Coming Back to the Centre

I am not the centre of the universe.

Expanding from a gravitational singularity, I

now come to fulfill a sense of pronounced cosmic inflation. Realized in all matters of energy and momentum, I am a hidden gem drowning in a perpendicular plane of unabashed success.

Floating aimlessly in the abyss of this cosmos, I am encircled by seemingly estranged voices. 

Judgement phases me.

Humility pacifies me.

Defensively, I retract... 

Pondering why it is that there exists a need to belittle my accomplishments. 

Sitting in the passenger seat of my life, I confront hardened criticism with a sense of controlled operation. 

Questions circumventing societal expectations. 

Conflating small-mindedness with culturally-specific jealousy. 

Holding the basis of my internal socialization in little regard, the boastful impose their opinions. 

Behind a self-preserved barricade of impenetrable glass, I stiffen out uneducated ignorance. 

I am human. Coincidentally woman.

On equal footing, I take my rightful place.

Aggressively surging forward, I veer into the direction deemed prohibited territory.

Options considered, I choose to challenge a pretentious opponent.

Now transparent to one another, you aim to negate my resume.

 

Crushingly, I nearly falter before the voices inside my tangled head.

Willfully encountering the anticipated conditions, I enable your universe to collide with my own. 

I counsel myself.

Arguing with the right angel, the devil on the left.

Orbiting in silence, I reassure myself. 

Like a sudden shudder of light, I snap. 

The logical, the reasoned authority of my mind rations my next move.

Voices bantering in lunatic fashion...

I am Sanctioned. I stand equally entitled.

Even in your underestimation, I cannot be sold.

I find it hard to believe the pretense of your compassion.

Your words...basked in drivel.

Blistering my ego. Discrediting my worth.

An attempt to catechize me...failed. 

I cry out...

I will not, nor will I ever, condition my success to soothe your inadequacies.

Efforts to mollify me...to stamp me out, are now part of our dialectical past tense.

11:11

Impractical idealism. 

Or is it visionary intuition?

Re-charging the universe, I wonder whether an entire set of 60 seconds exists simply so that I can prey upon this masonic number. 

Signaling a change, confirming chance...

11:11, flashes.

Selfishly I close my eyes, silencing my wish, obstructing intrusive listeners.

My world waits. You come to mind.

Opportunity abounds yet I desire only one thing.

Scanning from the bottom up, the physiology of your tactile and supple lips penetratingly call out for my attention.

An erogenous weapon paralyzing the efforts of even the most worthy of competitors. 

Hauntingly beautiful, the muscles stretch ever so slightly across the perfection of your face. 

Customarily a cultural expression denoting pleasure, my intuition confirms that I seal the envelope of your principle.

From my peripheral vision, I sense the desperation in your gaze.

Palpitations accelerate. Glands perspire. Intimacies excite.

11:12.

Temporary termination of "the moment."

Eyes wide open. 

Reality is made shockingly observable as I encounter the animate object of my desire in the metaphysical.

In that solitary moment, I acutely acknowledge what I crave not to lose.

The textures and tones of your body...

The impurities of intention...

The synonymity of psyches...

It then becomes painstakingly unbearable to imagine your impermanence.

Desiring the will to trace back time, I recant 11:12 desiring only its unitary predecessor.

 

Erasure of All Things Serendipitous

I ask the spirit for answers.

The serendipity baffles someone even as apt as I.

Reasons beyond my own understanding I assume, or that is at least how I ration it.

All I ask for is answers.

Give me at least that.

If not answers, then a retraction.

A removal of all things Y-O-U.

Erasure of that glance, that smile, that territorial stance.

Repetitious reminders confronting every corner of my mind. 

Rendering unnerving mental traffic in the depressing centres of memory. 

Better I store that disappointing box in an untouchable space, one that is as dark as it is inaccessible. 

Patience has become an unmoving stream threatening to run dry.

Unless the answers become transparent, I want nothing of serendipity. 

Truth is, I would rather render you obsolete.

Had I never fell upon this accidental fortune, it would hurt less.

Fairy-Tale

"When is it my turn?"

Such a silly question, silly girl.

