The Poetry Project

If I bare my soul

If I scour out

The darkling soot

And morbid webs

Of all that lurks in corners

Pretending friendship -

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The moment you went through that door I knew it was over

Your bags packed, your heart pounding, you were leaving

Your new life just beginning never to return back again

The moment you went through that door I knew it was over

Your bags are back now, but you are not

So short lived, your new life over, before it began [...]

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Slowly I rise from the ashes

Like a Phoenix

my flame is renewed

my wings are still new

and tight

I stretch them out

prepare myself to take off

on my new journey [...]

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This proves my familiar office,

brandishing a cup of frank

coffee: bittersweet and black.

[...]

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Dearest,

I dreamt of you again last night, the dream where you hold my hand. We sat together in what looked like a meadow. I tried to stay as long as she would let me but soon I was awake. I blocked out the light, shut my eyes tight so I could find you again. I stood in the distance watching you dance at the edge of my subconscious, you called to me. [...]

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A moment in time

Frozen memory

A passionate crime

Still lonely

Eyes portraying love

Incurable desire

No emotions above [...]

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Chantal Robbertse completed a BCom Photography degree (specialising in Fine Arts) at the Pretoria Technikon in 2002. These days, she spends her time finding the meaning in the beauty in simple things, and is simply stunned by the means some people will go to to be beautiful. They’re dreaming the wrong dream if they don’t already see that they are, she believes. But what she believes in most of all is her dream to one day become a full-time photographer….

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Pass me the bottle

Let me see what’s inside

Take a shot from the bottle

On a roller coaster ride.

Pass me the bottle

Let me see what’s inside

Another shot from the bottle

On that roller coaster ride. [...]

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A stream called: Nothing

It christens me with delirious pleasure
The night’s velvet skin and stars
The dark twilight fading into a deep sense of mystery
And the cold winds blow…

We are trapped in this machine…                                                                                                                             and this machine is bleeding to death.
The ravens have passed to take what sorrows we spill
And the cold winds howl…

Drop ancient pride like a falling fever on glistening skin
As the hordes dance en masse like candle flames flickering
Bass beats pound to our human hearts

And cold winds descend…

Take heed for the last days are here and they will end
As time bleeds seconds and seconds die into hours
Eaten by the darkness of an uncertain path                                                                                          And the winds of mayhem rise up…

And I wake to live or to die
I shall carry all my love

And burn it in a western blaze

The ultimate shadow in the face of night and the darkness of day
Taking the mask given by stone sculptors
Douse the living fire that is passion… that is glamour
And swallow the pill called hypocrisy
Become a mindless maggot among the thriving throngs
Eating, shitting, living, saying, being nothing

That is what we are destined to be.

***

*Words by Douglas Simoes

*Photograph by Meggin Murphy

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Many full moons

later…

a thousand sunsets passed-

How many

new mornings still to come

before the visible

becomes

invisible

to your eyes so

full of emptiness

loneliness…

***

*Words by Hermien Veldhuizen-Nysschen

*Photograph by Andy Kruger

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