I saw a silver fish
dolphin shaped
stream lined
flutter across my late afternoon sky.
Too tiny to be a plane
too high to be a kite
unfashionably obscure to be a blimp.
it marked a merry way across my late afternoon sky.
Attempts at stringing together words as art.
I saw a silver fish
dolphin shaped
stream lined
flutter across my late afternoon sky.
Too tiny to be a plane
too high to be a kite
unfashionably obscure to be a blimp.
it marked a merry way across my late afternoon sky.
I want to explain.
I’ve never meant to be callous.
I want to spare your feelings.
Somehow I knew this was coming.
It’s the way you spoke to me.
I tried dissuading you.
I ignored your messages.
I hoped you’d realise that I was not with you that way inclined.
If I could redirect your question to someone who would readily accept…
You say to forgive you if you are out of line.
I respect you for asking.
I do.
My vanity is not flattered in refusing you.
But I could never possibly…
No.
I can’t.
I won’t.
I just can’t.
It’s just a word.
Monosyllabic.
A shake of the head.
Thank you for asking.
I wish I could be more delicate.
I take no pride in refusing you.
My head is bowed, my eyes sombre, my heart breaking for you.
There are certain sectors in man’s nature that are more flexible than others. Those strivings and character traits by which men differ from each other show a great amount of elasticity and malleability: love, destructiveness, sadism, the tendency to submit, the lust for power, detachment, the desire for self-aggrandisement, the passion for thrift, the enjoyment of sensual pleasure, and the fear of sensuality. These and many other strivings and fears to be found in man develop as a reaction to certain life conditions. They are not particularly flexible, for once they have become part of a person’s character, they do not easily disappear or change into some other drive. But they are flexible in the sense that individuals, particularly in their childhood, develop the one or other need according to the whole mode of life they find themselves in. None of these needs is fixed and rigid as if it were an innate part of human nature which develops and has to be satisfied under all circumstances.
(Erich Fromm, The fear of freedom)
The problem with the human heart
is that it is too much like lycra.
Pulled taut across ill deserving spaces
mistaking stretchabilty for unbreakability.
Tugging tighter
forcing fits
not a thought for threadbare continuity.
And when reason is repaired
lycra is left
free to contract
armed with the expectation
of a sudden disregard
for the form that it justjustnow stretched across
and the retention of a truer shape with ease.
But then the shapelessness of senseless complacency is plain for all to see.
He liked me in white; He liked me in pink.
When I was the person he liked
I turned my nose up at pastels
I bought only white.
When I liked the person he liked
I piously praised more colour
I bought only pink.
Now he’s off to Godaloneknowswhere
And his eyes are closed
But my drawer’s still half and half
Neatly folded bundles of pink and white at ease
Like spookasem spun on a stick.
Pink frilly nothings and staid white everythings
Readying themselves invitingly to be worn today
Surreptitiously stifling the black of me beneath.
(spookasem: Afrikaans for cotton candy; literally ghost breath)