A collection of some of the poems I´ve written over the years
I want to fly again
Into the wispy winds of time
Beyond the valleys and the seas
Over sandy beaches
And laughing children
Over hands held in love
And friends embracing
I want to fly again
Into dream-carved sunsets
Beyond dancing shadows
Over smokey fires
And smiling octogenerians
Over lovers locked in dance
And flowers in bloom
I want to fly again
I want to fly again
I’m on the pink pedestal above the clouds
Where the air is rare and crisp
The world below me is a world asleep
Awash in a myriad of colours from the stars above
The day is not dead and the night is not alive
She does not stir, a beautiful behemoth at peace
And here I stand with the sky on my shoulders
Held aloft by the winds of my ancestors
My face is torn and tense and my mind is in a warp
My soles are blistered and my dignity charred
But I am alive, alive alive
And I can scream into the setting sun and the jeer the dying day
I can laugh well into the oncoming night
And dance on the cusp of the dawn
For my tears of elation shall fall as raindrops on your soul
And my swiveling dreams will echo as whispers in eternity
The weight of the world on my outstretched arms
The billowing dawn of the night upon my cheeks
“How irreparably changed my life has become. It’s always the last day of summer and I’ve been left out in the cold with no door to get back in. I’ll grant you I’ve had more than my share of poignant moments. Life passes most people by while they’re making grand plans for it. Throughout my lifetime, I’ve left pieces of my heart here and there. And now, there’s almost not enough to stay alive. But I force a smile, knowing that my ambition far exceeded my talent. There are no more white horses or pretty ladies at my door.” George Jung
Restlessness haemorrhages heftily at my kleptomania
It’s a sinner’s cud I chew, ruminating as I am, on insomnia
The world outside me sleeps, draped in a white winter blackness
The world beneath me lies placid, morbid in its sullen sadness
Twists of fate and drops of hate glisten in the silvery moonlight
The shadows mock my wide eyed glare, hiding sense from sight
A cry shatters the silence, a shriek only my ears can hear
A vessel runs aground; causality’s casual cadence in crescendo somewhere near
And so I stare, goon eyed and glaring, playing tag with the daring
Into a mist that engulfs my sanity, stabbing at my plexus with its swirl
Gnashing at my nerves, pampering my discord, twisting with its every curl
The witching hour is upon me now, and I’m held captive to its antagonism
Irate and innate she hammers vociferously away, deaf to dissent, deaf to cynicism
And so to fate I commit my plight, to the hope of a time when all is all right
Tis but hope so faint, so quaint, so lame, so cold on this vicious night.
I’m looking towards the fields of Eden- to the vast Savannah plains that I grew up on, in whose whispers lie my dreams, my soul, my very being. My Savannah plains across which I rode my horse into the cool wind, and the rising dawn. Far from humanity and the struggles of the jealous, the selfish, the decadent, far from the maddening crowds.
This is to going home again, to the place where we came from. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
I looked towards the fields of Eden
Towards the furrows of hope neatly plowed
To youth, meticulously sown into the thirsty soil
youth, born barren, innocent, coy like the day
tamed to love, tamed to the content of the self
Free of grass, free of the bottle,
liberated from junk food and materialism
sheltered from selfishness and envy and pride
And all manner of primordial vices and vexations
I looked towards the fields of Eden
To a dawn of peace, a rising amber
A higher consciousness
My idyllic wanderings, my unconquerable naivety
For I have dreamed, and danced, laughed, cried, laughed some more and dreamed again. Another day, another revolving frame.
I’ve watched the best fall from their crest, watched the moon rise from the fickle flames of the departing day.
I have seen the sharpest minds of my generation crumble and crash; melt away like sand pillars in the Sahara
I’ve seen fingers pointed, stones hurled, dictators ousted, oligarchs substituted.
I have hurt my mother the earth, harmed myself by spectating from the amphitheater of society. I have laughed and dreamed and danced on this spectacular stage turned molten by the state of crisis
watched the greedy get hungrier, seen the hungry starve and the opulent flourish.
