ZAVibes

I wrote this poem shortly after my apostacy in 2002. I became agnostic in 1997, but finally gave up the ghost in 2002 (pun intended!)

Focus on the horizon
The bird of truth
comes flying
and perches on your soul

Claws, as sharp
as daggers, cut
through the fabric
of your life

What is left
Is what you are
just little left
of what you were

Christoff Gouws
2003-04-27

I wrote this poem shortly after my brother-in-law died in a car accident in 2003.

He was only 25 years old, recently engaged to his highschool sweetheart, his whole life still lying ahead.

It was horrible to witness the pain and suffering everyone who knew him - especially his parents - had to endure.

What’s even more painful is having to witness how people try to find answers. Why? Why him? Why now? These kinds of questions gnaw at their emotions, faiths, hopes and lives.

How do you explain to them that accidents happen? That people die, no rime or reason behind it, except that statistically we are all living on the edge and that anyone can die at any time and that there’s no higher meaning to it? That nature doesn’t care?

One thing IS clear though and that is that our lives are precious. Extremely fragile and precious.

We should cherish each other while we’re still alive…

You’ve probably heard the famous quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes:

“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions”

This idea - that once you let your mind go outside of a specific frame of reference your mind & thoughts were confined to your whole life - is what let to the writing of this poem.

Culture, Society, Political System, Religion, Moral Zeitgeist, any frame of reference you’re finding yourself in - let your mind soar above it, outside of it every once in a while and you’ll raise your consciousness in ways never imagined.

The only part of you that can ever be free is your thoughts/mind, if you let it…

These are couplets taken from the Rhyme Zone where there’s this competition for writing the most romantic first line and most unromantic second - here are a few of the entries:

Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you.
But the roses are wilting, the violets are dead, the sugar bowl’s empty and so is your head.

After you, my love, my only prize.
Would be a bullet between my eyes.

Of loving beauty you float with grace.
If only you could hide your face.

I thought that I could love no other.
Until, that is, I met your brother.

Kind, intelligent, loving and hot.
This describes everything you’re not.

I love your smile, your face, and your eyes
Damn, I’m good at telling lies!

Every time I see your face.
I wish I were in outer space.

My darling, my lover, my beautiful wife:
Marrying you screwed up my life.

Beauty is on the inside, but some may doubt,
If it’s true, I’d prefer you inside out.

I see your face when I am dreaming.
That’s why I always wake up screaming.

My love you take my breath away.
What have you stepped in, to smell this way.

My feelings for you no words can tell.
Except for maybe “go to hell.”