I reached, but you weren’t there;
I cried, but you didn’t hear me;
I tried, but I failed somewhere,
And the rains outside don’t care.
Woke up this morning to nothing,
And I decided to go nowhere;
There was nothing to do all day,
And the rains outside didn’t care.
We had a million conversations,
But they were all in my own head;
Afterwards, only silence was there,
And the rains outside never cared.
From the balcony of my life,
That birds fly away so, so slow,
The activity some distant strife,
When life happens far below.
And all men have a landlord—
Some devil in a cheap disguise,
Selling them wars with a sword,
Rinsed through the same old lies.
I wonder how much longer,
This machine can wander on;
When nothing makes you stronger,
And all the lies are long gone.
I die once again by the river in my dreams,
Hoping all I built once upon a time gleams;
But I shiver as the castle in the sky falls down,
And hopes are shattered upon cold, old ground,
To the rapturous roars of the lords of lies,
Cloaked in their politics and watched by eyes,
That never understand despite what they see,
And never evolve beyond their primitive glee,
To realize the prison does not trap what is free,
And a world of slaves is what is their equality.
We are climbing the walls,
The high walls…
We are climbing the walls,
As it all falls.
These people that live short lives of irrelevant beauty,
Are the art that litters the books of forgotten history;
Someone burnt down the museum but not the library,
Said the words were too hot for flames of the literary.
So I talked to these people and spent all day drinking,
They told of the treasures of ignorance and thinking;
But the dark waters rose as their boats were sinking,
Last I saw they were deep under water, lights blinking.
I buried their fading memory on the shores of denial,
I hung my head and thought of their dreams awhile;
Not for heroes, but for them I couldn’t help but smile,
For it is the common people that truly live lives of trial.
I recall the sweetest fall,
Where angels wept in the skies;
The cold drink before it all,
Couldn’t hide the fire in your eyes,
As smoke curled around our form,
I could see the future was closed,
And the present was stillborn,
As long as I was loving ghosts.
The sun was high as was I,
When you sailed past like a cloud,
Caught the breeze to catch your eye,
As whispers of love grew loud;
The gods themselves would part seas,
So I could walk to your side,
But even they could not seize,
A drowning heart beneath the tide.
And the sun was high as I stood,
On that lonely strip of the coasts,
I swear I did all that I could,
But still I remain loving ghosts.
And so I walked until I could not see shore,
I talked until silence was just so much more,
Above starlit bird symphonies touched high,
But low was the place I woke up on the floor.
Smoked and drank, smiled and rank the way,
Until just the sunrise was blurred lights’ day,
In corners of the eyes I once believed I owned,
I opened and I blinked—winked—I would say:
Not a grand way, not a terrible path at all,
Nothing, and nothing was the way I saw fall,
When the floor and sunrise touched a man,
That lay on the warm grave of a life I feel can.
And so I walked until I could not see shore.
I’ve just gone on leave over this festive period, but have a day or two before I leave Jozi. So I’ve decided to just mess around with more recording.
On that note, perhaps have a look at my ‘Abstract Superheroes‘ and ‘Empty Roads, Crowded Streets‘.
I also kinda of realize that all these songs are starting to look like they would fit on an album. And, in fact, I’ve decided that the album will be called ‘Beneath the City‘ and I’m going for that dark, dirty blues atmosphere.
We’ll see how it turns out…
My latest recording is a short instrumental I call ‘Graveyard of Buildings’ and you can download it here: Graveyard of Buildings.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it!
“I am the darkness between my eyelids,” he said,
And she smiled, “No, only the soft twilight instead.”
And the world kept spinning never noticing the two:
Days came, night slipped gently into morning dew,
Rains fell and left as oceans swallowed them all up,
Women danced and many a man drank from a full cup.
And still the world never noticed the two.
He cast his gaze up, “Hollow gods wrought the night!”
“So that we may lie in peace,” she whispered so slight,
And the oblivious machinery of man roared on…
Summers beamed down as winters crept upon,
Darkness fell as sure as the morning caressed the sky,
And mountain tops danced with the land’s idle lie.
And still the world never noticed the two.
The Sun itself burnt its last day upon a barren space,
When the very crows of war donned battle’s lace,
And the metals tore down the last standing man,
And all the world was left an empty quiet land…
“What conclusion can I give,” he sighed inside,
She smiled as she told him that he had already died.
I publish select poems through the Facebook platform in the form that I call the “House of Falling Leaves“.
Probably some of my favourite poems in the collection are: