otist

Popcorn Blossom

Do you mourn your pink children? Once budding, perfect on your fingertips, in full bloom, huddled in your cold stubbled embrace, whereupon spring's insistent breeze, they fell to duty and to their rest. There, laying carpets for a hundred aimless lovers so blindly snapping self obsessed moments in this fast fleeting fanfare of popcorn. Tomorrow come wind and rain, these wanderers are separated again. I wept then, though I knew neither the seasons nor the days For I felt the wind's cold force against my face And you drifting away, witnessing it all As these blossoms falling, shedding stark black lines standing. Childlike, crushed underfoot, dye on far away paths.

^{trumanity, 19 April 2018}

Plum Blossom by Beijing Photographer, Lisheng Chang on Unsplash

^{Pink Blossom Beijing by Lisheng Chang, 14 April 2017 – Unsplash}

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Unwords Matter or, Demise of Clarity

Tear these lines into bits of pain, like all the others, a paltry match, cartoon Before Her unrelenting charge and gain as lifting fog in advance of Searing Noon Wrestle beneath what seem a hundred feet Submit, chartered-off to another place, like all the others, hard extreme concrete and not your own, where all humanity needs forsake interspersed by dark red mud, etchings in blood “—someone was here, with someone or alone… Someone said something!” The concrete, the drying dust, all stinks a certainty “—Someone's etchings remain, words that compelled no-one!” —they do nothing but say we're all that remain of passion, belief, and faith the remnants of a battle lost for measly claim testaments to ill-preparedness and loss they serve a resounding lesson. As the fog descends again and you're alone with errant thoughts and the words you think of saying, and then decide are worth as much being thought alone Words rise again, wrestling to the fight beneath weightier ones, becoming feet The languishing lines turn cryptic narratives of characters that daren't speak For, "Whose life is to say, if we're none of us, the same?" You're bending now, achieving significance: “Unlives do nothing," you're repeating, “—run masked Caitiff, and fall neatly, alight! Your intersection! Your destination. Tomorrow, another. Be compelled and content.” “—your insignificance is satisfactory. Your significance, irritating!” Words of pelted heart and mind retreat sentences scurry and hide, then at noon, resiliently they fall into forms marching on with lives of their own

^{trumanity, 14 June 2022}

A man carrying a head pan next to a makeshift Locker Lagos, Nigeria

^{Image: A young girl in Queens, NYC USA by Tatiana Rodriguez on unsplash}

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Balconies and Dining Tables

1987, Verulam

On the balcony, the crackling, slow, long drags Below, pedestrians on the busy street The Elder's face lit by the glow of the ember, enough to hint a sign, was it concern, before it was hidden by exhaled smoke The scent mixing with dhania and mint and the sounds with the TV reporting another alert The hopeless days, then, burned and festered, transpiring from a litany of murders into the years ahead as they were read into the record from a prompter.

The Elders' voice, exhaled slowly, The Study observed, closer, the expression was less concern suggesting all the madness was, in some way, sensible.

The distant green hills, covered in black night, echoes of mayhem from corrugated bellies life preparing for burial in the approaching attraction the grass clothed, as the dutiful moon behind the cloud, and morning rays somewhere far away, which by a morrow's noon would certainly scorch and sear

The starved caged spirits that would no longer grin nor slow their paces toward life's bidding knocks but suffer jabs and kicks that would consume us one by one.

The sense lay there in the voice, trained aloof distance An attitude that kept us marching quietly, bearing all weight even after you'd gone, and into all the nights ahead all quiet aloneness the many leavings and waitings bred.

The kitchen now without delicate hands, but life's scent has not left, the mayhem grew yet, all the quiet love remains.

^{trumanity, 11 May 2018, 20 May 2022}

^{Image: Carrying a head pan in Lagos, Nigeria by Rémy Ajenifuja on unsplash}

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The Call

When that day, not before

I live with it, an affront dragged along Serving no purpose but to inflict sense Something to wake me when I dare to sleep Smiles radiate, mere cold affronts to sense Needy eyes, needly thorns warding off All is vapour, no match to the inevitable scorch. Love is an island in a cold sea Deeper, yet one day drowned by it Pain seeks companion to torture The sea removes all traces of yearning Until it, like love, never existed We wait for a call that never comes

^{trumanity, 19 May 2022}

^{Image: Untitled portrait, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam by Anthony Tran on Unsplash}

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May Victory Day

Lines long ago, repeated today The halls filled quickly with steely faces of men Bodies worn, pressed in queues for hard soles, khakis and leather, honours' latest address Regimented gaze covered their land and dear souls They'd hear their children's voices playing by the fields, streets and the trenches Not the cacophony of grenades and rockets of the ill-fated plight, of man's evil might The battalion of untold events, unrelatable by letters, The horrors tallied remain locked away in gunsights. On the Morning, May rise after Tyranny's night Truth's victorious Day etched into memory's light May march certain, The Immortals return Leaving Dead once again to a cold earth cavern.

