The Greatest Teacher: Fear
Part One: The Miseducation of Fear
I learnt that family is a six letter word that means absolutely nothing if you don’t do what they want or tell you to
I learnt how to blend in at an early age because being different hurts so much
I learnt how to blend in at an early age because when you move to a different city every year, it becomes your greatest tool
I learnt to be my own best friend because when you move to a different city every year, you become your best ally
I learnt to rely on my instincts from the times I ran away because my father beat me too hard
I learnt that you pay for the consequences of all your actions, I spent many nights under roofless skies learning this lesson
I know how to down a beer quick, been in pits where you have but minutes to black-out or scar your memory for life, couldn’t risk losing sleep
I learnt that insomnia is a result of excessive stress
Panicking too much about the future
I’ve felt anxiety sixty seconds into a lecture so deep I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sit still, couldn’t keep
I learnt that some parents hate weed so much that they would strangle their child with their school tie just to get them to stop
Make them break-up with their girlfriend because “you’re too young to know love”
I learnt that at park station, passengers boarding buses the following day, for whatever reason, have to leave waiting rooms at some point after 10pm
So they put you in this dingy ass place near their dumping site, horrible nights I
Learnt that time only heals all wounds not when you let it
But if you are capable of it
I once found myself staring a young, beautiful coloured girl at a house party in Auckland Park dead in the face
Unable to answer her question
“How do you un-know all you’ve known?
How do you let go of all you are to hold on to something else? What something else?
If all you’ve ever been is not the way to live, then what is?
I learnt that if you give too much of yourself you end up with nothing
That people love you as long as the way you live, the things you do agree with their lifestyle, life choices and their perception of how life should be lived
That when you step outside their boundaries (and you always will), they discard you quick
Or try force you to change
That they never let you walk away but still insist and persist on your “need” to change and live the way they live, fuck how you choose to make yourself
I learnt that addiction can lead you to pick up stompies in cold, dark nights just to supress the edge long enough to sleep
Pain and suffering inside
I learnt to keep everything inside so much that I no longer drink too much in case the dark spill out
I learnt to roll with the punches
That nobody really accepts you, somebody always questions something however weightless their opinion
I learnt how to genuinely hate my father
Father Please Write Me a Lovesong
Father please write me a lovesong
That I may know how to love
Inject in the lyrics instructions on how to love me
Paint pictures of self as wealth, a child on mothers’ breasts in nests on mountains
Not lost and falling to my death
Tell me why you beat me so hard
Why you were never there for anything else
What I meant to you, because it means nothing now
Father please write me a lovesong
Maybe wish me happy birthday on the bridge
Maybe it will save me from jumping off of this one
Make it poetic and paint a picture of what it is to love
Maybe in the embedded emotions show me how it feels to be loved
Lord knows you never did when I still thought of you as a figure
Not just a number amongst
Father please write me a lovesong
Telling me it’s ok that I hate you
That if you die in the next ten years I won’t go to your funeral
Let the lyrics tell me that it’s ok that I can no longer cry
Father please write me a lovesong
Promising you’ll stop popping up every once in a while neither drunk nor sober, professing rotten love, promising change and better futures I no longer need you, you hurt the most
I would be a fool if I went back to the same blade that drove me insane, found myself contemplating residence in a grave, I am no longer a slave so father please write me a lovesong
I learnt that repeatedly forgiving the same “mistakes” by the same person is draining and I am tired
Because I can’t let go of this darkness
I hold on to this pain, maybe even look for it because it is the only emotion I can still feel and I don’t want to feel this way anymore but I know no other life
It’s like there’s this thick, hard layer over my heart, I no longer feel anything
I don’t want to do coke because I know I’ll be lost forever and weed no longer cuts I can no longer feel
I only interact with people logically because I only know pain and anger I could kill someone
I No Longer Believe In God
Like how his word says it would be
He doesn’t speak to me like he did with Samuel
I don’t run to my masters room not knowing it’s him all this time
But I only hear pins drop
Not angels, not the Holy Spirit, not the blood of the lamb who died on Calvary for me, pins
And needles and scalpels that dissect and judge for the fuck of it
He doesn’t judge, he doesn’t give justice to those in need, he doesn’t protect those who choose him you just hear shit like prayer is an art and God answers in his own mysterious ways, yet when David cried out
