The open sky has hidden Shadows

Behind your shoulder blades the sun cuts the city sky to sleep, the skyscrapers seem not to be ready for bed though, they fight back with open and lit windows. Those annoying traffic lights are getting useless as the machines have retired and probably dreaming of the next morrow’s drive. Heard in the still urban wind is a loud breath of big air-conditioners and a smellable music of frying pans inside the buildings. You are not here, something under these pavements is silent. Their patterns seem new and obscure to the slumbering bodies of the homeless. It is not sadness, but a feeling of unfamiliarity. You’re somewhere between a weakening nexus of urban and rural, or future and past. 

The open road will be good to you. There will be unnamed lands besides you. Look at them and inhale all dreams of fellow nomads who came before you. Do not name them. Fall in love with the empty sky, rid your mind off its limits. You are free. Indefinitely. So take all you can get from all those vacant spaces in the quiet horizon. Follow the ungoverned movements of those slowly flying birds, they have no destination, so be patient, victory isn’t about arriving but the experiences collected and treasured throughout the trajectory. I will not yet speak about the spaces in my heart. Be joyful. You can look back if you want, I don’t know much about leaving so such advices have not yet been planted in my field of unevenly growing knowledge. Look around you. Moreover, I cannot yet suggest that you look inside you either. 

I will tell you though about the openness of the road and the spaces in the sky. I will speak less of the scarecrows in the corn gardens and the dead fish below the rivers you will cross. Not much about the tired souls now invisibly wondering atop the mountains you will see. I have seen the bonfires in your eyes, how they keep growing regardless of the winds motion or presence. I know about your hidden passions. I have sensed the warmth woven into your shy palms when the city is cold. You can hold an infant without a blanket or naked in this winter night and they will not cry. I marvel nightly at the miracle of your calm voice. Every word that passes your larynx sounds like a song. Angelic! You are such an oblivious healer!  There is beauty in how you curl your limited body between these cluttered city streets, untouched. Your serenity is magical! 

The open road: This is not even about ego or me blowing my own plastic horn; I’m not that big or insignificantly small, but you will miss me. The emptiness in the sky will remind you of the frivolous things I spend the whole night talking about, without any solid hypothesis. The silent horizon will remind you of my pointlessness. The lack of stop signs and traffic lights will remind you of my unstoppable laughter. How I stretch one stupid joke to a million stories without end. Those trees now standing without their leaves will remind you of my dry jokes. You will feel like I’m your favourite thing about the city behind you, though invisible now, you will see my face traced by the starless spaces in that rural night sky. You will think of all the strange things about me, those that you like and those you would rather do without. You will swallow the void in the horizon and the emptiness will fill you up, you will miss me. Who am I kidding? This does sound egotistic. Forgive me. I should have told you about me, how I feel about your absence. But…That will be too much for your travelling bones to carry. I want you to travel lightly, so I will keep all my feelings about your impermanent departure to myself. 

Your height is a symbol of how much you respect gravity and not so much interested in what happens in the sky. I realise now that I’ve painted so much of sky into this letter that you probably won’t read much into it. I think that’s what I want. For you not to read too much into it, but decode more from the things I didn’t have the courage or the skill to express. Don’t read too much into it. 

Be there and enjoy all the emptiness around you.

The city probably misses you. Just a probability. The skyscrapers are not giving much in that regard. Only open and lit windows.
Read all the omitted parts of this letter somewhere between The Shadows in the sky. 

Yours concealed by light and exposed by Shadows,

Elysium Garcia…back to The Shadows

Manufacturing Kings

Interview with Word N Sound on Manufacturing Kings, a poem by Elysium Garcia for Do Good Inc.

WnS: Having been deeply moved by our initiative, poet Elysium Garcia dedicated a poem to Do Good Inc., prompting this quick interview with him.

Word N Sound: Why did you decide to dedicate your poem to Do Good? What is it about the project that touched you so deeply?
Elysium Garcia:
From when I received and understood the course of the initiative, something burned inside of me. More than excitement, I went back to my childhood and remembered how challenging it was to be the 62nd pupil in a classroom flooding with hopelessness and the inability to dream beyond the predetermined destiny of street corners and second-hand contentment of an uncomfortable reality. I remembered how impossible it is to have goals when you have no idea of where to even begin. I was one of the four kids that shared one text book. A library was a room where torn and outdated books are stored, we didn’t know it for any other purpose. It was till after my matric year that I saw people walking into a library to read or study. All those memories were evoked when I realised the magnitude of Do Good Inc. I thought of how well some of us would have grown up to be if there were, amidst that inherent suffering, such initiatives then. Sadly, though I speak of it as a distant memory, it is still happening to most South African children. Children sent to school only as a standard procedure of life and not necessarily for education. This ghost of my past is a continuous present to a lot of children right now. So upon hearing about Do Good Inc, a new hope arose in me, I saw that suffering already ending and new kings being born.

