Quaking

Why is everything
so earthquake-like?

(Ogre-like)

Flicking from dream to 
nightmare-like


just when I think I 
understand the quaking
and have learnt to ride it


you change the rhythm 
of your stamping

and I lose my 
Feet my head my sense
of gravity 

(again)

In heartbreak

You barely exist right now
You are
Transparent.
Your words soft
And weightless, floating up 
Somewhere less painful as 
Soon as they escape your mouth

And every muscle on your 
Face says you wish you could
Join them.
Float and be nothing. Silent
and no longer attached, no longer
Flinching at every beat of some one
Else's heart.

I wish I could help you. Float you
With helium balloons (the ones we'll walk
Round the zoo for your sister's babyshower
Tomorrow)

Only lightly tied to the earth
In heavenspace, safe
For the light
And the healing

Christmas Father

December in the dust.

Hammanskraal heat

And one grubby Christmas decoration

Long way away from Sandtons sparkle.

Do reindeer even know Hammanskraal?

Christmas Father can use donkeys here, if he comes.

We'll hear their clatter on the corrugated iron!

But we'll stay in bed tjoeps quiet

Pretending to be asleep, to not scare them.

We don't have a Christmas tree for presents.

But we have a tree outside in the yard.

 That's better, it's a shade tree

It has 84 different names from

The 84 children here.

We wrote in them, the names, in the dust with our feet.

 so you know who we are.

Use that tree, donkeys, Christmas Father. Its big you can

See it from faaar. And

We won't clutter it with presents before you

are here. We'll leave space.

We don't have mince pies but we've got Bakers Choice, you can have...

... The best ones, the strawberry wafers, we'll

Leave you one! Two! Ok, one and a half. We are many here, everyone wants.

And for the donkeys we don't have carrots.

We have cabbage

They look rotten but

just peel

The outer leaves away. Anyway

Donkeys aren't fussy, sies, they

Must be happy you need to use them here!

So, Christmas Father, for Christmas can I

Have a swimming pool?

We have such a big yard here

And its nothing just dust!

Imagine 84 of us splash splash splash!

No, maybe it would get dirty and we'll have to clean. And the water would get finished. And plus what if the small small ones fell in?

Can I have a bed of my own?

We are 16 in this room you

Know!

No, maybe... Nights

Are scary sometimes and then being together tighttight is nice like, even

The snoring...

And I couldn't be the only one with my own bed.

We would need 84 beds and then

We would be sleeping in the yard!

So maybe, Christmas Father, I'll just ask

You something easy?

Can you light our Tree?

Maybe do it secretly, so I can

Just see it if I close my eyes

Like that!

It's lighting up our names,

What we wrote in the dust.

December in the dust.

Hammanskraal heat

And one shining Christmas tree

Brighter than all Sandtons sparkle

Silver (teeth)

Hey fairybaby
You’ve got mud on your shoes
And grit in your teeth

You’ve been tied and
Tired and ground down
Until you fit
Something recognisable

And once in that shape
You shouted that it was yours
(because oh baby if it
wasn’t then the universe is
scarier than you could fend off)

but baby no shape could hold you.

Each ,in each place, yourstyle
Yourscream kept in and your monsters
Whispered their world stories in your ear
(no amount of headshaking would clear them, no
upping the volume could chase them
out of your head)

and as they whispered you
grew adding their dance strides
to your dance steps until you
couldn't remember whose feet were whose
(and yes you stood on some toes, baby)

and as you grew ties snapped and your
teeth turned silver and you began to
look more and more like the moon

and people got scared. But only the
people who made the ties. Only the
people for whom monstersundethebed
never held any hope.

People who see size as measured in
More and Less, not Who. Not When.

People who see outlines only and not the 
Squintfor rainbows, the cloud shapes in
The middle.

Because fairybaby you could never
Let your monsters go. They are your home as
Much as you are theirs, you are their Moon and they are your
Wild and some people will always be scared.

Because whatever shape you
Make yourself:
Small or straight or homemadedinner
Shaped, your teeth will always someday(night,hope)
Start to glow silver...

So, FairyBaby, moonsunwindchild,
Dirtchild Wildchild lets go and paint
Cities while they sleep! Lets grimace in
Peoples windows and let them think
It's the moon, intruding in their dreams

Lets howl and dance and spinstories
Until we get a goldgrimaceglow back
From some windows

And we will add Monsters
To our band.

Megan

I love your CAPITALS

Your voice that SHOUTS about

IMPORTANT things

And EXCITING things

And MAGIC things

And shouts for ME

And ANYONE who can

See the MAGIC

Your voice that takes me

STOMP STOMP STOMP

Back to our garden

And me FOUR and you SIX

And you EXPLAINING the

WORLD to me.

Because it was IMPORTANT

To MUDPIES and MULBERRIES

And imaginaries in BOXES AND BUBBLES

To bathtime ADVENTURES, where you

Were PIRATE QUEEN but made me, nearly

Always FIRST mate (and sometimes the parrot)

To FIGHTS about the colour of the SKY

And my first introductions to spectrums of truth, BLUE

I would say, YES NOW, you said but MAINLY PURPLE

And I cried frustrated tears about MAINLY

And we STOMP STOMP STOMPED

STORIES.

Mainly stories,

riddled with truths,

like

The earthworms we

saved off the tiles,

After the rain.

Fizzers (Fingers)

We were insane
 You and I
   Stretched out like
     Fizzers, in the sun

And mashed into each
 Other like small kids do with
    Fizzers, here
  My pink
Your green
And look! magic! twistscurls
  Swirls round and round and wrapping again and again
    And thinner and closer and how
 Tight can we make it until until
I want my pink and
 You want your green

But they have melted into each
Other, in the sun

So we put our mouths
  Together and
    Sucked
 The two flavours out
 End from end

We burned holes in our
  Tongues
   And still couldn't pry them apart,
(my green your
   pink)
      and we wrapped them
    round our sticky
fingers and
   pulled and pulled
     until they stretched out so far


one thin thin tightrope
                                 until the snap-
                                             when it came- was miniscule

until the only thing left between us was distance

Beat

if i have a word
in each of my cells

then i am paralysed
by their weight
their order

if i can get still enough that
my heart is the only beat

then i will find a way
to flow them through my
fingers and
out

into something new
(or old, but something
told at least)

but in this paralyses
i cannot
get my fingers
to move
and cannot get
my heart

to beat and not flutter