One small seed

31 October 2012

 

One small

seed is all you need

One small seed makes one small tree

One small tree makes ten more seeds

Ten more seeds make ten small trees

Ten small trees make much more seeds

Trees and seeds and seeds and trees

Trees with seeds make seeded trees

Take your seed, take your deed

And give it to a world

in need

You never

know, might

never see

That deed

become a

thousand trees

Trees with seeds and seeded trees

One small seed is all you need

i, lightning

20 September 2012

would that i would

explode

and dash across the sky

a luminescent-ever-present

sparkle in your eye

aye, that i will be

be

cause

hope pushes up

it comes from my king

who tells me my name:

i, lightning

poem for jakob

20 August 2012

hey dreamer

i see you there

shape-shifting the clouds,

forming the dust of yonder

into a living, breathing

entity

that fills your veins with fire

and your heart with beat.

you are giddy

and not without reason –

you can hear it

you can taste it

you can smell it…

the possibility –

and it´s yours.

Graeme

February 2012

While some friends and I were reading the first lines of some novels we discovered at a beach house in Port Alfred, South Africa, I was challenged to write a few versions of possible first lines for the life story of a certain Graeme Preston. These are the results. There are some personal jokes weaved in, but I hope you will find them funny anyway.

“Ouch” said Zelda.

* * *

It was a seemingly unassuming day, it being 4 October 1984, when MH felt a decided coldness coast up and down his spine, a slight anomaly that was to manifest decades later in the form of his predestined arch nemesis.

* * *

“Were you or were you not walking with Joanna Woods on the beach on the morning of the 24th of February?” Graeme Preston’s eyes glistened as he questioned the accused at the witness stand, and on the inside he felt the satisfaction of knowing that the case was already in the bag – he was not called the untouchable boob for nothing.

* * *

Rarely has one man embodied an untouchable manly confidence peppered with the awkwardness of a shell-less turtle

Oh, the things I could do!

Early 2007

I just discovered this by fluke while going through some old word documents – I forgot that I had written this, and I can´t remember what meeting I was in, but it helped me produce a fun Dr Seuss-ian poem!

It’s so boring in this meeting,

right now I wish that I was eating –

eating home-made pumpkin pie,

or perhaps getting on an aeroplane to fly.

Fly to the Andes, yes, that’s it –

to milk wild yaks with Brad Pitt.

Or maybe I could jump into the sea,

catch a surf (and yes, maybe even wee).

So many things that I could do instead

of being in this boardroom, going off my head.

I could ride a black bull at a rodeo in Mexico

or tease my mangled hair into a 70’s ‘fro.

Maybe phone a boy in Holland whose name I think is Martyn

or apply to change my name from ‘Caroline’ to ‘Spartan’.

It’s time for me to get out of here

to audition for the lead role in King Lear

and pick strawberries in a place called Manamaloo,

or paint my toenails a Caribbean blue.

So many things that I want to do –

five hundred and one, to be exact, give or take a few.

What about wrestling a mean two-toed sloth,

or making friends with the nearly-extinct behemoth?

I could prance through town, dressed up like a fairy,

or walk into a biker´s club pretending to be scary.

I could waltz with Vanderly Walter Van Sno

while learning to play Beethoven on a banjo.

Oh, the things I could do if they’d let me out

of this meeting today – how I’d jump and I’d shout!

One

25 April 2012

Funny

how when I forget who You are,

I forget who I am-

so closely interconnected are we,

You in me, and I in You.

Will my heart ever see?

So human, so very, very human am I,

yet You were so very human too  –

so human that You died.

But not for long. You came back…

Heart, see!

Ears, hear!

That the connection between us

would be felt, my Dear.

Birds and the bees

24 April 2012

Maddie did not know her eyes could go that big. You mean to say, that´s how it works?

She nearly gagged. Biology was not her favourite subject anymore. Nope. As she looked away from the overhead projector for a breather, she noticed a bee buzzing at her desk-side window. She shooed him with her ruler, pushing him towards an opening. Finally, he bumbled off into the great outdoors.

