Conscience Fiction
Poetry by Ilva Pieterse

Stars/scars

April 28th 2012

I am waiting for the stars to lead me Away from this late night double-feature But I just can’t get these scars to leave me Our time was too short For me to realise That a five-star last resort Was all I was to you I should have been the wiser I should have seen [...]

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I wrote a poem for you

March 12th 2012

I wrote a poem for you The day before I met you When I didn’t yet know a soul can be shipwrecked Or that the sun can have secrets When I hadn’t yet learned to look for symptoms Or dreamed you could become my weakness You entered me like a sickness From your first ‘hello’ [...]

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A lucid doodle

February 5th 2012

With a tracing of my dreams I’ll draw for you In the shapes of streams And the sounds of seas A lucid doodle The colour of waterdrops To show you where my world stops And my bones begin I’ll take you to the place Where my poems sing

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I’m not depressed

November 3rd 2011

I am not depressed I’m just deflated Out of style and over-dressed At second-best, I’m overrated An old birthday balloon (Out of breath, somewhat bated) I hum my jingles out of tune One-hit-wonders soon outdated Like a song without sound Mourning a muted meltdown I’m at the point of no concern For my inability to [...]

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Cocoon

June 6th 2011

She spun a cocoon The colour of a silent moon Around what remained Of her lost and un-gained. She bound bone to bone Stitched smile to song And calmly coloured her cries In the shades of reason gone wrong. But when she saw That her loss was a learning curve And her being Not a [...]

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Captivated

June 1st 2011

Hold me like a promise; Break me like a vow. For today I am as fragile as the secrets of a child, And as desperate as a dream dressed in dust.

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Another woman

March 15th 2011

There is another woman living In the friction Between your hips and my thighs Do you think I haven’t seen The memory of her Swimming in the moisture of your eyes? Do you think I haven’t noticed The sadness In the lines around your smile? Do you think I haven’t realised You’re somewhere else all [...]

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Bourbon Street

January 30th 2011

You and me We should be poetry We should be prose The way our breathing slows And our hearts beat Like wings on Bourbon Street. You and I We should be together Birds of a feather Flying like time. We always had rhythm, you know We just never had rhyme. We committed a crime together [...]

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Read them their writes

January 17th 2011

My words Are serving a sentence For mixing their tenses. While my pen Pleads repentance For its pompous pretenses. Silly little Bic Went a tad overboard When declaring itself A match for the sword. My words got the slammer When, as partners in crime Ignored rules of grammar And reasons for rhyme. But what now [...]

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Fine-tuned

November 26th 2010

You were beautiful in Borneo Like a song I’d been expecting To start playing on the stereo I was fragile when you found me A lifetime’s worth of sorrow And disappointment built around me But you gave me a standing ovation A merry-go-round of applause And cut through my curt conversation With your musical mixed [...]

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