The things you dream of are built for fantasies. Crack open the spine and find yourself a barrage of dazzling stories ...trotting horses, magic dust, and fate. Princesses awakening from vile and poisonous apple induced a comas. Characters playing second fiddle, drawing together used fabrics and pass-me-down accessories to make ballroom gowns. Carriages fit for royalty, reduced to garden variety vegetables at the stroke of time's large hand. Genies in bottles. Mermaids making devil deals for human limbs. Fantastical fairy-tales.

"Is it possible that it will never happen unless I will it so?"

Such a silly question, silly girl.

Prayers are mere words, some answered, others ignored. Fate is for the gods. Wishes for birthdays, before burning candles that grow with each calendar. Will is for the strong, its partner patience for the martyrs. To say it will happen when the time believes it so is to channel faith, an immeasurable tool that does not ensure a guarantee or a set of warranty conditions signed and bound in the case of its failure. 

"Is it then an impossibility?"

Such a silly question, silly girl. 

All things are possibilities. Just as the sky lights, so does it darken. Possibilities do not simply exist in a set of positives, yet why is it that they are always painted as such? Dreamlike colours smeared on a boundless canvas. Making little room for niches of disappointment. Fairy-tales bar those among us from grappling with reality. For as much as we make room for the good, so too should we make storage for those conditions deemed disenchanting. It takes even greater strength to grapple with these realities.

Silly girl, there are no morals to learn in storybook endings. They teach of our vulnerability, the neglectful need to grab our dreams and force them to be so.

So is life. Yes, it is dull at times, it is lightening colouring darkened skies. Continually active, excitingly scorching players out of their dull existences, conditionally fantastical. 

Those "turns" that plague your inquiring mind insist upon a system of waiting, upon a condition of permission. For that, I insist that there is no room. We are women, we need not wait for such a thing. Your youthful mind has much to learn when it comes to demeaning expectations.

Silly girls cling to Cinderella's myth. In her world, turns exist. In this world, the one we inhabit, chance is but an abomination. 

Yesterday Is No More

You never know the whens and ifs of meeting someone again. 

The supernatural has a mystifying way of dislodging our schedules, hijacking valuable human connections. 

The tendency is to picturesquely frame youth as unconquerable, staging our bodies and our minds as though we are immortal. Death does not have its prejudices. Anyone who has intimately confronted loss will painstakingly confess that life's cousin is far from sexist or racist, let alone ageist. Negating Darwin's theory. It's process of selection is random. Without philosophical logic or scientific deduction. A thief by all means, it grants little satisfaction to those it steals from and leaves forsaken in the wake of its earthly destruction. 

Waiting beyond its door, a box of opened letters, unanswered, ink run dry.

When asked, the explanation might be simple. Yet, for those victimized by its reasoning, it would never be easy to swallow no matter how sophisticated the decorum. 

For those armoured in the ground war, there is never a cut clean rationale to any of it. The uniform: black attire. The wailing that pleads. The eulogy that can never possess enough details to encapsulate the entirety of a lived life. The salty tears against the four elements. The handshakes plagued by the anxiety in each grip. The perpetual prayers demanding a re-take, a directors cut of alternative endings. 

I will wake up tomorrow in a world without you. What a thought to have running, to have reeling. Forever motionless. Recounting the scenarios, I stare blankly at the popcorn ceiling. To imagine how it is that those who are close to you will continue to labour, love and soldier on is deadening to the senses. The moments continue to pace on, the palms of my two hands oscillate on the ruffled bedsheets. I certify that the memories will grow dim. Time folds in, most mis-recollect. Calendars label days, fingertips flip through months. Somehow, tomorrow and the days proceeding it are different from yesterday. 

Yesterday promised the whats, the ifs. Yesterday, the actors in this drama drudged through the script that regulated their (e)motions without reading ahead. No notion of its written ending, just promise of a timely reconnection. 

But today we fall victim to erasure. Yesterday is no more as we anticipate the future. 

Tomorrow solicits a greater crime. It disintegrates the physical. Blurs the memorable. Deadens the audible. Little by little, the world I once knew, one populated by the physicality of your body and the spirituality of your soul in the everyday, transcends into fiction. 

...You never know the whats and ifs of meeting someone again. 

The world promises only a limited time offer. The supernatural places its hands on the controls, stamping an expiry date on each of our fated outcomes. 

Wherever it is you now come to exist, I am versed in its promises; a rekindling of experiences, a reawakening of thought and intimacies, and a renewal of connection. 

