Category Archives: life

by

twice to die 

Who I was then...

  has not brought me here.

I came by some accord
  the voice of which
  is difficult to hear.
 
Footsteps lost in dust.
History with the past.
Nothing really lasts
  even with an iron grasp.
 
A quick creation.
Fleeting salvation
  followed by soul starvation
  and incessant rumination.
 
Who I am now
  was impossible to see
  in that seed
  whence I came to be.
 
Inside this human shape,
  — someway, somehow,
  there was a plan
  I could not know.
 
Searching did not reveal.
For years the genuine seed
  remained under seal.
No matter how deep you dig
  or high you fly
  that seed wants you to die.
 
One day the dice rolls on.
And while you aren’t aware
  that seed becomes your swan.
It turns your life right around
  and lifts you off the ground.
 
See,
  Second life
  comes from a story
  written in your book.
Regardless what, 
  it will weave its way
  to glory
  and give you 
  what the first life took.

Until the ink runs out then,
  I shall define my life
  through the pen...
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by

Defrost

pain-smoke-death

My heart screams. My brain finds no rest.

I have to speak out, and simultaneously I condemn any ridiculous arguments that attempt to justify harming even ONE human being in the process.
(i.e. It is absurd to assume that everyone nearing the fence in the Gaza strip is a Hamas terrorist?)

I see mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters and loved ones in hellish agony. All of this has found echo in my head. Images of the affected in this progressive hate saga between Israelis & Palestinians continually interrupt my whole stream of consciousness when awake and asleep.

The future is for the young first, and only then it is for the rest of us. Alas, there is no future in this case. There is only hate and pain and segregation. Known also as Apartheid, this system forcefully singles out a group of people in the most demeaning, derogatory, insensitive, insulting and inhumane way. As is proven once more here, such systems are upheld by the powerful and the victims are depicted as the villains, who one has to be protected from at all cost, even by murder.

The world is mostly ruled by the old and stubborn who don’t waver from their stance and who continually garner support for what they think is the rightful cause, bending the ear of those who elected them.

When rulers bring war and destruction and hate instead of wisdom, love and peace, then you know they are the wrong leaders.

My roots reach deep into two countries: South Africa and Germany. Both have experienced the worst of humanity. The rainbow also doesn’t shine every day in our rainbow nation but the rainbow will forever be in our minds when we remember the atrocities of the past.

An answer can never be found in war, fences, concentration camps and human abuse.

Also, no answers are found when these leaders sit together because they will never agree as long as they insist on playing chess.

The solution lies with the young and innocent and the dreamers, thinkers and innovators.
They have to sit together and define what they want because the world belongs to them, and not to the warring, dead of conscience fanatics tainted with the brush of history, self-righteousness and other ills.

Analysing history, as we are known to do, should teach us how to deal with the future. Why don’t we get it?
All naysayers out there have a closer look at the miraculous, peaceful transformation of South Africa.

Where there is a will there is a way!

What is immediately required is a human bridge, an influx of support from all nations to stand with the oppressed, confused and petrified.

“Bring the future back to those who have lost it.”

I call on all in the world, young and old, to do this for those who suffer.

The promise of life only exists if you have a future.

“A denied future is dead life.”

Could any conscience live with such a thought any longer than a moment, let alone decades?

Let there be a human curtain made out of every living fabric that says: ‘Stop and change.’
Dismantle the barricades, the obstructions, the walls and fences and melt the ice of the frozen.

The time to forcefully exclude and deny has no space in the 21st century.

Here is an appeal to the big operators, profit-machines, life-changers, innovators and altruists and philanthropists, to dedicate a paragraph in a chapter of their book in their life to aid in solving this human catastrophe now. The affected parties can’t solve it: the UN can’t, and other nations can’t but the people of the world can. Some things are beyond governing bodies; they are in the individual hands of humanity across all and any divide.

This is an appeal to all the young and spirited and compassionate, — who cannot sleep another night just like I at 0230 this morning, — to create a tsunami, an avalanche, an eruption of change through their presence and their voice.

