"Absence and death are the same - only that in death there is no suffering." (Theodore Roosevelt)


Remembering the life and times of an amazing grandmother. Rest in peace mbuya.

good at being alone...(Burial - Archanagel)

So it's been a while since my last post. Mainly I think I just forgot I had a blog but that random stream of rants and ramblings had to come back sooner or later.

I'm currently back in South Africa on holiday and staying with my folks while I'm here. Had an interest chat with my old man last week about the complexities of raising children and how you just never know how it's going to work out.

It got me thinking. If I wind up being half as good a husband and father as my old man is, I'll be pretty content with life.

I guess this is not so much a post as a big up to my old man!

Would you trade your life?

I spend a lot of time inside my head. Jumping from deep conversations with myself about life, love & and everything else, to random assessments of how my life would be, if I was someone else. 

I think about lives I could have changed, businesses I could have built, wars I could have fought and people I could have know. It's often a welcome break from reality. But the reality of my existence always trumps my cognitive flights of fancy. Don't get me wrong, my life has been great up to this point, but I can never seem to escape the question of how to become something more/different than the person I am today.

Do I just take charge and change direction, or will fear of the unknown ultimately hold me back? Do I incrementally adjust or is that a sure fire way of ensure I never diverge entirely.

So man questions. Still searching for answers. Still wondering if I would trade my life.

Puff Puff Give

I can’t talk for long
I’ve got things to do.
But I was alone
And I wanted to talk
About you
About me
About us.

About nothing in particular
About anything
Anything really that involves
Me
You
Us.

I wanted to talk about everything
But I have nothing to say
So lets just talk about nothing
Not about me
You
Or us.

I have to go but I feel better now
Because I was alone,
With me
Then you
Then us
And anything else
That is nothing in particular.

I write, I cry...I don’t and I will die

I see you by my side
Knowing you are not there.
---------------------------------
I write because I’m unhappy
And even I need some release
From this melancholy siesta
This pitiful, pitiful prison.

I write because I’m weak
An I feel I must make you all happy,
Keep you satisfied
And let you think that
I’m really in control.

I write because I need to remember
Where I came from to know where
Not to go
To never forget the slow sinking dew drops
In my soul.
To win one unsubstantial battle
In this war, which
I cannot begin to fight.

I write because I need to cry
- cry out to anyone willing to listen.
I write because I feel
- feel nothing but hurt, in flesh
like salt in the open

I, like a needle – I hurt
I hurt because I do not know
I do not know because,
I cannot know.
At least not today, not while
I’m unhappy.

Riddle me this

Elementary my dear
it’s just a game that’s all.
Such it is, and so
It is such
Leaving a minuscule difference between
Too little and too much.
If you desire it to be this
You invariably end up with that
Perchance you’ll dream
But in reality fall flat.

By and by you might just win
Rise to the top and be crowned a king.
Till then good fellow,
All I can say is “Adieu”
Flee I must, this game was never designed for two

If you really love something

If you love something let it tear you apart
And break you from within.
If you truly love it
Chances are you’ll never win.

If you love something run from it
An see if it follows
If you truly love it
The empty loneliness will not be hollow.

If you love something be natural
And don’t let everyone know
If you truly love it
Then your love itself will show.

If you love something free it
And let it be
If you truly love it
Listen and don’t love like me

“Life is like a snowball.
If you don’t stop it at the beginning,
It just gets more dangerous”

Gone Fishin’

The passing thoughts of the changing moment
Leave me for an instant and for a time
Are gone.
In that time I am void,
A hollow black hole,
Independent of fact
Living in fiction.

I am empty as the thoughts
Glide over the contours of the earth,
As they shout from the roof tops
Their cries echoing in the depths of the valleys
Of my mind.

I am as empty as the thoughts
That have left me,
Standing in the dark in these final hours
to make it so.

My thoughts are of beauty
Never changing but always new.
My thoughts are my own
My thoughts are you.