Death reminds us that in a second, life as we know it, can change. It is a hand that forces each of us to have a face-to-face encounter with our own mortality. Coming to terms with the fact that we, the living, can be quickly separated by the limitations of our skin.

Tomorrow, when the sun warms my closed eyes, I will remember that time spans a short space. I will tell those who inhabit my circle that I love them. I will reach out to hug those who sustain me. Never once forgetting that one day, yesterday will be no more. 

Dedicated to the memory of someone who I knew yesterday and remember today. R.I.P Troy Dixon.

Fettered Numb, Caged Free

The darkest corners of our mind, an architectural set of convex angles, intersecting at the sight of familiar walls. Where the dust and cobwebs collect, in the impossible-to-reach areas during seasonal cleaning, stands a collection of imprisoned secrets bound by unforgiving self-judgement.  

Our thoughts, floating swiftly. Our fears, ever apparent. Reluctantly pressing our physical self laterally, confusing static movement for propulsive actuation. Emotionally hampering growth. Psychologically dismantling years worth of project restructuring. Our memories, repressed. Our insecurities, despondent. All entombed at the unduly cost of a carte blanche.

Perfection is but an idealistic ghost that often ceases to exist in the real, yet flourishes in the matrix. Yet we wrap ourselves in the cloak of its promise. Pretense housed under its ethereal musk. Eclipsing the singular factualism of life: the notion that humanity lies victim to a state of BE. 

For some who are comfortable in their afflictive coats, a unisex garment ornamented by a combination of toggles, zippers and hook-and-loop fasteners, this fashionable epidermis exists to serve as a mere shell from which self-pulchritude can percolate and secrete. 

For others, for those who walk un-named, remorsefully vacillating, this carapace functions as a conservational wall. Vigilantly safeguarding this correctional facility against those on its outside perimeter. Its custodian, equally effective at withstanding intruders as he is at hesitantly conceding to familiar visitors. 

This phobia, this cowardice to show our real physiognomy, it handicaps our ability to grow. It triturates our process. Self-acceptance assumes a drawn out exercise. Actualization an elongated tunnel of phosphorescence. Without these steps, this inching forward, we are prisoners of our own making. Never able to walk unguarded. Forever bonded, eternally fettered. Bound by tools of restraint designed to compromise two halves, the physical body and its spiritual alter ego. Linked together by chain, hinge and bar, making any activity impossible without the promise of freedom's insurance, the all powerful key. Shackled to an existence not of our own choosing. Contained by a life constructively devised by those who maneuver our process, who manipulate our journey. Our master plan a final product moulded by their rigid rule, re-packaged by their judging eyes. 

Case File

Your eyes feed immediately into your soul "they" say. Like the windows of a century home, within resides fantastical wonders beyond comprehension, undetected for a set of 

immeasurable time-slots.

Organs that locate light, sending signals along the optic nerve, visualizing my intentions. Distinguishing shapes and colours, allowing greater binocular perception, polarizing my inquiry. Inching closer, peering ever so closely, attempting to rescue many a thing, I am a hunter on a reconnaissance mission. 

