[Give a Damn] Colour

I am not the colour of the paper I write to you on,
I might be less than violet and so much more than saffron.
I am not just pink but the cerise that flows loudly right through me,
So much more opaque than you could expect me to be.


You thought you knew me,
You thought you could colour-assume me.
But this is not a whine of independence or my anger at you,
This is my exposure of your inadequate recognition of hue.


You thought you knew what I loved and what I might like,
You assumed I was powerless, an ambivalent and naïve white.
You thought I might like you so you beat me up outside a bar,
Until that evening for me turned to a horrible black char.


You were just nervous and protected an inane feigned anger,
While your blood flowed unwelcomed hot colours in amber.
You were heated, you were angry, you were unlistening and you were scared,
You were everything your mother taught you not to be while you only saw red.


You made me feel pain so deep I thought I would never forget,
Like unresolved, undecided oil paint on a canvas still wet.
But whet behind the ears you thought you had resolved your confusion therein,
While you live inside your victory, you’re only shroud in a resentful green.


So we walked in different directions and I chose the white dove,
Because you will never ever know the colour of my love.
You are not my type but you thought that because I was gay,
You could excuse your behaviour with areas you deemed grey.


Unacceptable in my world that thrives on colours in kaleidoscope,
All you do to yourself is tighten that oatmeal coloured neck-rope.
It’s not ok and I hope you find a brighter path before you sink,
But know that there is so much more to my world than simply being pink.

We will walk different journeys – I will send you a white dove,
Because you could never ever know the colour of my love.
I am not just your expected pink but a rainbow that flows brightly right through me,
And we are a so much more wonderment than you will ever understand us to be.

Under the Milky Way

Maybe I’m just scared

Scared of being an adult

Scared of loving and not being loved

Maybe I’m scared because they are older now than they should be
Maybe I am scared because I knew this day would come but didn’t think yet
Maybe

Maybe I try too hard
Maybe I fall to hard
Maybe

Maybe I can’t hurdle as well as I think I can
Or earn as much as I think I can in the expected timespan
Maybe I can’t fix what might not need fixing
Maybe

Maybe I like to stay awake at night by myself just because
Maybe it doesn’t mean anything like being up to no-good
I could sleep and dream or be awake and fantasise
Maybe

Maybe I fall too hard

Maybe I expect too hard

Maybe I admonish too hard

Maybe I’m already everything I planned I would be…
Not the actor although always performing
Maybe they already look at me impressed and wonder why I still think I don’t know what I’m doing

Maybe

Maybe I try too hard

Maybe I cry too hard

Maybe I am angry
Maybe I don’t know why –
Why I walk and talk and do silly things for my own regret
Maybe

Maybe not

Maybe he thinks I’m silly too and just keeps going
Or is he ever-patient and ever-knowing?
Is his big love the same as my big love?
Maybe

Maybe I don’t accept enough

Maybe

When will it stop?
Where will it end?
Maybe when I turn the corner and things are just different…
Maybe

Who you were in smaller clothes

Where did it come from,
this great big alarm?
This inside crucifying,
doing my personality this harm?

It bore from things outside of my control,
and now it gnaws at me like a hungry troll.
I never asked it to be a crutch, or a need for the pill,
so why does it taunt me so, from the window sill?

It makes me forget, about the magic I see,
it depletes the oxygen from the fire in me.
By forcing me to focus on so much else,
replacing my personality with grey ghoul of ghost.

The flickers of my greatness sit behind steel gates,
kept away from me by that same spate of hate –
that links me to my past and debilitates my now,
refusing me by I to allow myself to grow.

They say it is only I who holds myself back,
they might be right and I’ll try to learn from all that.
But I confess that I may still have my doubts,
they live long in the darkness and depths of the cuts.


They don’t just breeze away like clouds in the wind,
it takes a lot more than that, to truly and fully mend.
It can take notepads and music and books to find the fire,
and even more of all this, to no longer walk the wire.


But I hope I find the key to those horrible big gates,
because I’m bored of this constricting, anger and hate.
it lets up at times feeding us glimmers of hope,
but then it simply giggles at me, and then tightens the rope.


It makes me want to ask…


Do you really think that we have time?
While we plot this map to a fanciful sublime?
A place where Tink walks ink footprints on a map,
where we never grow old, or we ever agree to that? 


Where your head actually clears and you can smell the air,
when you forgive the baggage and let go of despair?
When you remember who you were in smaller clothes,
without forgetting where it is that you still want to go?


When you think about playgrounds and music forever,
those are the same thoughts that you always promised to treasure.
But getting caught up in today is the hefty price,
a bigger risk always than just throwing the dice.