“And that is how momma birds feed their young, by regurgitating their digested worms into the mouths of their chicks.” The teacher looked up just in time to see Maddie throw up.

Sword

24 April 2012

True story.

Darkness.

Moving in acute slow motion, hardly breathing, hearts-a-beating, the two shaking girls pushed the door open, not knowing what they would find on the other side. Even if it would be something awfully horrid, they might not even be able to see it. Which was worse than seeing something awfully horrid face to face, because at least then you could give it a name. They only had each other for protection, and a sordid sword.

Creak.

An open door.

A scream.

“Girls, why are you coming out of the bathroom with a plastic sword?”

Adrian!

Foiled fantasy. Reality check.

The Pen Trilogy

23 April 2012

We make thousands of decisions everyday on various scales of significance. Each decision has its consequences, and we have all at some stage asked the question “What if?” in relation to decisions we have made. This little scenario – loosely based on a true encounter – plays on this question in a “sliding doors” kind of way.

Pen: I (What if he didn´t?)

He dropped his pen.
Now retrieving a pen while you are atop a bicycle is not an easy task and requires equal amounts of balance and dexterity, none of which he possessed in abundance. Which is why he was thankful as much as he was surprised that, even though she looked like she was in a hurry, she stopped, picked up his pen, and handed it to him.
That was kind of her, he thought.
I love clumsy guys, she thought.
She has striking eyes, he thought.
He dresses well, she thought.
I wonder if I should ask her out for a cup of…nah, he thought.
The three second exchange was over, the light turned green, and he thanked her and pedalled on, while she crossed the street, never to think about him or his pen again.

Pen: II (What if he did?)

He dropped his pen.
Now retrieving a pen while you are atop a bicycle is not an easy task and requires equal amounts of balance and dexterity, none of which he possessed in abundance. Which is why he was thankful as much as he was surprised that, even though she looked like she was in a hurry, she stopped, picked up his pen, and handed it to him.
“That was kind of you, thank you!” he said.
“It´s cool, you looked like you needed the help, the way you were teetering there on your bike!” she said.
“Um, I know this is going to sound like a pick up line, please believe me, it´s not, but I need to tell you that your eyes are very striking, seriously,” he said.
“Thanks, complement received. By the way, nice jeans.”
“You can´t go wrong with green skinny jeans, right? Hey, I know this is very spontaneous, and I don´t usually do this, but I have some time to kill…um, do you maybe want to grab a cup of coffee? I mean, if you have time, and in public, of course, that way you can scream for help if you think I have psycho tendencies.”
“Well, I don´t even know you, um…but, ja, I guess that sounds cool, if it´ll be in public and all. I´ve just got to post this letter, then I´m pretty much free for the rest of the day.”
The light turned green, and he got off his bicycle so that he could walk with her.
They named their children after rock stars.

Pen: III (What if she didn´t?)

He dropped his pen.
Now retrieving a pen while you are atop a bicycle is not an easy task and requires equal amounts of balance and dexterity, none of which he possessed in abundance. Which is why he was irritated that none of the pedestrians standing next to him at the red traffic light cared to help him recover his pen.
She saw him drop his pen, but was too preoccupied with the time to give him more than a split second´s notice. Checking for cars, she skipped the red light. On the other side of the street, she turned her head to look back at the man on the bicycle, the one whose green skinny jeans she liked. That action and the time it took was all that was required for her to miss seeing the open manhole in front of her, which swallowed her up. Only thing is, it might have looked like a mere manhole to the naked eye, but it was actually a portal to the Jurassic era. When she got up from her fall, she dusted herself off and was about to continue forging forwards, when she realized that something was amiss. The last thing she saw was the tyrannosaurus lunging towards her, and in a kind of stupor she resigned herself to her fate. So this is how I go, she thought.

five minutes

22 April 2012

Mitte, Berlin, contemplating transition.

on days like these

when divinity makes way for lesser things

i feel me like

a cat

dancing

on a piece of string

strung between two weedy trees

blown about by a breezy breeze

it´s a good thing cats know how to fall

on

their

feet