Hidden words

She carefully carved the words,
immediately realising what she had done,
She tried to scrub them out.
But it was too late,
He had already seen it.

He started towards her,
She looked down to avoid his eye contact,
Desperately trying to cover it up
as he was to pass by.

...thinking how foolish she had been...
...trying to imagine what he could possibly think...

A tear fell,
and yet her eyes were dry.

She felt his damp cheek press against hers
as he took her in his arms
and held her so tightly,
showing the love he never before knew how to express.

Catch her specks of dust...

She sits with a pen,
With some paper.
Her mind filled with ideas, thoughts.
So inspired,
So full of potential.

Fantastic words start to formulate,
Miraculous images...

And yet as soon as her pen touches the paper,
Her imagination shatters,
It turns to dust
and blows away in the wind...

African Treasure

A beautiful little girl,
She and her friends full of wonder.
They follow us through the streets,
they follow the muzugos (white people),
that they so rarely see.

We go to visit a school of older children,
we take the young girls with us.
The four of them play amongst themselves,
as we talk to the older children.

Sometimes they are distracted by our play,
by our words,
but mostly they are content,
playing in the grass and dust around them.

We finish, and leave the school,
The four children come with us.
Outside the gates we are ready to head back.
Before we go I give each child a crayon.

The beautiful little girl takes it from me.
She opens her hand
and starts to draw on the treasure she holds.
I look closer.

Her treasure is a razor blade.
Her treasure is a danger,
Her treasure could infect her,
Her treasure could be a killer.

A girl of no more then four years,
Her toy of choice?
A tool that spreads a deadly virus,
In a country where AIDS is a reality.

Magic Spells

Only in films, and then, computer generated,
to set the eerie graveyard scene.
But this, tonight, is real.
Dirty fluff sweeping past the moon at such speed.
Some so murky it briefly blocks the light of the moon,
Some so thin the moon illuminates a magically, misty, glowing grey

-The sort you would see seeping from a witches cauldron.

Blossom

One little cherry blossom,

all alone,

...shivering...

petals shaking in the breeze

The first sign that spring is coming...

The sun shines a little brighter...

...but my heart sinks a little deeper

Oh, to be noticed...

The quiet girl,
barely utters a word.
Always armed with a book,
lost in her own world.
So thin,
So frail.

She thinks the world doesn't see her,
so she is fading away.
She no longer looks at the world,
eyes down to the words on the page.

She doesn't see the boy who watches her.
Waiting for one look,
one glance,
from his only love...

...his heart is breaking.

The beautiful music in his mind

There is an old man sitting on the opposite side.
The whole journey he has been scribbling away frantically,
Through pages,
Turning pages,
Flipping back.

I finally look over to see.
He has a mixture of manuscript and lined paper,
Words and music.
Swapping between pieces of paper
as he has new ideas for music,
then lyrics,
then back to music.
Tapping his foot
- hearing his creation form inside his head
nodding,
tapping along,
stopping.
- that's wrong
then a scribble
followed by more frantic writing.

Trying to capture all of these ideas before they fade away.
I wish I could have heard the beauty of his creation.