Aurum

All these voices in my head, please stop them with your you. Tell them to cease existing one by one and convince them they aren't real. You are the only one who can save me; you put me into this cage with all my demons. You left me unintentionally, but with your own determination to be clean good and golden. The golden girl with the golden hair, skin so fair, make up a story about how you're there but really you're an apparition just like I am. A fake figment of whatever imagination conjured you and I up, and we imagined that we'd be fine. But clearly I'm falling apart with all the purpose of a thousand pages of Okonkwo, don't get me wrong. I love you just like you say you love me but it hurts when the darkness closes in and the short fuse on candle-boom-stick doesn't keep it away for all that long. What use is a light if it only lasts as long as the attention span of a gold fish, golden hair, goldilocks, she locks away her heart and hides it from me with hugs and kisses and misses and emptiness that fills emptiness. Forgive me for trying not to cry at this sad scene, that the reflection of my existence as told by gingerly stepping around the looking glass through which I saw what I wanted to see. And again, I'm sorry. But I have to do me.

In The Meantime

Inbetween being here and there I struggle to be anywhere mentally. Having purpose is the main drive for some, working hard to get a car, to have a nice house, to be living a comfortable life. But I sometimes struggle to see the logic. Let me put it like this. You trade the skills that your body possesses (after education and work experience and all that) just to put food on the table? How can that be your purpose? That's a very roundabout way of getting to your end goal. But there are some who do it for more, and some who do it for less. Who am I to judge? I just have an opinion and I share it. But you see, with me the drive isn't about all the fancy things and the lavish lifestyle; I just want to find what makes me happy and hopefully I'll be able to do all of that and still be able to put food on the table. Sounds like a dream, right? I would not hesitate if the opportunity came my way. But all this talk of opportunity and privilege and money makes my tongue curl up because I know deep down that I probably won't care about all that extra stuff that people want. I don't know. It's like there's a kind of power that money has over us. It's become so subconscious that we blame it on other things and use words like "need" to justify our excessive consumerist tendencies. But alas, this is our reality and we do need some form of money to get us from day to day. I have yet to decide what I want to spend the rest of my life doing to placate my inner consumerist, and that is the scary part because between now and then, I have to seriously think about every step that I make and how it's related to the next step I'll take and so on. It's a challenging thing to just be thrust into the world and be pressured - if not expected - to flourish. And many people have the mindset for it. I am afraid I may have to mull a bit linger over that one and see how I fare later on. In the meantime, I'll just write about my feelings because that's all I have for now.

Uncreated World: Home

I could write a novel on the smells of home. My city town is warm, warmer than the sun, the sum of the warmth of its parts like no other. I could write a symphony on the sounds that it makes as it breathes in life and exhales slowly, holding on to each breath as long as it can. I can feel it moving beneath me, around me, inside me. This pride, this loathing, this love i have for my home. But, my eyes are still clouded by youth and inexperience and margins and percentages and statistics that make me a part of this, a part of that. I welcome the warmth of winter like it was summer's sweet kiss. And oh, how i have enjoyed my summers. I could write endless poems about how my summers are filled with love and  beauty and longing. I wish I could show the world my home and see how proud I am of where I am from. But, there is always this loathing. I cannot release it from my heart for the love I have is the other side of my hatred. This is my home, but, I do not feel at home, I know not what the feeling of home is. I've tried to write prescriptions on how to feel at home, what medicinal route to take, what dosage I should take the sights in. But, my home is not mine to love. It was created by people who know nothing about me who I know nothing about. I can't make myself leave because this is the only thing like home I've ever known. But I do want to be free, outside where they sell 5 emalangeni umbila on the street. But I'll never fit in. Because my tongue does not roll the same way and my tone does not tone the same way. I am an outcast and a statistic. A percentage on a paper that more than 13% of the people of this country cannot read. Don't forgive me, for I have done nothing wrong, but let me be in peace and let me stay without quarrel. Because my home is mine. And nobody can take it from the depths of my heart.

Judging Me

Isn't it nice that everyone can write so well? That they have metaphors and similes and all that juxtaposition of alliterated whatever. And then there's me who has so much to say buy can't say it the way you like to hear it. I know, it's weird isnt it? That there's a method to how people want to write and how they end up writing is completely different. But here I am, simplifying everything because I don't want to not remember what and how and why I felt like writing. It's almost always about myself or someone who I care about really. Not many other people can put me in such a vulnerable emotional position to let loose and put oen to oaoer as it were. But I, alas, am not as eloquent as they need me to be. The literary minds of everyday people who decide whose poetry to engage with because it sounds like they should be snapping their fingers. And don't get me wrong, I have no beef with that, it's just. My heart hurts every time I write because I put a piece of my soul into each and every one if my poems and even these preludes to poetry have a fair bit of heart in them. But the flow, the intonation, the way you read it isn't supposed to do anything but make you think what I'm thinking, and paint an image in your mind's eye of how I'm feeling. And maybe it's my fault for not getting it across well enough, or even expecting too much from my writing. And maybe it's your fault for holding my words to the same standard you hold everything else to. I can't judge really. All I'm saying is let me write the way I write. Tips and hints and comments are fine but, they become condescending after a while and all I can picture is you thinking that you're better than how I feel. And that hurts. But I can bounce back, frankly I don't care what anyone thinks (almost a contradiction but not quite) i just want to write without people being judges about it to my face. Poets are sensitive people when it comes to their work. Respect that.