Dream Life/Real Life
We cheerfully assume that in some mystic way, love conquers all, that good outweighs evil in the just balances of the universe, And at the 11th hour, something gloriously triumphant will prevent the worst before it happens. Justin Brooks Atkinson Years ago, during a drive through Pretoria, as it was, I watched, fascinated, as throngs of people braved inclement weather to file into the nearest corner store, to buy lottery tickets for what was at the time, a record jackpot. Inside the car, meanwhile, my uncle and aunt speculated merrily on what they would do with such a loot. I...
Read More>I’ve been digging through my old journals looking for some material for my research proposal. While some of the poetry I found there, left me wondering how the paper it was written on didn’t curl up in embarrassment for having to shelter such drivel, this poem I quite like, Traitorous Tears With only my ownarms expendingto encompass me,I curl up,cornered,into recoiling cold,dwarfed by dirty-pink detachmentA pink towelmufflesmy draining gaspsmy insurmountable fearmy infinitesimal voice. ‘A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a lovesickness. It is a...
Read MoreWords to live by
“Only those who truly love and who are truly strong can sustain their lives as a dream. You dwell in your own enchantment. Life throws stones at you, but your love and your dream change those stones into the flowers of discovery. Even if you lose, or are defeated by things, your triumph will always be exemplary. And if no one knows it, then there are places that do. People like you enrich the dreams of the worlds, and it is dreams that create history. People like you are unknowing transformers of things, protected by your own fairy-tale, by love.” Ben Okri (Nigeria)
Read MoreSome more poetry
In your own words I may well be decrepit of the trappings of triumph unsightly to eyes trained in the fountain frail from the humdrum of an epoch stripped bare of precious memory But these words, your own, endure to ensure mine was not an unrequited love
Read MoreWinter Rain
Don, my new Ugandan friend (if I could take the liberty to call him that), asks whether the xenophobic attacks in South Africa are perhaps an “expression of a bigger malaise that no one seems to capture”. I’ll quote my reply to him, from his post on The Other View: Regarding the xenophobic crisis: Firstly, it should not be seen as a sudden uprising but rather as a gradual amalgamation of other issues facing the country, poverty, crime and unemployment. I’ll share with you comments from a columnist of the local Times daily: …As South Africans, we have an attitude...
Read More