Crystal Heart

I feel just like Tiaan after a bad cricket game
every day his lips in a tight, embittered line,
a sad teenager is just like living with death
itself, when he gets into the car the tem-
perature drops, I act stupid just to make
him laugh in spite of himself

Here I am at work embittered, suffering because
I lost my self-esteem also, I dreamt of giving a
better performance, then discovered my work
has no value at all, this painful realisation des-
troys my concentration, my heart is broken as
Mr Mohapi remarked on beholding

The scratched crystal heart in the little blue bag
you gave me as a token of appreciation, I am
consumed by a guilty conscience – I failed in
combating my inability to do routine jobs and
have not lived up to your expectations, I feel
much worse than Tiaan ever could

But no time for sackcloth and ashes, we must help
him to regain his self-confidence – I hide my
own fears, withdrawing from life…

[I thought I could make up for my shortcomings
by trying my best in whatever tasks I could master,
but it is not working, knowing that I am actually
hindering my colleagues instead of helping means
my life is meaningless and I must try harder to
overcome my love for the rhythm of lines which
determines the beat which dictates the choice of
sound which requires the right number of syllables
in all the terms to keep the time sequence right
which means my work is all wrong… we have
to relay meaning, not create a melody…]

Wanders Disconsolately

Sitting on my own quiet island
in the middle of others’ happy
activity, clasped in the numbing
arms of the allergy

Stiff neck and back while the upper
lobes of my brain are pressurised
I cannot escape by hitching a ride
on anyone’s words -

music or dreams because my mind
is stuck on the lowest level of the
Dungeon Dimensions, pills have no
effect, my only hope is

Quantum Physics and concomitant
explanation of the world as hologram –
these scientific terms calm my mind as
it wanders disconsolately

Between universes, exiled from its own
happy station somewhere between
fantasy and reality…

Exiled From Beauty

Ten new letters to the President, while still
suffering the aftereffects of malva pudding
and chocolate cake, the pressure in my head
pressing me down into the thick black sheet
of reality’s trampoline

I can’t jump up and down to look at the rosy
clouds of dreams, stuck in the molasses of
chemical imbalances, fighting madly for es-
cape, afraid my mind seems too weak to
tunnel through this black hole

And emerge into a new universe on the other
side, can't fall through the rabbit hole like Alice
in Wonderland, I have to use the wormholes of
reality postulated by Einstein, moving in another
dimension outside temporal space

Oh make haste and send your message, Oracle
of Delphi, send it by telepathy to let my inner senses
know victory will be mine in the end, I shall not remain
caught in the snare of corporeal existence for too long
exiled from the beauty

Of the original melody that called the universe into
existence, still responding to the harmonics of
Gregorian chant and bel canto song…