Now, all that’s left are words and stanzas, paper frames, paper planes and the falling confetti shreds of dreams already danced, already departed.
I have been in Eden, partaken in its abundance
watched rogue elements wreak havoc on good people and come to the indefinite conclusion that there must be a reason why we are all still here.
For we shall dream, laugh, dance and cry another day, another departing hour.
A poem for lost friends. Although gone, your light will forever shine amongst us.
Chariots of passion call to you from the heavens,
To you, dim and dead in your coffin, clean and shaven
Under a summer breeze, bathed in a warm savannah sun you sleep
In a mahogany coffin so deep
Into the fiery sky you soar, free as the stars that clutter the sky
Way beyond the whispers of the wind, o so very high
A tale of tales you leave behind,
A written imprint that drenches the stained eyes of your kind
Under a veil of blackness, a beautiful maidens eyes glisten
And within her, the ears of one unborn listen
Curiously and unwittingly to the sound of inevitability, to the blunt chants of death
Yet to her, awaits a plenteousness of opportunity, to her whose name shall be Beth Under crimson ambience into a white light you commit
And upon heaven’s golden gates you shall knock
The sky is but a sagging tarpaulin of jaded grey
Hung decadently from the hooks of faded stars
My eyes sag and itch, red with the pain of failure
And the numbing shock of disappointment
I have loved and lost, loved and lost another day
Another soul, another unconquerable surmount
I shall hope again another day, another dawn
When the flakes of this malaise are far from my mind
And the heat of the summer sun scorches my skin
I shall love again another, day, another dawn
the unconquerable vice of life
From the fumbled state of this festive twist, comes the dawn, bright, breezy and bold, a wandering nomad in the mist
The air is thick with ash and fog from the bygone night,
a lingering pattern of wispy plumes and dreamy shades
She’s in a void, past the trapdoors of perception, beneath the ether, she is the ether, the pale, rain-wrecked grey of the day before
She’s knotted into the neatly woven fabric of the night, beneath the flowing seams of the subconscious afore
Her eyes hold the stars of the fading night, the dreams of her forefathers and their kin before them
She is the rain and the drop, the bass, the alto, the nervous, the stable , the yang, the ying, the paint strokes, the fluttering shudder that shaded them
She’s the pale, the pitch, the string, the stitch. She’s my whole world and i’m but a flicker in the dancing shadows of her moonlit life.
For my beautiful earth :
I could hug this sullen silence
Dazzling and morose like the early morning’s sunrise
I’m full of peace, blushing like the red savannah earth in the soft sunrise
I could embrace this tranquil silence
Distant and faded like the dusty twilight yonder
I’m inundated by feeling, flushing like rose petals in the scorching noon
I could kiss this beautiful silence
Divine and stately like the starry nocturnal skyline
I’m overwhelmed with love, burning like cedar embers in the black night.
IDIDIT Pass- Present- Future
AmK.
Restlessness haemorrhages heftily at my kleptomania
It’s a sinner’s cud I chew, ruminating as I am, on insomnia
The world outside me sleeps, draped in a white winter blackness
The world beneath me lies placid, morbid in its sullen sadness
Twists of fate and drops of hate glisten in the silvery moonlight
The shadows mock my wide eyed glare, hiding sense from sight
A cry shatters the silence, a shriek only my ears can hear
A vessel runs aground; causality’s casual cadence in crescendo somewhere near
And so I stare, goon eyed and glaring, playing tag with the daring
Into a mist that engulfs my sanity, stabbing at my plexus with its swirl
Gnashing at my nerves, pampering my discord, twisting with its every curl
The witching hour is upon me now, and I’m held captive to its antagonism
Irate and innate she hammers vociferously away, deaf to dissent, deaf to cynicism
And so to fate I commit my plight, to the hope of a time when all is all right
Tis but hope so faint, so quaint, so lame, so cold on this vicious night.
Kortbæk_Travels 