Long journey labouring months of grief, darkness and hollow holes, Longing for the life lost, The one I search and seek, Craving the normality, The routine and daily crux, Resisting the awakening, The gift this curse has blessed me with, My neck breaks with compliance, Yet, like the abused, I lie awake, Communing with lies that are now gone, Like a Stockholm baby in the grave, Patience and grit in abundance, But darkness surrounds the…
Bashful rays seep through the fragrant petals of freshly blooming buds weeping branches hang heavy with ripened fleshy fruits yearning to be plucked from their bearer’s arms the ephemeral light pooling over boundless fields as the hatching twilight cocoons the sky the fleeting summer solstice ashes into a jaded umber dusk so come. feast. while the belly of the harvest is full and the horizon is bleak. -Raylene Naidoo
idol of my affection my moon hair of night and eyes of an even darker one. day’s fair dreams cannot fathom such a muse splitting midnight skies unsheathe a celestial beauty worthy of worship the eternal mother brimming with lustre an argent nobility swathed in ivory gossamer tufts a crownless queen hung in a starless sky. -Raylene Naidoo
If power is unmeasurable Does it mean it’s unlimited How long have we searched for the hidden tool Day and night searching like headless fools Not knowing that it only lies within both me and you Like a door waiting to be unlocked Or a person too afraid to just knock With fear of what’s on other the other end Is fear the only thing that really appears to look cool? With no where to…
I am rooted in the age of Morpheus. Sewed to the tapestry of the adversary. The chambers of the heart cry out the will to live. Eyes flutter open like butterfly wings from a dreamless cocoon. For I am awake. Threaded to fiction I pull at the seems, clutched to a false fantasy. With the roar of all the beasts under the heavens I rise. Oh deserter of the “World’s Womb”, flung violently into the…
Kingdom of Sand. I know that I am. Your long begotten son, born from Rain and Stone. Though I am severed from thee, I am of thy Bone. I tread the Tides, so far from birth. Swayed by Mighty Winds, I hold firm to the Earth. Guided by Moon and Star, I have sailed thus far. Dreams dashed to the wilderness, I voyaged out with nothing less. With heart rooted to thy shore, I wished…
Road of damnation. How long have my steps haunted scorched Asphalt. A mirage of my former frame Willed back to existence. As if projected through dust and air, From the memory of friends and family And yet corporeal…The hole remains, Void of light and warmth. And so I wander winding threads beyond what mortal eye could see Feet dragged heavy through cracked stone, Searching…until all of me is made whole. And as time unfolds, I…
Dog-bitten and soft, the casualty of our happy home gifts palmfuls of fruit each June, antisocial sanctum each afternoon. A simple hum, fluttering green thumb, dove chests and eggshell ribs soaking my parents’ pacific yard. Would it be so terrible? Bathtub voices, berries, jungly suspension over the yard? Every eye in this house a tree stump, a pair of well-worn feet. Everyone I love is a dandelion on a lawn, lifting lemony face, grinning at…
In final days, the sound of music. The smell of salt, softened. Fawn eyes, stains. The weeping, the willow, and the trucker: wavering leg, soft-bellied and tender in warm metal box. For Emma, again. Fizz of brilliant sprout each spring, caskets of cartilage each October. The number of moons needed to harvest a word, and how we only learned to fly because one afternoon two brothers saw a bird and wondered how to model its…
The storm arrived to play, to provoke the lake in earnest, after I set off on my swim. I felt it move from diamonds and gleam to graphite and raw edges. Weightless, tossed sideways over and again, and in my small irrelevance I stroke towards land, turn my breath away from the waves wanting in. Lake of refuge, reliability and impervious beauty, reminding me now of its unfathomable self, its ceaselessness. The thresholds I routinely…