Let the airlines offer free tickets for this human cause. Let the food companies and all industries that make huge profits provide shelter and food for those heeding the cause.

Let it be a humanitarian evolution. Call it the Sunrise of Humanity. Let all nations congregate where weapons currently decide human fate. Let the flags of 190+ nations stare down any aggression from either side.

Will you shoot my flag?

May every soldier with a weapon become aware not only of the responsibility to his country/people but also the responsibility to humanity.

Could you bear the burden for the rest of your life of being a traitor to any one of them?

Let us be part of this movement lest we want to be judged for non-action when our conscience faces its last breath.

Do something. Anything. Everybody, do it. Make music, write, paint, go there…,we have to roll that drama over and bring those, who had the unimaginable happen in the life of their ancestors, to the realization of their inhumane actions. History is wagging a very irritated finger.

My old Zulu friend Jameson ‘Umkuhlu’ Mthembu speaks from deep within his wise soul when he says,

umkuhlu1

 

 

“Don’t put a fridge by your heart,”

 

 

 

…not for longer than a few hours or at most a day or two.

“Everyone:  your time is up,”

that is quite obvious to all and yourself.

One of the critical human lessons and actions towards progress is that you have to put ‘stuff’ behind you in order to move forward. — Do it!

It is time to defrost.

*Picture from AFP on http://www.spiegel.de

by

uncentered

Cloudman why are you waving at me?

Is there something I don’t see?

cloudman

I am nothing

I am clueless

I am lost

 

No cheque in the post

Fruitless attempts to summit my life, oh yes

Contempt with insanity’s grin

 

Decades have rolled on

Overgrown now the paths I once ventured

Blinded and stuck on some, —  far too long

Sometimes it really feels that I’m done

 

Now, time is called the ‘aftermath’

That little left should be made to last

Create the antecedent of tomorrow

Leave out today’s horror,

relegate that to the past

 

Nothing: is all that matters

Clueless: the more the better

Lost: is the prize not the cost

 

by

died it 

He believed, then doubted, then died it

 
Creativity was his door to become more

Poetry and prose were the tears that he cried,

  and he toiled with the question:

What was it all for?

 

Doubt was the dust

  infiltrating even his purest intention

Now he lies spent like rain in the grass,

  tears on a tissue, lipstick on a glass

Not even the universe affords him attention

 

He always believed too much,

  and proof was never important as such

If he liked it, he deemed it to be true,

  even if experts were cleverer and knew

 

His world, perhaps, was slightly askew

 

Belief was like a train:

Up front the idea, creditability and fame

…so far so good

Followed by wagons of responsibilities,

  too many to name

…that was the drudge

Suddenly a yardstick emerged

  with which he was judged (his ideas)

 

Yes, he believed a lot

But, certainly didn’t want to be put on the spot

  for that which he called ‘the smoke from his pot’

It wasn’t religion or philosophy or such,

  they were ideas,

  life’s attempts at art with a smudge

 

Believing was more like following a trail

Not weighing each thought or step on a scale

T'was an indication of an approximate direction,

  and was prone to frequent correction

 

Believing and doubting were forever composing,

One minute blissfully flying over harmonies crest,

  euphorically losing control in the zest

and then,

  crashing into the trough of Wagner’s gloomiest best

He was cog and engine in a perpetually opposing quest

 

Shattered belief, triumphant doubt,

  sometimes one or the other acted out

A farmer of conflict, a dreamer of hope,

  ever the next wave of life should puzzle it out

 

Liberally sown by doubt the seeds of conflict abound

That’s why believing in dreams is so very allowed

But,
 
  dreams are also the food 

  which conflict gobbles to sprout

  and once it has grown

  it smothers the dreams

  so they lose the belief in their own

 

If life was nurtured by believing in dreams,

  no matter how irrational they seemed

and doubt destroys them with such might

  undoubdetly, he thought, he had just died