The Numb Mourner’s Prayer

Hani du Toit

Unstitch the patchwork of

My mended heart

Loosen the threads

Knitted so tight

I cannot fall apart

Untie my heart

From all these strangled strings

Wound up in double knots

Weaving a braid of every

Unsaid thing

Unpick the strands

Let out the seams

So I may conjure

In the quiet of my dreams

Not only disappointment

And your wrath

But flashes of your smile,

Your kindest words,

Your belly laugh

Undo this rusted hook

That bolts this chamber’s door

To memories of beach days

River song and more

Allow my stiffened heart

The sweet relief

The rough raw fray

Of love and loss and grief

Let me unravel

Thread by worn out thread

So I can taste the poignant pangs -

The piercing truth -

That you are dead

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow with the Life Riting Collective on 21 July 2022

Flight Path

Giles Griffin

A frantic flapping as I ran by, watching my feet

Avoiding the shit dog owners leave

In this our shared strip of semi-wildness

Between grey suburbia and the wetlands

Between tamed nature and the real thing.

And there you were, entangled in the strands

Of an electric fence, thankfully disarmed

Majestic, dark-eyed, razor-beaked, one wing

Wedged up between the strands

You, not knowing what had trapped you

Me, not understanding how you got there

The two of us ensnared by fear

Of each other, suddenly face to face

With a species we had little business with

But also had no need to be afraid of.

So I stopped, inhaled your magnificence,

Your taloned feet, your red-dark plumage

But also your white-barred-black wing twisted up

Pondering how I might release you, this

Not being a skill they teach at school or college

Even though dear friends are avid birders

This circumstance had not been discussed, nor

Notes taken for future reference.

So I simply said: “It’s OK, stay calm, let the wing slide down

Don’t struggle, you will hurt yourself, gently does it”

Or words to that effect, to calm myself as much as you.

You stopped. The wing, held in the upper strand

Slowly glided down, and you gathered yourself.

Then you looked at me, as if to say: “Of course

I wasn’t panicking, you just startled me and I

Well, I just got a fright when you came running.”

Which I had been doing from a long way off

And surely birds of prey are, well, eagle-eyed

But I did not correct you: it was not my place.

We contemplated each other, as strangers sometimes do

Looked each other obliquely in the eye, considered

Whether this encounter might continue or was over.

All in all, for Africa it was very British, frosty, formal, aloof.

Then you dipped your rufous head, spread your wings

Now released but not quite yet re-tested

And took off to my right, around the houses, slowly

In no great hurry to part from our strange meeting.

Further down the path, which I then followed, you stopped

Perched by the side of the path, gathering yourself again

Hoping, I suppose, that full flight would still be possible.

And so it was, because as I jogged up beside you, off you soared,

Circled, glided across rooftops and out of sight, encounter over.

And as I ran on past the vlei-side houses with their mountain views

My heart crash-landed meaning: power and freedom,

A moment trapped in ignorance, requiring only calm

And self-belief to solve the shock, tackle the new

Inspired to find release and strength to soar again

To summit rooftops, find new flight paths, ways to live.

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow with the Life Riting Collective on 21 July 2022

A Plea to Poetry

(Pollsmoor Prison 3 April 1989, written during a panic attack during a hunger strike for the release of political prisoners)

Gertrude Fester

Hold! Hold onto your mind!

Do not let dumb fascists taunt you!

Psychologically terrorise you!

Psychologically pulverise you!

Do not let them break you

crumble you

bit

by

bit

into a seething mass of unbridled emotions

random pieces of yourself, your soul

flung furiously

scattered sporadically

like

bits of shit

onto cell walls.

Hold onto your anger, contain it

Do not let it like

a malignant cell spread insidiously

throughout

your body cells, your soul

eating it up

devouring your very self

your soul

consuming the residue of your humanity

your dignity

do not let them dehumanise you further

in this hell hole of hostility

this cell

claustrophobically covering you

closing in on you

overwhelming you

the powerful over the powerless

your soul

your spirit

slouched in yourself

your pent-up frustrations

cloud your brain

imprison your soul

like they imprison your body

your hands shiver

vibrating with impotence

Though your mind cannot form clear thoughts

systematise them

though your hands cannot produce polished letters

go on

write on

contain your mind

hold onto your thoughts

write them down!

You paralysed

powerless in prison

hold onto life, to sanity

soothe your tormented soul

push prod on to pusillanimity

to poetic purgation

Let Calliope inspire your spirit

to soar the skies

let your tears not dissipate your spirit

but rather

feed new strength into you

infuse you with faith

that the spirit shall not be caged

that the powerless shall free themselves from

indignity and oppression

let your pen

however slow

empower you through poetry

as your pen pours out your troubled thoughts

jettisoned like flotsam onto paper

so too

shall strength be sieved into your soul.

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow with the Life Riting Collective on 21 July 2022