When David opened his chest, took out his heart and poured its tears unto his lap, he gave him his kingdoms and rulership over all his people
My open, broken, bruised, used, torn, shattered and cold heart has become a tattoo on the skin on His inner right thigh where its tears never dry, as they pour out day and night and all I hear are pins because prayer is an art and he answers in his own time and mysterious ways
And all I want is the pain to stop
Because he simply does not exist
Where I need him the most
Where it is said everything exists
I no longer believe in god
People hurt me, people ridicule me; people call me names
People prosper while I rot in graves
I work hard and push and after I pour out my all
Still, everything I touch turns into shrivelled up darkness, no success, just fucked up relationships with every human being I interact with
I clash with everybody I live with so I no longer have relationships because it’s always me
Though I meditate and pray everyday
So I no longer believe in God
Because I’ve never felt more alone
It then defeats the purpose
Part Three: Freedom From Fear
Out of understand someone stems every form of love
Understanding the next person as they are
Allows you to truly love a person; whoever he is
As unravelled by the fibres that enable the flesh to perceive the breath as flesh
Out of understanding comes acceptance
It is because we have not accepted our own flaws that we point out and ridicule what we perceive as flaws in others
Out of understanding comes acceptance of self
Of the world in and around us not as we want, hope, wish, need, pray it is
Understanding requires openness
Openness requires surrendering, a lowering of defences
The challenge of you, your core beliefs
The tools with which you navigate your map of life
A challenge and test of all you know
Out of understanding stems trust
Being ok with wanting the things you want
Being ok with loving the things you love
Being ok with needing space and privacy sometimes
Trusting in everything that moves you from inside you; your individually experienced and felt truths
Out of understanding comes listening
To hearts, to clear voices inside
That your mind fights you so you can fight back
By the time you’re done battling your mind
By the time you’re done conquering your mind
You are ready for anything for there is no opponent far shrewder, far crueller, even far superior than your own mind
Out of understanding comes control
I am capable of feeling only pain and darkness
But pain and darkness cannot feel me
I can let myself only feel pain and darkness
Or I can wake the fuck up and let everything I want in
I can teach myself how to feel the positive like how I taught myself to be better at poetry
My father never taught me how to love but I can now teach me how to love
I can raise my own children now
When I was a child I could cry
Now I can raise the parts of me whoever I once blamed failed to raise
Now I can write my own lovesong
I breathe through my nostrils and mouth, I exhale – get out!
You have borrowed, took over and used up my body long enough to brave the world on your own now my love it’s enough
You were just walking by and I brought you into my life, you held tight
But now I’m torn and I bleed on knees a slave to need
The pain come with life now it’s the only thing that I feel so fly my sorrows
I can no longer breathe without a high they die, my tomorrows so fly my sorrows
I can no longer live without the feel of warm thighs, dark, light, big-boned, thin, thick, beautiful, “ugly” you wear a skirt?
I don’t get drunk, I blackout so what’s the point?
I, too, played a part so goodbye resentment and anger
They could never have hurt me without my consent so so long revenge
Nobody knows me like you do darkness so you know better than most it was temporal
a poem within a poem within a poem
My beautiful, loving heart
Sold you out, traded you for artificial living and feeling
For cages and whips it’s no wonder you no longer speak
“The world” hurt me, but I hurt YOU
I was weak and I failed to see you leave me every time I refused to heed
Your warnings and now you bleed
Oh my beautiful, loving heart
You’re the one who introduced me to Poetry ten years ago
I remember how you moved when I first heard those words
How free I felt because it was one of the most important things I was waiting or searching for in life
I remember the life coursing inside
The name of the piece was “While Smoking My Pen”
Thank you Andile Skhakhane
Thank you Khosi Mthimkhulu
I remember how warm and complete I felt when you had decided that “fuck it, I’m going in”
And you plunged into the depth of Amanda’s heart
Ten years later and we’re still together in a time where love no longer exists, but I put you in pits
Dance, Rap, Sound Engineering, the art of moving lip
I found those things by listening to and following you
Sex, weed, alcohol, fear, doubt, anxiety, failure not of life
I found those things by forsaking you and look what I put you through
I return to free, a holy trinity of soul, heart and me.
The force thanks you for your service
I relieve you of your duty.
A king has returned to claim his rightful place.
