A pair of paradox, or pandora’s box

We are forgotten yesterdays of tomorrow,
note-booked mementos on thighs time travelled,
back from the future, a few tsha-tsha with flashes
blackouts and gray-matter gashes,
the slurred dance of good memory,
crib-notes on collar-bones,
bare chest, a loose tie, knots, not around neck
formal education white suits, tucked-in remembering.
A formal date chasing me indoors.
chasing me into doors of consistent
nurturing nature of the neuro
doors on the right, left doubt in the cold.
A manner of hindsight sighs.

Running back to the future to save my 4 unborn children
from my present past. Amnesia.
The pendulum swings in reversed backwards.
Forward is just an antithesis – poor protest art
An analogue, roman-concept coded in digital now.
Fraudulent, faux and pseudo. We look at the sun
to tell day from night.

Progress is practising stillness
Passage of pain frozen in time,
sun is amber lantern,
phantom of what & who has risen,
out of resin’s
suspended-infinity-loop prison.
The bitterness of honey stings
sour-sweet on the taste buds of trauma.
Strolling up memory lane, compassion
for former faults. Less envy, only empathy
Fragment of a broken dream further smashed
can’t fill in the air smothered cracks.

We died many deaths.
A mass burial, a mountain of bodies brewing
under the garden, the slumbering sandy soil wakes.
3 is the number of perfect balance and god.
Ma’, my Sisi, and I.
My mother died the day the doctor
Told her that the body she called
Home was evicting her, with a 10-year-notice.
She must have watched herself
watch herself
sitting on covered couches
thinking what a theft of life
this holy trinity is –
what is left
to see
here?

I saved all of the pain of breaking
my bones for this,
I ran in opposites, dislocated my hip
never stood for much but numbness
an absence of nothing because
feelings kill.
I saved haunting ghosts of night for day
For this day
For today.
All these reservoirs of resilience won’t be enough,
ever.

I wept
winter sunsets –
to remind my new self on the coldest of nights
that once time was warm days
a slice of life’s beauty in Redemption.

Efforts tuck sweat under my arms,
gravity grounding my prideful chest down.

A bed of waves
afloat sober dreams
nightmares of wrinkled water
submarine my day dreams
and flowing peace.
Please be polite and let me be.

I now know, less hoarding.
I now know, less procrastinating.
I now know, see the family more.
I now know that I do not know.

A thousand leagues below
and still sinking.
A hundred fathoms down
and still sinking.
The lows of attraction.
No laws, drowning is customary.
A survival guide is found at rock bottom.

speaking so passionately of death can only give life, some sacred solace, for strength

Till the day we fly free

I’m reaching but never gripping,
It’s soul ripping how they’re preaching,
yet are never teaching.

I’ll never hide,
even when I die.
I’ll be immortalized
in some formaldehyde.
Where my soul, spirit and skin divide
I’ll be like a deity,
the higher me,
doing the Lord’s work,
hire me.

The humble apple-pie
can satisfy no appetite
here comes the hunger tide.

When wings carried Icarus
through cutting winds
we were pulled feathers
of wisdom’s birdy-body of ink
taking flight second-heaven plane
the son, seeks The Sun.

I’m grown now,
dealing with chronic stress,
and I believe less in a deity,
it seems like too far a stretch
The stench from a faithless,
hopeless, homeless.

nublaccsoul is a Bachelor of Arts: Media, Communication and Culture student at the Nelson Mandela University, in his second year of study. This is ancestral, past-life reading; this is meditation and prayer; this is future telling, a spiritual fair. i compose poetry for myself as a tool to navigate through the past, to locate who and what i am in the now, and how best to position myself tomorrow. Born and bred in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, the creative is of Mpuma Koloni descent. His mantra reads: Believe. Be. Live. And you’ll forever live; not physically, but historically. Twitter: NuBlaccSoul

Artwork by nublaccsoul