Purple Petals, with a Yellow Stain

Smile for me one last time
That I might remember you
Smile so that every sense in me may be
Heightened in the ecstasy of my world that is you

Look at me and be the closing
Image, to mark the beginning of this night
Look so that our eyes might engage
In a seemingly endless touch,
An eternal conversation

Move and gesture
While the world is still at rest
Move and gesture
Let me imagine your sweet caress

Speak to me, fill me with the
Nothingness of us.
Tell me about the emptiness
Of we.
Explain to me that which
Has not been.

Love me,
Just for a moment
Do nothing else,
But love me.

Billy Shake the Spear

I have nothing to offer you
That much you should know
I have no silver or gold
I’m not wise and neither am I old
I have no stories to tell
I’m quite simple as well
I have nothing much give you
Just in case you hadn’t seen
No platinum gifts
No comment to uplift
I have few riches and no wealth
By the way I’m in horrible health
I have no thoughts on this moment
And now I have no more words for this sonnet

Big Brother is watching...

Watching, waiting
Waiting in watch.
Never blinking
Of you I am thinking.

Watching, waiting
Do I watch too much?
Never sighing or though
Inside I’m dying.

Watching, crying
Waiting smiling.
Time passes by
The never faltering eye.

Waiting, laughing
Watching nothing
Never blinking
Of you I am thinking.

The End?

At the end where do we go, with whom do we stay?
Do we look down and protect those we loved?
If we burn do we join the sea, and there will we always be?

What about the words that we never got to say?
Is there a second chance?
What about romance?
What of those who didn’t believe, what becomes of them?
When does eternity end, cause I don’t feel like waiting?

I speak from my heart but is there anyone listening,
Are you all too busy doing what you “have” to do?

I don’t not fear death; it is not the end.
It is life that scares me.
I look forward to the end and receive it with open arms.
Do you?

May be then I will be with all those who could not wait and went ahead.
When I die who will care, I feel there is nobody there.

Death is not the end,
It is merely my gateway to the beginning.

(In loving memory of Panganai and Baby John Tandi)

Old folks hoax

Slowly, slowly he is coming to terms
With the fact that his world will no longer turn.

Painfully he is watching a hole grow in his heart
With the end so close it is too late for him to start.

He’s forgetting, what it is to feel
The scars are deep, he will never heal.

He knows that his wounds have only just begun
He wonders if there is much further left to run.

Gradually he is watching the picture turning grey and grim
Every moment, drawing closer the suffering, still in store for him.

He sees it all gently fading away
And there is nothing he can do or say.

He hears the music dying down
As they take it all, take his crown.

It’s so dark, and there’s nothing left
But he alone can not forget.
The pain increases each day and yet
Only he, has no regrets.

I don't write about myself
I write about all the people I am not

All my lines
Carefully scripted
To please the masses
Keep them entertained

All these lines
Mental masturbation at best
Dreams of all I could have been
At worst

tell me joy
where are you wasting away
who's life have you found better to fill
where are your days spent
and who is it you keep company in the nights
are you ever to return

tell me joy
why do i no longer deserve you
now who will inhabit my dreams
how can you be here only to mock me

I am a complicated man.
So complicated that not even I can begin to understand myself.
The only thing that plagues me.
Haunts me, day in and day out.
Is that nagging feeling that something is very, very wrong.
Constantly...

I knew a man who lived in fear
It was huge, it was angry, it was drawing near
Behind his house, a secret place
Was the shadow of the demon he could never face
He built a wall of steel and flame
And men with guns, to keep it tame
Then standing back, he made it plain
That the nightmare would never ever rise again
But the fear and the fire and the guns remain

It doesn’t matter now
It’s over anyhow
He tells the world that it’s sleeping
But as the night came round
I heard its lonely sound
It wasn’t roaring, it was weeping

And then one day the neighbors came
They were curious to know about the smoke and flame
They stood around outside the wall
But of course there was nothing to be heard at all
"My friends," he said, "We’ve reached our goal
The threat is under firm control
As long as peace and order reign
I’ll be damned if I can see a reason to explain
Why the fear and the fire and the guns remain"

Weeping - Dan Heyman (http://www.weeping.info/Weeping.html)

Sadly there are still so many who aren't roaring but rather weeping around the world...