Triumph of the Heart

There were swamps, slums, gottas, brunks, love songs,
Hidden pleasure, ignored passion, secret worship,
Quiet movement and undisclosed self loving,
Now I know God has brought me here for something


I take a quick glance around the arena as a grumpy bookie elbows me into decision making. The Heart is more likable, but I read weakness in its gentle gestures and innocent smiles. The Mind’s sturdy image emits confidence, and although its gloomy dark robe gives me goose-flesh, there’s no time for a second thought. I make a safe bet. What a chicken, I tell myself.

My head says I lost my way
But my heart knows that my life is destined in anyway
A long road running towards stops where I pay
Pay, pay for what I have taken and is got what I deserving

A few lonely drops run down my spine when I hear the crowd cheering. I wake up from this self-imposed hypnosis to see the Heart on the floor, motionless. Gaudy colors blend with piercing whistles as I escape for the door, ready for all of it to fade away, stay behind, dissolve in the night breeze, disappear and be forgotten.

Needed to search myself to go back
Had no signs of hope before lost in the darkness
Not knowing what my fate makes of me
And oh ignoring the fellowship accompanying me

The clingy hand grabs my sleeve and pulls me back into the noise. It’s not over, the bookie grins. There’s another dose of beating up, slipping down and bleeding away. The winner takes on the Pride. I silently examine the Mind leaping in the corner, dark hood sliding down unnoticed, revealing the confused gaze and moisture on the weary forehead. I am not a big fan of the Pride. Struggling to silent my instincts this time, I bet on the one I believe in, not the one I think looks more promising. I know this attempt to do the right thing comes too late in the game, but I can only make so many mistakes before they start contaminating my soul.

What is the mind without the heart
What am I without my shadow
What is life without knowing that death comes
What is a song without a melody

I feel every drop of blood touch the floor. They burn tiny holes in my head, devouring my thoughts and turning them into blankness. I feel no strength. She can’t afford to lose this one, I hear the coach yell as he throws in the towel. I feel relieved enough to get up and run. Across the isle, up the stairs, onto the ring floor, out of breath and lost for words, I stop and look down, puzzled. I feel nothing. My silence offers little compassion to the Mind. Sorry, I whisper before dashing back through the crowd, past panicky stares and out of their range.

Tell me, won’t you tell me, what your mind is without your heart
Tell me, do you feel, do you feel happiness
When you don’t feel pain
Your heart, your heart, your heart…
Your soul, your soul, your soul…
Say we must destroy in order to rebuild,
In order to rebuild, don’t you know, don’t you know
Your heart, polarity must be for you and me, for you and me...

Somewhere in the back room, I drop to my knees in front of a lonely figure, shattered in its quiet calamity. I give tribute to it and a promise to keep my freedom out of fear’s reach. From this battle on, I choose to tend to the Heart.

Lyrics in this post: Mind vs. Heart by Nneka
Currently listening: Mind vs. Heart by Nneka
Image credit: speak2josie

6 a.m.

I long for other you
Unable to release
This grip
Of fingers turning blue
I act at ease
Then hide to weep
Under my skin
From hand of fate
Its painful scratch
For I have seen
Your falling state
Please stay and catch
Day's quiet cue
Please try to be
For sunrise longer
The other you
Hold on to me
Till I grow stronger
And leave behind
This place
Its dust
My lover’s mind
His fading grace
His lust

Your face
My past

Light and Dark

I used to scan through your hints like one scans through a book with pretty pictures, without diving in first ... I did not understand. It sank in all of a sudden as I was staring blankly at the clouds beneath, flying back from the place in between the mountains where you were born and lived for one day. I had just closed the last page of Mandela’s biography, which took boredom out of the forever I spent in the airports. I was done hiding my tears from strangers, wiping them off the pages that struck me so deep. I looked into the thin stripe of blue light, the place of safety above the storm. My mind was wondering. I haven’t been thinking of you for weeks now, but somehow you have ways of intruding my head when I least expect it. "I am crazy," you whispered once, and "I am light and dark," you wrote another time using those little magnets on my fridge. Of course you didn’t mean the surface, the mere pictures in your book, the outside that sometimes fools us into walking in circles around the meaning that is so obvious. How blind was I to never dig deeper?

I dropped my bags in the doorway and rushed to my desk, frantically reading words and faces you put on the screen. There it was, sitting in the open, yelling at me for taking so long to hear. Forgive me my blindness. I would have strangled my pride in its cradle if I only knew how much of you I misunderstood.

One half.

I wish I could go back and touch your life, my dear friend, the way you touched mine. You woke me up like the rain wakes a leaf in a desert, helping it fight the draught for the right to grow again, washing its memory clean of the dry comfort of the sun, bringing back the time long forgotten, when it first tasted the storm and danced with the wind and bloomed so carelessly, when it wanted to live for the sake of the landscape around it, not the survival itself.

So does my mind.

Currently listening: Vuli Ndlela (Accept the Situation) by Brenda Fassie

The book mentioned in the post: Nelson Mandela: No Easy Walk to Freedom by Barry Denenberg