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"I've lived and died
in the mirrors of strangers eyes.
Drawing from a cast of thousands, each elaborate disguise.
Yet even in this theatre, Primed for weary reprise, An inquiry ripples through, Under the skin of old lies.
Who am I? But In between and unseen longing for someone to recognise"
What is left after a fire runs through you?
The phantom ash of what was,
An air heavy with swirling requiems to dreams,
A palette of grey?
Could there be in the aftermath,
The space and sustenance for those seeds that survive?
Enlivened by the remains, weary but knowing,
Of the reasons for seasons.
Some nights I distill the foundations of my will,
Tracing the depths of this yearning to be of use.
The waves washed us clean...
Buoyant beasts in midday sun,
Diving deep beneath cacophony,
Breath baited to shores unseen.
"For where does one go?
When cast into dwellings of doubt,
built only for the joy of smoke.
When caught between
daily races
and the lure of the stars?
When the earth is arid
for seeds you long to sow?"
A cerulean surrender,
A tender balm of silence,
Seeping through window pores,
into chambers not yet a home.
In this graceful suspension,
With fortunes set to the currents,
There is no knowing
of how far we'll go...
It often appears to me that we have a cavernous hunger within our psyche. An insatiable appetite for knowing that rumbles through our blood and bones. An often bittersweet reverence of predictability. One that manifests itself in innocuous practicalities that make contemporary life, many would argue, better! Yet amidst our intricate maps, our technology, systems and methods ...I am often encumbered by a thought. The thought that men and women may well forge forward to understand the intricacies of stars and planets, even inhabit them, without having journeyed inward with purpose. Inward into that murky landscape some call the soul. The palette of artists, authors, musicians and the timeless pedestal of seers, prophets and philosophers. That map-less terrain upon which no house can ever be built . For its soil is teeming with life that is felt but never seen. A life that cracks through the naive predictability of all the foundations we attempt to lay upon its surface.
Ah...how I have detested these spaces within! Its taunting mixtures of fear and memory. Its unending questions, its grip upon all corners of time; the past, present and future all confused within its unending universe. The burden of thought with each plunge for answers, like sifting through the Sahara with a spoon! An endeavor that left my hopes parched, desires unfulfilled and me, alone in the eviscerating heat of an impossible escape.
Escape...for it was in the chaos of struggle that I was plunged into these depths I now refer to as soil. Yet in truth, it possessed no label, it was a place of suffering in my eyes, an abstraction in the depths of my mind from which I sought refuge. Refuge earned in desperate doses , albeit in brief moments of fantasy, of gratitude and service to others. A surface smile and sarcastic charm that veiled the intensity of suffering beneath. For that murky undertow, in all its depravity, could not be accepted. It needed to be suppressed, if at all possible, forgotten, as if it were some torrid imagining. For above it all was where life was worthwhile, even if it were a spectacle tasked with distraction. It was a life one could speak of , one which could be rationalised and planned for.
Alas... if you have attempted this with great earnest, you must feel the weight of the air beneath my sigh when I say that it is an exercise in futility. For I walked countless roads, with both feet and mind, only to return to the incessant beat of my core. That pounding within, like Poe's Tell-Tale Heart, unyielding in its seek of my sincere attention. Laughing at my meager armoury, my fondness of distress, all too aware of my tenderness.
Oh how weary I grew! Spent and ashamedly confused. Believe me... I do not lay claim to any convenient wisdom or badges of courage in saying any of this. For in entering this world, we are bereft of choice and as such, living is an act of courage that we all partake in. If at all, the intensity of weariness rendered me momentarily blind. Blind to pictures painted, roles cast and stories told. Fatigue tore open a void within which I could eventually summon the strength to see anew.
For in the depths of my weariness, questions simmered in the darkness. Centered on the utility of this murky core I endured visits to. "Surely there must be a purpose to it beyond suffering? These cycles of remembrance, these self deprecating projections ...do they serve any purpose?" This line of thought, in the winding canals of my day dreams, were incisive.They opened me to the possibility of extracting some use from the smoke within. Smoke from fires started long ago. And this is how I came to call my core...my soil. For utility implies the potential of growth and for any of consequence to grow...there must be fertile soil.
Could it not be that we are akin to seedlings, tunneling through an ambiguous earth in seek of sustenance? A journey in which our roots persistently swim through the damp earth of our experiences, tasked with the purpose of growth. Our leaves and branches in a vibrant dance to the songs of the sun, until the moon invites us to dream. A gorgeous symbiosis. For what is one without the other? Does a tree with shallow roots not risk the felling of its ambitions by the winds of circumstance? Does a system of roots, so attuned to the underground, not languish and lose heart without the joy of the sun? Without the sweet longing of its flowers and fruits to be of use to this world? Oh does this thought not shake to the foundations our infantile tales of light and dark? Does this not at the very least prompt us to consider how little we value struggle, our supposed demons, our darkness in the depths of our minds. Does it not ask us, in spite (and moreover because) of our fears, to dig deeper into our beings as opposed to building towers atop false foundations?