^{trumanity, 9 May 2022}

Ariana-Suárez-1324687_with-the-victory-day/-mobilmusic.ru

^{Image credit: With the Victory Day – Russia by Lazy Rit – mobilmusic Licence}

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Our Eden

A month ago, angels began filling this place with sounds of joy and music with love and light. Your thoughtfulness would have it no other way: You share one room and Daddy must have his own. My concerns assuaged - each night after school, or weekends when the baby visits My heart nestles in the warmth of your voices filling our place from yours to the next room So much more than ever before, you huddle up together, excitedly one's words rushing over the other's like babbling rocks in a stream the words of the local tongue, flow their meanings, mostly lost to me I play a game on my own, smile invading my lips Is she disapproving, or is she excited by something a friend said or protesting some unfair admonishment by a teacher Alone at my table i know only that you're growing well, you're talented, pouring light everywhere you go and I am at once immensely proud of you, overwhelmed by Love and baffled, why I was bestowed with such Gifts it is some mistake that I share in this joy by some lottery that I have been counted as worthy of all this. How so much Love supplants the agents of my decay that come creeping, tucked away in darkness, under a sink, in my dirty old bones, silently gestating by the million. Our antidote is that we thrive in spite of all that dank dirt, coming eventually to draw a curtain on our stage These acts of Love Light and Music performed before my tear-filled eyes and my aching regretful heart, poorly fathomed by my cluttered mind By Grace, out of all this, grows such as You that when another Act is cued, You will remember this Light.

^{trumanity, 24 March 2019}

^{Image: Mother & Daughter by Eye for Ebony on unsplash}

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Friends In Field

Innocence melts in burgeoning noon's heat Roots drink their fill, a hue with emerald time Field adorns herself in jewels' replete A humming bee tends the wizened vine

Wade in the field knee-deep there to stand Gaze upon saying naught to snow nor to sand A trail of gems and traces of things yet unsure Hum a slow route to the gold salty shore

Oh, dear Field in a blurry mad fade White snow hastening far and away Oh, adorned One reveal how the days From shadows shall raze quandering gaze.

^{trumanity, 3 May 2022}

^{Image: Only white in the green, Lima, Peru by Ariana Suárez on unsplash}

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Motion Sickness

an outbreak in the company precinct, Cape Town He's relaxing in an expensive suit in India or Dubai, Speaker! This is ridiculous! He took our money and ran away! Let him come here to testify! It is un African, this thing, this hyena has captured our poor ministers and now he has escaped. He's tarnished our poor black men and women, captured their imaginations with wealth and promises of power, used them as tools. Especially our defenceless women. He is a toxic man. Look at his captured victims, ministers of the ruling party, they have even taken to wearing Gucci! I move that we find this hyena in India and bring him back here so we can slit him by the tendencies! We have called him to testify But where is he? We are not his fools. A point of order, Speaker! This hyena can't say that ... No, Honourable member You are out of order. I did not recognise you. Speaker, he must withdraw that statement! This one is just like that fat hyena in India. His tail is scouring the sand behind him So smartly he is covering his tracks and manipulating the voters now We can never allow him to say we are hyenas. A point of order, Speaker! No! I did not recognise you. The honourable hyena is still on the floor! Sit down! Okay, Speaker. Point of order, Speaker. Yes, what is your point of order, Honourable member? The honourable member is wearing Gucci under that red overall How can he accuse that other man? It is also not unconstitutional to wear Gucci! No! That is not a point of order. Sit down! Point of order, Speaker! Yes? On what rule do you rise? No, it is not a rule. The honourable member is using hate speech. That is unparliamentary. He must withdraw. What part is hate speech? He talks about hyenas, Speaker. He himself is the hyena, and what does he have against wildlife? No. You are out of order. I will turn off your mic because you are acting in an unparliamentary manner. Where is the fat cat, Speaker? I move that we call the minister of Home Affairs. Why did he allow him to escape at the border. I move for an enquiry into this matter! I second that motion, Speaker!

^{trumanity, 15th April 2018}

^{Image: Wildlife capture by Jay Wennington on unsplash}

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The Greatest Know

i've known love but only from the inside from the inside giving out not even from the inside looking out for what I saw was not love i thought it was until a moment when I saw what it was was love. but not the giving out kind and then i came to know that some live without love ~ whether for fear of it or having no need for it ~ and that, maybe, all we ever do with love is live with a burning hunger for it We dream of it in front of us, inside us it helps us sleep until it begins to keep us from sleep Once i came to know then chose that knowing and breathing while knowing requires neither believing in things like trust in not being hurt by it in being who I want but it requires living who I want regardless of all that may come.

^{trumanity, 15th February 2021}

^{Words on thorny cactus, Cap d'Antibes, France by Fabien Bazanegue on unsplash}

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Faithful Fruition

In the years of pale white walls, the faithful are deep black Roots of the sprout delve deeper, the oak trunks thicken At the clarion call, they grow securely by streams Your child's feet stumble, when yours scald on desert sand, In time, they surround you, braving the wars of the soul Never bowing, striding in bright light of oiled lamps Never poorly nor fearful, ever certain and tall.

^{trumanity, 30th August 2021}

^{Image: Valley of Fires – State Park, USA by Jake Blucker on unsplash}

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