Category: art

Intangibles

Mother followed all the trends –
Scarsdale and grapefruit diets,
minis and maxis,
platforms and pumps –
reaching for an ideal
my child’s mind
could not comprehend

Father dreamt of a voice makeover
had flown his ancestral roots
in search of…what?
I did not know

I learned that men
were to be pleased,
and compassion
was a woman’s role
and it was folly to hazard
confrontation when alcohol
was in the mix,

Intangible as life was
I deduced that secrets –
the avoidance of scandal –
rendered women ineffective

and by the very circumstance
of my birth, I was tainted,
weighted by shame
destined to endure
pain as love
invested in
my worthlessness

Except life is evolution
and rage emerges
from oppression
and conviction
smashes the impotence
of ideals, embraces
the abstracts
of fluidities,

and merging out of shame
I see that struggle
is opportunity

and that rewriting legacies
is an honourable goal
and I do have power
in any given moment…

only wish
I had known it
sooner.

(Art my own)

Mastery

Happenstance welcome,
dreamer that I am

Loyal to memories
and committed to progress

Professional ambitions unrequited,
I seek new avenues…

Failure a nag
provokes hesitation

Let me be!
I am independent!

This path is unique
and while I dwell
in contemplation of what ifs

I recognize my challenges,
the unreliability of illness,
expect no encores

Easier to focus
on what I can master
today.

(Watercolour mine)

Visible, Yet Hidden

I am visible, yet hiding –
balancing a vitality-blocking
disorder that renders me
inanimate, repulsive –

Who doesn’t flinch
in the face of deviancy?

Creativity obsesses
grasps hope that courage
will annihilate the beast,
that resourcefulness
is all it takes to overcome –
Hold on!  it cries, nestled
deep within the grief –

Oh, you think you see me,
but I assure you, my friend,
you do not – I am rebel,
lost in isolation, vulnerability
fantasizing revolution –

Resolve trapped between
the exaggeration of infinite
possibility and the unremarkable
defence of compulsion to survive –
thrive even, if spirit was not
so aghast at current setbacks.

(Image my own)

Stories

Trees have a story,
buried in their roots,
refined by seasonal passages,
etched in scarred bark

Birds know these stories
Sing their praise, unapologetic –
and we can hear them too,
if we only learn to listen

I have a story
birthed from parental lips
delineated by the jostling
of our many limbed life

It states that I am the good one,
the responsible, the brilliant,
the child of hope and valour…
this story is not mine

I am a tree, whose scars
suggest a history, whose roots
remain hidden, and whose voice
was lost in familial tempests

The birds know it, though
and carry my essence
on winged notes, back
to source, where I am written.

(Art my own)