Word N Sound:
Please tell us about the poem itself. What was the writing process like? What research went into the piece? And what core message did you want the audience to walk away with?Elysium Garcia: The writing demanded a lot of digging into my childhood and tempering with stories I had long forgotten and found unnecessary to bring into my current reality. But acknowledging my course as a poet and putting aside the ideas I always want to write about, I found it immensely imperative for me to carry this message through. I knew that I wouldn’t be happy to hear my story being told by someone else, a person with no idea at all of how consuming it is to truly be in that space. So I went in. I also went out to a larger scale of a suffering outside the school yard, I observed it from infancy to when the children have grown with that agony into their adulthood. Some are experiences I haven’t particularly obtained myself, but I have always seen in the generations before me.

My dream about the poem was to awaken in the audience the importance of educating children and putting to sleep the idea of fighting for things we will never ever get or get back as black people if we believe in the force of muscles and chanting outside some offices or in the streets unless we deploy better fighting methods, which in this regard is raising an informed people (the undiscovered kings) ours is to awaken the giants and discover the kings that are hidden by the lack of education in these kids. In us.

Word N Sound:
The photography was deeply moving. How did that idea come about? Where did you source the images?Elysium Garcia:Most of the poem was written by the photographs, the idea of the poem was very small and I didn’t trust much into it. But as I discovered these photographs I felt a great need to give them a voice. Surely they say a thousand times more than my words, which is why I needed their help to tell my story or express my idea of Do Good Inc in a much more comprehensible and perhaps moving manner.
I found the photos from a variety of blogs on the internet, I have blogged some myself. There’s a gigantic world of endless information out there waiting to be discovered. The reason why initiatives such as Do Good Inc are so important.

Word N Sound:
What other campaigns/projects/initiatives would you like to see Do Good Inc being a part of in the future? Elysium Garcia:Growth! I would like to see the big corporations that have been given the power and all resources to do such things marvelling in astonishment upon the greatness of Do Good Inc and not understanding how it came about. And then join in just with their resources.
I see Do Good Inc growing to a level where we have tutors that parents trust more than school teachers. Where through Do Good Inc, South Africa and the whole of Africa awakens to the knowledge that educating a child is more important and more glorious than creating a dance show on TV.

The Church of Assholery

When hours are named ungodly
They knock at our doors
We clinch our hearts from beating
The silence of saintly tombs
We lock our rooms
Not even two spoons of sugar do we give out
These cocoons have limited space
We never let them in
We are tired!
Our shoulders have no wings
above our heads no luminous rings
we are not angels,
but exhausted human beings
Yes, God exists! For all of us.
But when they come knocking announced at your door
their stomachs falling apart and throats tearing
move the curtain, peak though the window
Remind them,
God for us all, but tonight my friend, it is every man for himself
Here’s a gospel to preach,
Do unto your friends what you wish they reciprocate
Friendship is not a charity ministry
Or a hymn to remember when voices are gone
When they come from an exile you know nothing off
Turn the key and lock the door
be silent, sing the holy gospel beneath your breath, holy!

Welcome to the church of assholery!
Here we are not sad or broken
We are not lonely,
God is always there,
Look around you,
How he has broken himself down to every single smile you see
Do not fear solitude,
Even the island has the whole ocean hugging its feet at all times
Do not wait for loneliness to see that you’ve always been alone
Gather your bones and bury the ashes of your sad isolation far away
You cannot be alone, you are part of a godly revolution
This is the church for you!
Welcome to the church of assholery
Come in, you are welcome!
In the name of the holy infinity
The grace of drunkenness and stupidity
The small mercy of being selfish
We welcome you
Yes, indeed
We are ridiculous, insipid and folly
Corny and pointless
Call us what you want,
We are the synagogue douche bags
The holy mount Zion of egomaniacs
We are the hooligans of the lord
A congregation of tired people
We have let the dead weight of inconsiderate friends go
Because we know, we don’t share the same destiny
This is no prophecy,
Here is the truth,
Not only when you are broken
At times you are happy and want some one to praise with
You stand atop the chapel of your lonesome holy life
And ring the church bell of your smile, your laughter so inviting
But no one ever comes,
No one ever needs church when it is not a Sunday
No one needs shelter when the clouds are just still hinting rain
Floods are a tragedy no one fears until they are drowning
You are Noah and your arc is a joke when the sun is still shining
Bless your heart, you are a congregation of volunteers
A non-profit organization, no one needs your company
They will never remember you, unless they really have to
Bless your heart,
You are a church of forgetful believers
The pillars are rattling
Walls have gone deaf
the whole structure is falling apart
Dangling at the collapsing temple of your heart
are the ghosts of friends that need for quenching
A sudden thirst, your drying holy water well
So shallow and almost empty
Out, You keep pouring your soul for them
Leaving nothing for yourself
The passersby, the strangers, bystanders
and comfortably loitering acquaintances
With no ideal of converting to true friends,
but they keep drinking
Your hands are lakes of baptism
A back up plan when in need for ablution
when the dust of their busy lives has risen to the necks
Chocking, they remember you for cleansing
only when they run out of options