Eyes, seemingly dark, complex optical systems without resolving power or a foreseeable end. A tunnel of uncertain corners, a horror for those among us afraid of unrepentant travel. Darkness is where the secrets hide "they" say. Of those, its true, you have many. Shifting in abandon, recklessly examining, your obscure eyes glide beyond the meeting point. The intent: concealment. Classified information intently trapped, you recoil at the unavoidable contact. Stinging embarrassment. Passionate disappointment. The crossroads momentarily averted. Pupils widen, baby blues bypass the intersection, preventing any imaginable casualty, whether physically injurious or psychologically undesirable.  "They" say shifting is the mark of an individual who is untrustworthy. Like a con-artist who constructs lies meant to disarm, you believe this strategy is a sure path to secure success. Your eyes, "they" say, speak volumes. As the dial turns, its true, your victim slowly amplifies the truth's audibility and deadens the tone of your lies. Initially translated into believed-to-be insecurities, I stare baffled beyond belief at my sheer stupidity. Before my once unbelieving eyes now stands defined verities not of my own making. As they move, I throw the net, capturing the only things I require in order to admit the light. Now, your casements, temporarily shut, are able to transparently grant access. Like a hunter, I excite at the thought of combating my prey. Paralyzing its limbs, numbing its senses. Weakening its efforts to wage a war of the minds, heightening its sense of defeat. Shaking after temporary distraction, I focus again on your eyes. As they darken, I insistently travel forward, unafraid of the looming light clearly visible at its root. Your eyes, reluctantly truthful, are fighting to protect your only key to salvation. Detective am I, poised to transcend the surface and resurrect  the unspoken evidence. I insist upon retrieving the dirt before conclusively conducting my investigation. Fanning through the files, I philosophically bag facts that include propositions presumed true, yet possibly negated if falsifiable. Defeated, you retract your initial statement. As the light becomes truth, unfortunate for you "I" say. Words, units of language consisting of combined clauses, are now insignificant. The physicality of silence is what I fear most for you. This lucid place, neighboured by the real, is where the truth screams out its loudest. You can never fog this place again. I am newly re-educated; no longer disoriented, no longer mystified, nevermore perplexed. Your words simply contextualize your prevarications, reflecting failed attempts at piercing holes. Complicated by a storm of manipulations, I take a final look at my case file. I warm to the thought of knowing that satisfaction will only come once I visualize your extermination. Lessons learnt. Partnerships axed. Trust is partially recuperating. Lifting the manila, binding it in leather, I begin to lay claim to cessation.

The Swarming Social Circle

A socialite of butterflies. Fluttering circle to monophyletic circle, adjusting to its banter, Cosmo in hand. Listening intently, then lightly rationalizing crashing investment markets, France's latest immigration crisis, melting polar ice caps, and the phenomenon of child soldiers in West Africa. Equally aware and informed amid a species paralleled in intellect on scenarios of past and present death, disease, famine and drought. Buzzing bees. Asking what of solutions. Superficially concerned. Mildly contemplating how to weather the intensity of multiple storms. Swarming insects. Conversations alter. Queen Bea dislikes the intense statements, the disheartening tone. Raising her hind wings, protruding proboscis, sucking dry the essential nectar and pollen as its energy source. Pollinating with bland subject matter of football, Sunday morning pass times , Friday night poker and trips to the Cape. Carrying an electrostatic charge, adhering poisonous pollen from its scopa and ventral abdomen to unsuspecting victims. A vulture bee transporting sticky honey, finally fulfilling her un-kept pleasure principle. Containers of shallow conversation rendering a stingless subgroup immobile and mesmerized by her skill. Subjected to trifling topic matter, useless in its content relative to the subaqueous controversies discussed earlier. Few fight off the sealed nature of the circle, rendered incapable to foster individual thought, to introduce paramount subject matter. An efficient pollinator among solitary and primitively social offspring, her buzzing drowns out the fighting chatter. Convergent evolution transforms the butterfly once centre-stage of socialites. Pinned down, indicative of a plesiomorphic condition, by the tools employed by the swarming social circle.

Nesta, Sing of the War

On an island basked in sand, water and sun grew a mighty boy who would one day wield words as weapons. Schooled by the wayward streets and the uplifting lessons of the spirit, this boy transcended into man.

Bred of humility and motivated by humanity, Robert sought out to speak truths, to urge brethren to invest in one another. The windows leaning into his inner strength grew weary, burning from the raging fire of inequality and the smoking decimation left behind in its wake. Robert sought out an awakening of words, a way to reach out and inspire those caught up, mystified and unaware. He reached for a tool, six strings. He countered it with a companion. Burrowed deep, beyond flesh, the arteries and bone, a voice spewing out groomed intellect. Accumulated knowledge with no claim to designated degrees fostered and bestowed upon by historically ivy institutions. A soul connected to that of life's people, speaking accuracies of life, labour, love, devastation and injustice. Coupling energies, Robert revitalized human query and concern. Nestled in words translated, Robert spoke only one true language, that of humanity. Urging women to pull back the tears, activists to stand up, and people everywhere to remain mindful of the war. A man once roaming Trench was now returning to the world, engaging in its re-education. His words moved beyond boundaries, crumbled well established and fought over walls. The people listened as the rastaman chant, "'dis a war." Years later, still ringing true in accordance to contemporary ills, the words rage forcefully. The radios tune, the televisions flicker. The viewers, some actively concered , others cold and unnatached. Minutes into hours, days into weeks. And as inspiration fades slowly, left unattended are his words rusted over as the war maintains its course.