whistle through acacias

before dancing with the sands.

I leap into this nocturnal canvas

with a palette of questions.

Do we not enliven

the wounded fragments in our minds?

Draw them upon maps,

Upon flags and build brands of belief?

Paint enemies to rail against 

in a violent struggle for significance?

Are we not threads in the fabric of the universe,

Lulled into discontent through perception

of some inferior 'sameness' ?

Driven by reptilian fear,

are our minds not knives?

Is it not  our capacity to choose compassion

that renders our violence so tragic?

Alas the cast of this night,

Have not the eyes for our lines,

nor the need for the tangles of thought.

There are only endless invitations

to a symphony of being.

Second Skin

  In many a crowded room,

filled with serpentine questions,

fictions form our second skin.

 

I feel those establishment hisses

in the liquored language of cities

are filled with towering conquests

built upon foundations of smoke.

 

And I feel the distance of continents,

As I listen to a litany of seasoned speeches.

Sweetened with heroics, spiced with drama

and bittered with the woes of privilege.

 

And I wonder...

In the brief silences between us,

Beyond these elaborate orchestrations,

If we know each other at all

or if we care to.

 

For with each passing day

it seems that  the pressures

of conformity are pale against

the void of not being true.

 

The Conversation

 

Your passing was whispered to me...

It was in the morning air as I stood

Anxious and uncertain upon foreign soil.

 

Stilted conversations, childhood realizations,

After years you were the centre of a symphony,

Looping unceremoniously in your aftermath.

 

With a stifled tremor, I kissed your lifeless forehead,

Watched you burn, Carried your ashes in an urn.

Consoled your father in his relentless grief.

 

Who were you papa?

I often felt you were a vile and selfish man,

We loved you in spite of you and yet,

It would seem it mattered so little.

You in your solitude,

Your stubborn wasted intelligence,

Loyalty only to intoxication, to escape.

 

Yet you shine in fragments still,

You blessed my heart with Africa,

I saw sober shades of a lovely man,

We cherished music, we danced,

You made us laugh.

At times...

You were a father, even a husband.

 

I only wish I could trace,

Those moments that corrupted your soul,

That tainted your heart so much so

that you were blinded to all you possessed.

"What a waste" they said at your funeral

and I  with a heavy heart, I concur.

 

Did you know what you put Mama through?

What you put us through? I hope not.

It is a relentless submission to life's betrayals,

I question every bit of light.

 

I wish we could talk as men,

As we did, when we last spoke.

For Papa I cannot help but feel,

That with each passing year,

That I am you at the crossroads,

And thus a stranger to myself.

 

I do not mourn your loss,

Though I must confess I miss you,

But how can I when I am your son?

You are stitched into my being.

 

Perhaps you were the ultimate sacrifice,

For me to grow from the pain of your passage.

So I can be true to myself for as long as I live.

So that I may be the man you ought to have been.

-----------------------------------------------------------

(7 years on)

The mirror of time has tempered my anger into compassion,

For it is clear that you were the greatest victim of your demons.

At times my heart drifts upon the air of some possibility

that I could have reached you...

But I am brought back by threads of reason,

For while I mourn the ever diminishing sound of your voice,

The truth is that the lesson of your life has strengthened mine,

And in this exchange, you are an inseparable part of me.

Black Mirror

 

 Image Credit: alexandra135

 

Themes of death seeped

into my dreams as a child

streams of existential guilt

flowing into scenes of judgement

and descents into an eviscerating eternity.

Over and over.

 

Maturity first bred weariness,

Deep in teenage flux,

Twisting through the purpose of my time,

Preordained or to be determined,

My thoughts anchored in morbidity.

"For I did not choose to be."

 

Alas I did not implode, but rather,

Surrendered to the fevers of thought,

A victim reduced to mere survival,

till the burden set me free.

Now impassioned by mortality I see...

 

It was a black mirror to peer inside,

To find joy where I once cried.

Reef

Cast me deep beneath these foaming waves, Where with borrowed breath I can see the shades

of ancestral dreams dance across the reef floor.

For there I am a shadow no more, a shadow no more.

 

My aching body gliding through words unspoken,

My pulsing heart rippling through promises broken,

To where my landless hopes still twist in the beams of the sun

Oh cast me now, Cast me deep, For here we are never one.