Thursday, November 15, 2012

Gaga Wisdom





"Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you're wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn't love you anymore." - Lady Gaga

Extract from short story: A Darker Shade of Grey


A Darker Shade of Grey
by
Raeez Jacobs

I feel like a packet full of smoke, choked on the top by chubby hands.
My mind is adrift so many thoughts, as if my head is a boardwalk for these soughts of things. Yet my mind is like the packet full of smoke; weightless and questionable. Scientifically. Philosophically. I never question it, because I hate getting things wrong, and my mind is the last thing I wan’t a fist fight with. This feeling has been scarce, and I can’t say I’ve missed it. Only I know it’s really familiar; I can be comfortable with it when I want to be, and I can be real uncomfortable with it too. I keep feeling as if my room is a platform, and a train would soon stop here, but all that materialises in the dimness, is a soccer-ball-sized puff of steam. The train is one of the things in my head, meant to represent something bigger than my inadequate imagination; something by which I become a quintessential dumbass. A piece of shit, son of a gun...call it whatever, the fact remains a fact.

The rain is just starting to fall, and I drown in every drop, like a meak speck of atmosphere. My eyes meet the wet road; the gravel from which steam rises, like a lane in a horror movie, and they stay there for hours. The clouds roll and the air darkens, as if more blackberry essence is being poured into the air by a servant of God. I think I can feel the wetness, yet I am indoors. I hear the rain make war on my zinc roof, and I know I’m not going to bother breaking my posture, to hell at deaf allies making so much noise above me.

 ©RaeezJacobs.2012.

Monday, November 5, 2012

[Poem] Toffee Skinned Goddess




Six-legged, nine arms
a goddess stuffed through
a dazzlig cincture
one-eyed in your shrine
choking on the brine
swirling like the twist
of a ballerina with sharp points
in the metro of your throat
jerking like a wind-smacked
postal pole with all your scarlet
letters turning upward like a UFO
and then raining down on you
like festive confetti
returned to sender
the repeat offender
calpable bender
with a little bit of she
in your masculinity
your skin is made of toffee
shining like vanilla floors when the
sun hits the windowpane
there ain’t no virgil going down
up your alley in your temple
but you feel the flame
feel the burn
as the torrent makes folds
and bangles of your loose
skin
you can’t grow accustomed
to the feeling
and your ears deafen
as you eavesdrop on the
screeching conversation between
your bone and your pulled muscle
that tear each other to shreds
while you try catch the drops of
confetti but they slip through
your fingers and disappear in the
palm of your hand

 ©RaeezJacobs. Poetry. 2012


[Poem] Of You- R. Jacobs



everything reminds me of you
when i think back
in the tape of my mind
i see you turning in my stereo

and i hear your lungs
pressing out the music
coming from your sweet mouth
with your hands changing
the way the wind felt on my cheeks

i see your eyes as i see
two headlights in the night
with the same anxious heart
of a lonely traveller

taking my jeans and smirk
down some pretty dangerous roads
getting into an old Chevy
with some sweet thing

who listened to Pour Some Sugar on Me
at the loudest volume
and made me sweat like
a slave in hell

with shackles at my shaking knees
rattling like possessed sea shells

hot and bothered
directly exposed to the heat

that all reminds me of you


©RaeezJacobs. Poetry. 2012

A piece of


-lambency jumps from the verses
your description glistens
you are the torch of my poetry
when the mist takes me hostage
you beautify my sordid miasma


Awkward Turtles and Romps


I’ve been contemplating getting a tattoo, for a long time now. I should
have been inked, around the time of my birthday (May 3, to be precise)
but somehow, it just never materialized as slated. Okay, I didn’t end up
getting it, because I was with a group of friends, gallivanting the streets
of Johannesburg, like tipsy-still-thirty gypsies. Literally, we were nomads.
but i won’t elaborate on that too much, since this piece is about ‘my tattoo’,
not about the alibis and setbacks. I remember the reaction I received, when
i reminded everyone that one of the stops (of the many) needed to be made
that day, should have been at the parlour; i could sense the disgruntlement,
although I do also understand that we were under immense pressure, to
find accommodation and settle in, having been on the road, literally, since
the night before.



I relented on the immediate need, and decided (promised myself)  that I could
just get it another time, and that it really wasn’t such a huge kettle of fish.
But albeit giving up, I remained aware of the rather irking fact that, I was not
always apt to save money, and that I would most likely be able to do my tattoo
six times over, with all the money I received, sporadically during the year, but
still wouldn’t end up inked, because of the former fact, of my disposition to
spend, foolhardily.

The 2012 year is about to end, and something I’ve wanted since the fall of the
previous year, might just remain a want until the break of the new year.
I don’t want that to happen. I am going to try with every corpuscle of
my being, to make this little dream become a reality before i carry, what should
be considered: ‘an expired dream’, into a year I’ve set aside for the
creation, development and emergence, of so many other ambitions, goals, etc.

For those who don’t know, the tattoo that I’ve been yearning to get on
my skin is; the outline (in bold and black, not beautiful lines) of a tattoo,
with it’s stout legs pushed out at its sides. The lack of detail has everything to
do with my simplicity, and also the symbolism of it;

the outer lines depict the shadow of the turtle
the boldness of the lines symbolise the texture (in a sense), lending
to the idea of strength (in relation to the turtle’s shell)-à the hard shell,
signifies the face of exterior strength, and also the length and breath of
the protection we assimilate, as defenses and to keep out what we
don’t welcome in. The line is like a wall, in other words, except that
we don’t live within the construct, we are it, and the walls are
bold and thick, emphasising that we have strong bodies and spirits, but
mostly that we are unimpressionable and our mental state is able
to perservere influence.

The turlte became sort of an influential ‘figure of fauna’ to me, around the
time i started enjoying my trips down marijuana avenue, with my crazy antics,
illusions and artistic paraphernalia like, viz. my poetry pads, pens, notebooks, and
imagined realities.  
The turtle was then used, to let one another know, if the other was already high. In that way,
we would all be cognisant of the state we were in. That was it, really. However, turtles had
long since stood out for me, because of how dissimilar they are to other animals, and how
their speed is criticised. I believe that, it was this criticism which somehow made me privy, of the
entitlement assumed, destructive criticism given, and the judgements handed out by humans, extending the criticism, control over, and judgement of other human beings to animals, in a global and evolving world. The turtle is almost like me, though I am anything but slow; I tend to slow down, casually, to peruse what’s happening around me, and I might even take a while to get going again. I’m comfortable in my shell- my outer experience, and it’s of great importance to me, because not only does it encase my organs, but it’s a point by which I am perceived, socially. Irrespective of whether such a perception affects me or not, my physical appearance matters to me, not only for partial veneration and admiration from others, but it’s also something I can contain and construct my qualia (innate reality); my mental world is concealed, and kept private through my outer frame. Exactly, the way turtles are concealed within their shells.

Example of Turtle Outline for tattoo

Picture from my birthday weekend, with Azizza and Chanelle