In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Snapshot Stories.”
A few years ago I was invited to a ’50s Glamour party for a friend’s 40th birthday. My friend was a South African living in Sydney for a few years. We had been friends in South Africa a long time ago. The dress I wore was bought in Johannesburg in December 2000. The party was lovely. That particular friend has the most warm, lovely friendly disposition. She now lives in Cape Town.
Hand so soft and tender
A mother’s loving touch
In a flash, mere blink of eye
Knife’s sharpened edge
Released the flow of blood
The floodgates burst wide open;
From the hand that nurture spread
In its place replaced
Pure anger
Flowing
Furious
Faster
Rushing
Gushing
Never
Stopping
A river
River
Bleeding
River
Weeping
River
Speeding
Killing
Thrilling
Scaring
Frightening
River
River
River
Of
Death
A river
River
Of
Red
.
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Toy Story.”
My favorite toy was a doll my maternal grandmother sent to me from Cape Town. It arrived in a box complete with knitted clothes and bonnet. In Afrikaans they have a lovely word for bonnet – “koppie kappie”. Which directly translated reads a small head covering. It is one of a few items I have kept from my childhood. She is now under my daughter’s protective care.
There is a little musical box embedded into her at the back. A tiny record fitted into it and would play some music. One day the neighborhood boys grabbed my doll and ripped the record out. I remember two of their names. Ryan and Brendan. You have been shamed! I must have been five or younger, as we were living in a house and after that we moved to an apartment. I was five when I broke my collarbone and that happened when I was in the apartment.
“There’s more room in a broken heart”
Coming Around Again – Carly Simon
If you want me
Come and get me
If you need me
Tell me so
If you love
The way I talk
My every move
The way I walk
Search me
Till you find me
I am waiting
I’ll be yours
A voice against drugs, from someone who is paying the price. If any readers recall my 72 Hour post and Execution Night, please do support this soul in his writing.
I felt that there was something I had forgotten to do. I was reading the blogs of others and I realised that they all had introduced themselves. Well here is mine. Sorry for the lateness.
My name is Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen. Hmm. It’s a complicated introduction to make. Mainly because I am not meant to let it be known I have accessed online. And secondly, how to say I am in jail, serving out a life sentence in a foreign country. Well that wasn’t so awkward. It was really really weird. In April 29th of this year, two Australians were executed by firing squad. It has been haunting me ever since.
Our crime was attempting to smuggler drugs from some country back home. We got arrested. Ten years later, the executions took place. It was something I thought wouldn’t happen, but it did. I know that I had committed…
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In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “All About Me.”
My blog was originally Moving Towards The Light, based on my very first poem The Light. After a couple of months of initial blogging, I ran out of ideas and inspiration and my blog became dormant.
I resurrected it a few months later when my mood dropped and I needed to write. It was at the same time that Robin Williams passed away and I watched Dead Poets Society. In one scene he tells his students – we have poetry in us because we have passion. These words kept on repeating in my mind. I have poetry in me because I have passion. Passion, poetry, poetry, passion. Passion through Poetry.
I’ve included my initial gravatar. My aunt created it for me based on a king protea photograph.
It was edited to form the cover of my personal edition book.
If only you knew
The passion that rages within
The yearnings that raise their voice
Offering no escape
I want to run
I want to fly
I want to be free
If only you knew
The struggles within my heart
The beating as it raises its tempo
Urging me along
To move
To go
To be
If only you knew
What moves me
What causes my heart to skip its beat
What makes me feel alive
To live
To breathe
To love
If only you knew
My father loves to give gifts. It is one of his love languages. We always knew that we would be spoilt at Christmas time if my father had anything to do with it. My grandmother used to tell us a story that when he was a small boy he only had a few coins, but went off on his own to the local store. On Christmas Day he presented both his parents with a gift. His father was presented with a handy light bulb and she received a tin of peas. The last gift I received from my father was a perfume for my birthday last year. I don’t see him very often now as he lives in Johannesburg.
My parents were on holiday in the UK when my mother passed away. They were to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary that year. He had to endure a long haul flight back home without his wife.
On Sunday mornings my dad used to play his music and cook breakfast.
I miss those mornings and the sometimes happy family times we shared.
Where is my place in the world?
Am I resigned to the shadows
To live as quietly as I possibly can
Watching those in the sun
While I observe from afar
Is it my place to abide
To make peace with the discontent
The passion that brews and causes me to ache
To long for the force to sweep me off my feet
Into whirlwinds of unknown worlds
Is it my place to quieten
The voices that rage within my heart
And wave them away with the brush
Of my calloused, nail-bitten hands
Speaking myself into a happiness I do not feel
Is it my place to be less than I ever dreamed
To excuse every failure I have made
And be content with what I have
So that nothing is lost but then
Everything is lost anyway
Is it my place to see the blue sky above
And know that the power that imagined creation into being
Is the same power that created me
And to feel one with the land, and the earth and the sea and the sky
Breathing in the same air as the living beings surrounding me
Is it my place to kneel before my Lord
And pray from the very core of my soul
I have not the answer to where my place is in the world
Or what I should be achieving, or doing, or striving for
But I yield my heart and the life that I am
That I can be of use to Thee
In small ways or great –
Now and forever
Not my will, Lord
But thine be done
Poems and Petals 