sleepless days

Running on empty today... only thing keeping me going is spirit. Reality seems very surreal right now, following three days of little sleep and too much writing (business-related). Add to it all, a truck driver decided to re-design my car last night. That said, still went through to the Gordon Institute of Business Studies this morning (at some ungodly hour - the world should start at 10am and end at 2 am) for a Seminar on 'The Role of the Arts in Empowering the Nation'. Intense. I was one of the speakers, talking about my perspective from a poetry angle and I think I did reasonably well. My epiphany from the experience: I have spent so much time trying to make a living from my writing that I have lost sight of the power of word, and its place in society. Still trying to make sense of it all. The seminar is part of what GIBS calls the NEXUS programme which involves middle to top management from major corporates coming together over a year - this aspect was part of the efforts to expose corporates to a world outside of their own and educate them on the possibilities that are out there.

Okay, feeling incoherent so not going to get into this. Sorry. Activities for this week? Doing the UNISA Festival of Languages on Thursday with Kabomo and Myesha Jenkins, then head of to Lesotho for the Morija Arts and Cultural Festival. Travelling with poets: Napo Masheane, Lebo Mashile, Ayob Vania, Kabomo Vilakazi and Myesha Jenkins. It feels like a bit of a homecoming for me in that I started truly exploring the Word in Joburg and now I am going home. Hoping to also setup more activities and events around poetry there - talent is everywhere, it is about where the possibility lies. I grew up in a household where the sky was too much of a limit and in a country where opportunity to explore alternative lifestyles is, or rather was, extremely difficult. No music school, no studios, etc, etc. I need to make a difference in establishing a true presence for the Word.... this is hopefully the first step in that process.

Words:

'i am the voice of nameless men/too scared to speak/ their words caught between their lips/ bubbling in the space between skin and flesh'

'your pupils are the mirror that reflect dreams/ and so / only you see them/ from the inside'

'nowhere is after somewhere/ and i think i am there'

'i miss your rhythm/ when pleasure whispers mystic melodies/ beneath sordid emptiness'

'she peels the petals of my song/ the rhythm of my heartbeat laid bare for all to see/ i am putty pushed through cracks'

omnipresence: seek & you shall find/ bleed & you shall cry/ smoke & you will get high/ stand tall & the devil shall fall/ dance-black-dance/ speak-shout/ chant it down/

but remember your place

Yeah, that's my story. I'm tired.