Your chest is a cathedral, a holy refuge of sinner-like friends
Recalling you only when the emergency of salvation emerges
You are the pope slouched behind the veil
as they unveil all their agonies
You forget you troubles
and with tender mercy solve their mysteries

Only sometimes, when all doors are shut in the faces
do they remember that your shoulders are a church of eternal kindness
The entrance to your heart is ever welcoming
Your arms are open doors
They can always walk in
Bless your good heart;
The secondhand sacrament needed only when sins start itching
You are always there for scratching
Glory O Glory you are such a good friend!
Have you not tired?
Have you not tired of being the messiah?
How you always put down your fire
to fuel their distant flames
They are bonfires now, and you have put aside all your desires
Watered down your dreams to set sail the ship of their passing realities
Out of breath; you have been the insignificant air filling their tires
And they move! You are static
Your hands have wires,
look up at see the puppeteers you call friends
When will you ever see that your good heart has been your downfall?
Bless your soul!
You are a church of pretenders and parasitic cynics
Glory O glory you are a song sung only when tongues are cut off
I say leave that church my friend
Your big heart is heavier than what your hands can hold
Let it go!
Kindness has nothing to do with accommodating parasites
Selflessness is not the act of giving away yourself
Remember your soul, even the promise of love cannot afford it
Forgiveness has nothing to do with your spirit
We forgive just to eliminate physical problems
Just to avoid criminal records and death sentences
If it is then fuck spiritual growth,
Your body is still young, no need to age the spirit
It is time you learn to say no!
Mean it!
Do not tremble, stand firm at the pulpit of your church and say NO!
Do not be fear loneliness, you were born alone
Your destiny is yours,
the cross you carry was designed for your small shoulders
Carry it! When they come to ask for help with theirs say it proudly Fuck No!
Yes, be an asshole!
It is so much easier than being the good guy
All you have to do is be yourself!
Come to the church of jerks!
The church of the new faith,
Our religion is one,
We believe in you!
All you have to do is what you want to
Our commandment is one,
Do you!
Burn the masks and wear your only face
Do not fear being selfish!
Holy O divine you’ve been fucked many times
It has to stop!

…back to The Shadows
© Elysium Garcia | Kagiso Tshepe

At the point where fingers are tips
skin lingers from bone
the edge of body
skin tone independent of light
texture numb of touch
much of what made the spine in ruins
and neck the pivot of head is a one way road
They all sit
an annoying symposium of sick things
once known to chest and ear as birds
the faded music of a laughter forgotten
and today with loathed echoes
They sit and swallow tea
over a mutual memory shared
in different times,
the breaking bread 
the small back 
they all once emptied their lonely over
Them strangers in near history
eyes charged with prospects of a friendly future
not so long from here, 
to be precise, 
as long as his bad name and filthy skin can stretch
But for a man with such a short name
how long will their songs last for?
A man with such thin skin
How far will the congregation stay?
O the folly of a church built on the bad music of angels
A flock of songbirds gathered under a tree of giant ears
How it will swallow their songs before the air
The tree casts the longest shadow 
hearing songs from beneath a bird’s breastplate 
Them lovely strangers
what amount of notes will their terrible voices
need to sing in attempts to out live his name
and out live the tree with giant ears to maintain the union?
Do they even feel anything about each other
beyond the dead man’s silent song?
How long will this awkward union stretch?

and the tree’s ears…back to The Shadows.