So maybe just go back to the pure and the simple,
to innocent moments and that juvenile dimple.
to a time you know you exhibited honest love,
when you felt that satisfying warmth on your heart like a glove.


That place that you know, you know still exists,
on your palm, for your life and in your heart’s history books.
It never goes away or really forgets about you, 
it’s only you who needs to know, what you want to do…




Dylan Balkind ©

In the shadows of your den

Storms unleashed with an evil kiss,
in an eon of uncertainty while the darkness hissed.
It was certainly not great or even just a little bit sublime,
this was the mess that was 2009.

I grew and I fought but I didn’t necessarily have to like it,
I stared blankly back at faces who told me I would survive it.
I didn’t ask for a war with the Universe herself,
I wanted to walk through it coolly, without any strife.

But we don’t always get what we want and there’s no guarantee we ever will,
while we sit on the abysmal 2009 windowsill.
But hopefully only abysmal while you look back on the mess,
quite clear of murk and only gleaming optimism for the rest.

So, you ask for hardiness in your new army of men,
the army that will make up your empowered thoughts for 2010.
There will be no more flirting with the dark ego itself,
your humility will abandon your pride and put its arrogance on the shelf.

Look after yourself a little more in the months to come,
more about actual care and feelings – and less about the gun.
The gun you shot off too often and always far too loudly,
while you walked through 2009 misinformed and all proudly.

And no more trampling on your souls fragile boundary fence,
and no more daring evil kisses with uninformed confidence.
But be sure to lose nothing while you heal in the shadows of your den,
and be only a wiser and happier self as you face 2010.

A new day and a year that will be completely sunny and fine,
certainly more than great and so much more than sublime.
For 2009 is gone and I am ready to walk in –
to a happier and healthier space as I face 2010.

1999

It was 1999 and you could smell it. When the river met the sunset and the water met the edge. Orange in colour. In air. In feel. And on your skin.


When the people you were with were more than family and the things you heard were more than lessons. They were fables shared and memories in the making. When holidays were journeys of the soul… and the mind… and they transcended its own boundaries. When the people who were there then – and who are not here now – shared moments we never thought would go away.

It was 1999 and you could smell it. Computers were about to die and we were on the Orange River. Calculators were about to be confused with their own programming and we didn’t give a shit. We thought about sunscreen, swimming, capsizing and a safe place to sleep at night. We wondered how not to be wimps, while being wimps.

It was when friendships were being formed, reformed… and engagements were fresh; where personalities were incarnate and no pretences were upheld… when people had responsibilities and responsibilities were being ignored – on purpose.

It was 1999 and I was new. Obnoxious. Arrogant. All-knowing… but new. New in my skin. A skin that only then had a name… And a new way in how it was then negotiating an avenue to present itself, its personality, my walk, my talk. How I held my eyes and where they “did not look”. (The guide was an attractive Adonis of a man – you must know.)

It was 1999 and the first and last change of millennium we will ever traverse. Jean. Sandra. Barry. Mags. Shelly. Patrick. Niki. Glenn. Kim. Jason. Mel. Ant. Richard. Lynette. Terry. Viv. Karen… and me. On a way through life we could never have imagined; floating through some issues and rapidly through others.

It was 1999 and you could smell it. You still can if you try hard enough. Raw, vigilant yet friendly times where people listened without listening and swam without having to keep their heads above water. It was 1999 and it was what it was. Just that. Just great times. Just a journey. Just a spectacular leap of faith for those who thought they couldn’t do it and did – and those who thought they knew they could and didn’t quite…

It was 1999 and you could smell it.

I still try.

Do you?


© Dylan Balkind 2009
 

Baskets of happiness

Your energy is a decision that has the strength to be relentless, immeasurable and unmatchable. Your naivety is beautiful and its innocence can be invigorating, illuminating and most of all pure. The only decisions we should be worried about, are those to be open and a willingness to engage, receive and appreciate that our inexperience is an offering rather than a crutch.

Building paper houses on the beach where the tide washes in is the same sense of fragility we negotiate everyday; a tight rope between feeling creatively good about ourselves while being subject to impulses, urges and the whim of those who share in our space and our time.

So… it is not always easy not to get involved… But… your senses are your God-given gifts that reward you with the prize of being able to be tangible with your surrounds and the personalities that you connect with daily. Collect only the good stuff that carries the glitter and the magic into your life and put it into your basket of happiness to take with you on your own snippets-of-life journey - to wherever it is you are going.


© Dylan Balkind 2009