Oh brothers and sisters, forgive any pretense contained herein. In this rambling cerebral alchemy. For it is with unending sincerity that I share the truth of my realizations. I have long seen within, a hideous being, barely fit to persist. A swirl of smokey images that lingered all the more when I sought to escape them. Is it only when I chose to borrow deeper that I could see their fires of origin, the innocence of the starter. When doused with loving temperance, oh the lessons, the fertility contained in the ash! Oh the relief, the surge of power that flows through your being when these words swim within you....
" From all that has come to pass...how will I to grow?"
The click of the pendulum was a thread of sound in a fabric of silence. A mixture of waning daylight and the warm glow of a solitary bulb stretched across the white walls of the room. He was seated at the head of the dining table, surveying his surrounds with a curious gleam in his eyes.
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In the depths of the haze I was in, I found solace in the strangest things. I was waiting for the reasons to dawn on me, reasons to persevere, to rejoice in the midst of my despondency. Not the reasons of intellect, those wisps of so called insight have never had the roots to survive within me. I was waiting for reasons that would reverberate through my very being. I was waiting as I would for the train at Central Station every evening ...for a timely means to get me home. And It was here that a peculiar habit started to form...
![New Bern Pigeon[1]](http://static1.squarespace.com/static/594e46141b631bec82272373/594f491acab339884c8ff4f6/594f4931cab339884c8ffb88/1498368305077/New-Bern-Pigeon1.jpg?format=original)
One day I rose from the catacombs of thought and my eyes chanced upon a group of pigeons roosting on the platform's rafters. Their breathing seemingly vigorous and brimming with vitality. Their movements like uninhibited expressions of every impulse swimming within them. I was captivated by this scene and thereafter, I would habitually scan the rafters and while away the wait. Days turned to weeks and then to months. I'd often feel the borders of a rare smile on my face upon each sighting.
I ask myself what it was that drew me to this seemingly unspectacular scene each day. Perhaps it was a sense of kinship I felt in their seemingly frantic ways, their apparent lack of direction and purpose. Their subservience to impulse. Their existence in the shadows of the lives of others, relegated and labelled rats of the skies , scavenging upon the scraps of those who truly lived.
Or was it very different? Was it that I perceived their manner as being reflective of an intensity of living I sought? A freedom from the shackles of thought. Did they encapsulate a vitality and innocence lost to the largely mechanical, discontent passengers below? Were they smiling at the useless smoke I was mired in? Was I smiling back because some part of me recognised this?
Alas it is the nature of the mind to examine all of this in hindsight. To vilify or to romanticize, to simplify or to add layers to what was. The truth is that it was likely a murky mixture of these reasons that swam in the sea that is my subconscious. What I do know is that the sight of those birds brought me to the present. Freeing me, if but for a series of moments, from the tentacle grip of the past. Immersing me in the vitality of living through the sheer contrast of their impulsive activity against my rare stillness. I am of the firm conviction that this in itself was instrumental in me transcending the smokey rooms that thought created within me... so I would wield my pen again.
As I walked along the platform this morning , I paid thanks to my old friends as they flew on to their daily adventures. For when I was waiting, they were beacons of the present.
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.
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.
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...
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!
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...
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.
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.
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.
Late night cacophony,
Two discordant voices
teasing at the seams
of my reality.
Dear...
I'll find a way of letting you know
(such familiarity is fantasy)
Beyond this mere periphery,
(eyes see not the spirit)
Past old scars,
(entrenched)
There is love in me.
(What of its worth)
Love...
(a pedestrian word)
I will find a way for you to see,
(to fear i'll submit)
For I can't quite explain
(inarticulate as I am)
This dreamscape you fill,
(My rugged terrain)
We are bound by purpose
(infantile thoughts persist)
to the land and its people,
in a union of synergy
and I smile as I never have,
tracing your face in starlight.
(Oh the tentacle grip of my imagination)
These voices,
cast shadows
that swallow possibility.
Silence is pristine.
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,
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.
They breathe...
this wood, these walls
and the memories upon them.
Free from my forgetful haze,
To compose calm from ruin.
Held in this lunar caress,
We lie in silent witness,
To the dance of fireflies
in echoes of our old lives.
And in your soft eyes,
In this thirst between our lips,
We find maps to this meridian.