Allow for the bleed

O you of dripping jaws
you of drizzling elbows
your perspiring nails
and flooding ankles
The god of, if you are a god, all liquid things
unleash your wet sword,

O river, O sea
release your gushing heart to my aid
shower all gates open,
you watery messiah
pierce your slippery mercy in
rain o sir! rain o madam!

rain you of ephemeral silhouette
dissolve all this solid fear
this trembling of angry rock
melt this shivering of stubborn mountain
this most rigid panic, evaporate
sir, madam,

condense please this iron terror
You god of, if you are a god at all, of all liquid things
Sir, Madam,
Destroy all this rigidity
Jeopardize this fixed sadness
Break all the walls
Sir, Madam, please,
heed to my metal stiff plea
Allow for the bleed.

…back to The Shadows.

Serendipity

Cigarette ashes and coffee stains ruined our photo book.

They have erected a museum of ghostly newspaper articles over the sacred ground where we buried our time capsule with those 11 letters to our futures selves 10 autumns ago.
All I have as memory are these blur poorly shaded sketches stored in my chaotic mind, in no particular order.
There isn’t much, but yeah, will take what I can get.
It sucks because the only way to open this memory box we made a pact once, that it should be by drowning it in warm tears of either one of us…This is fine, don’t worry you don’t have to cry, I will swallow my low self esteem and cry for you.
there are splat patterns, the abstract paintings of  infants on their trembling knees,
Arms out stretched towards the open sky
Catching bungee jumping mountains and free falling light bulbs, grandsons of meteorites,
Their smiles destroying the tyranny of all things ugly in the face of the galaxy
Their smiles are what makes the world spin,
tucked between dying hearts and breaking bones are their chuckles,
this is the sticky substance that has glued the dead and living together,
there is great life in every death, existence is solidified to an enchanting stillness.
We are here today, you and I
There are pink skeletons and silver petals, the color of youthful metals, the ornaments of our awkward union,
Map readers illiterate, indecisive compasses.
It is impossible to plot the precise moment when we became one.
Not many of these objects are useful
The memories they hold are armless soldiers, their souls are cold. 
When these stories are told,
The fabric walls between enemy territories are torn. 
Nations die when they unfold. 
I’m slowly forgetting about the war. 
Don’t mind this part. 
Behold, there’s a sculpture of us next to the stream beneath the willows on a Saturday morning, your pockets are full of rainbows and I have brought the sails with, hoisted my sleeves towards my elbows in case the stream discreetly grows to a river or the whole ocean while we recite our poems. 
I’m ready to save your life if floods come as unannounced as they usually do. 
There’s a bird in my chest, every hour she comes to life and remind me that I love you despite myself. 
This bird is a giant woman, she is you in the forth approaching incarnations, 
though my heart, smaller than her ear lobe, I love her too. 
I speak to her, I tell her that even if you and I part ways, 
hearts discover their separate pathways, I will keep her there, always, 
I will carry her with me all my life, because I love her, not because of you, 
but because she is you and I Love you, she stays there. 
She is there now. 
But she doesn’t remind me of anything. 
Me and her concur.
Not many of these objects are useful
The memories they hold are armless soldiers, their souls are cold.
When these stories are told,
The fabric walls between enemy territories are torn.
Nations die when they unfold.
I’m slowly forgetting about the war.
Don’t mind this part.
Behold, there’s a sculpture of us next to the stream beneath the willows on a Saturday morning, your pockets are full of rainbows and I have brought the sails with, hoisted my sleeves towards my elbows in case the stream discreetly grows to a river or the whole ocean while we recite our poems.
I’m ready to save your life if floods come as unannounced as they usually do.
There’s a bird in my chest, every hour she comes to life and remind me that I love you despite myself.
This bird is a giant woman, she is you in the forth approaching incarnations,
though my heart, smaller than her ear lobe, I love her too.
I speak to her, I tell her that even if you and I part ways,
hearts discover their separate pathways, I will keep her there, always,
I will carry her with me all my life, because I love her, not because of you,
but because she is you and I Love you, she stays there.
She is there now.
But she doesn’t remind me of anything.
Me and her concur.
There’s a bottle filled with sad, there are words in the sad louder than the sea waves, 
the words speak loudly, volumes of units more than grains there in. 
You bought this at the African market, I remember. 
The third gift you handed me after the StarBook and your heart. 
I wish it was your heart that you forgot here not this sand, 
but like I said, I’ll take what I can get.
There are 3 dimensional glasses; 
this reminds me of a day we were so drunk of a Love unbound, 
our feet moving independent of our minds, 
the perpendicular labyrinth to the movie theater, 
we had set our temporary destiny to see the ancient mythical gods play hide and seek behind modern day ideologies, but fate had it otherwise, 
we obliviously killed half of our glorious night looking at robots fighting humans, 
their steel fists colliding, 
the unbearable music of our daily arguments 
about biscuit crumbs on your bed, 
the sudden vanishing of body lotion, 
the antagonistic notions we had about what good poetry should sound like. 
I tried them on in desperate attempts to see the slope where we once slipped an fell in love. History is a blur collage of could have and should have beens, 
I see nothing worth my search. 

My dear Love, my soul has tired. 
I will not search anymore,
This last object is the end of my quest
My hand feels like greying hair,
I can feel your heart in the bad stories 
that the grapes carry to my ears through a subterranean vein
It does not have any of your tears
But I know you enough to trust that you’re crying as well on the other side
I can feel your shoulder blades cutting through my chest
I’m holding too, too hopelessly much to a fading memory of you
This is because you’re still her in my chest
The giant women has built a nest
It is a fortress of gold feathers
This is my last treasure of a Love unknown
I still keep her here. I Love her despite my self
When the fortress grows cold in the early phases of spring
She covers my flaws with her violet blanket
It has the powers of a flying carpet
She never flies though, She stays there, she sleeps there,
engrossed in my endless questions
‘How did we end up here? When did we become such puppets of a mere alkaline chemical reaction?’
She is not a scientist, so she doesn’t answer questions about time, alchemy of physics
She loves mystery and magic with the same force but in the opposite directions as I Love her. Nightly, I ask her these questions 
And like we did yesterday, we conclude…
There’s a bottle filled with sad, there are words in the sad louder than the sea waves,
the words speak loudly, volumes of units more than grains there in.
You bought this at the African market, I remember.
The third gift you handed me after the StarBook and your heart.
I wish it was your heart that you forgot here not this sand,
but like I said, I’ll take what I can get.
There are 3 dimensional glasses;
this reminds me of a day we were so drunk of a Love unbound,
our feet moving independent of our minds,
the perpendicular labyrinth to the movie theater,
we had set our temporary destiny to see the ancient mythical gods play hide and seek behind modern day ideologies, but fate had it otherwise,
we obliviously killed half of our glorious night looking at robots fighting humans,
their steel fists colliding,
the unbearable music of our daily arguments
about biscuit crumbs on your bed,
the sudden vanishing of body lotion,
the antagonistic notions we had about what good poetry should sound like.
I tried them on in desperate attempts to see the slope where we once slipped an fell in love. History is a blur collage of could have and should have beens,
I see nothing worth my search. 
My dear Love, my soul has tired. 
I will not search anymore,
This last object is the end of my quest
My hand feels like greying hair,
I can feel your heart in the bad stories 
that the grapes carry to my ears through a subterranean vein
It does not have any of your tears
But I know you enough to trust that you’re crying as well on the other side
I can feel your shoulder blades cutting through my chest
I’m holding too, too hopelessly much to a fading memory of you
This is because you’re still her in my chest
The giant women has built a nest
It is a fortress of gold feathers
This is my last treasure of a Love unknown
I still keep her here. I Love her despite my self
When the fortress grows cold in the early phases of spring
She covers my flaws with her violet blanket
It has the powers of a flying carpet
She never flies though, She stays there, she sleeps there,
engrossed in my endless questions
‘How did we end up here? When did we become such puppets of a mere alkaline chemical reaction?’
She is not a scientist, so she doesn’t answer questions about time, alchemy of physics
She loves mystery and magic with the same force but in the opposite directions as I Love her. Nightly, I ask her these questions 
And like we did yesterday, we conclude…
My dear Love, my soul has tired.
I will not search anymore,
This last object is the end of my quest
My hand feels like greying hair,
I can feel your heart in the bad stories
that the grapes carry to my ears through a subterranean vein
It does not have any of your tears
But I know you enough to trust that you’re crying as well on the other side
I can feel your shoulder blades cutting through my chest
I’m holding too, too hopelessly much to a fading memory of you
This is because you’re still her in my chest
The giant women has built a nest
It is a fortress of gold feathers
This is my last treasure of a Love unknown
I still keep her here. I Love her despite my self
When the fortress grows cold in the early phases of spring
She covers my flaws with her violet blanket
It has the powers of a flying carpet
She never flies though, She stays there, she sleeps there,
engrossed in my endless questions
‘How did we end up here? When did we become such puppets of a mere alkaline chemical reaction?’
She is not a scientist, so she doesn’t answer questions about time, alchemy of physics
She loves mystery and magic with the same force but in the opposite directions as I Love her. Nightly, I ask her these questions
And like we did yesterday, we conclude…

It is open, 

Serendipity, that’s how it happened.

Serendipity, that’s how it happened.

Serendipity, that’s how it happened.

∞

~ Ben Thikalog of Tecres Yociets