We write

We write to release

Rage

Inner peace

Inner turmoil

We write

because anger is unbecoming

Shades of dragons and lizards where puppies and cute kitties should be

We write

because the demons within are clawing at the bubble

causing lesions in an already rupturing wall 

We write

because if we do not

that fine line we walk

will split our world into a million pieces

I write 

because what burns within

burns brighter outside my former self

I write because it stitches the broken pieces back together again

Shell

to write this is to admit infallibility 

to admit my own shortcomings 

doing the same thing over and over

and expecting a different result

to look on past failures and understand defeat

then to look at present perils and see past spectres

to look into your eyes and read my follies

i keep looking to you

as some sort of hero 

a saviour to my desires gone wrong

unwilling to hear myself say 

that you are only about you and what you can acquire

i keep clutching to our past

romanticizing our connection

vision in shades of pink and hues of red

passion imbued with romance on a bed carved for death

but rosy eyes shade reason

darkening vision

when in reality the connection is grey 

i am one of one hundred in a sea of damaged shells

the vision never holding truth

with yours speaking truth from the highest peak

i am one in a sea of many

nothing special, nothing unique

to you i am a fix for a five minute treat

never understanding if i was so daft not to see

or if i never imagined one could view beauty with such commonality

what you find so common must and will cause your demise

death at the hands of thing you despise

wrapping you in the embrace of cold calculation

smothering you with passionate demise

caressing your very insides with the ice of hidden contempt

slipping the sheath of dark gray death into the heat of your soul

staring as what was within flees its tortured cage.

I stand peering down

looking at what used to be

years of comraderie, some said love

now a distant memory

shedding a tear for the woman i used to be

before he met me.©

Avionelle L Calder

2011©

Soe: We like it just Soe

I am intrigued and amused by those of us who sit in our homes and happily pronounce that the current State of Emergency is the best thing since slice bread because as it stands all of you were living under self imposed curfews anyway.  I am amused because all of you thus far who have expressed that view are the same ones wining low to the ground in many a party and fete, attending many a show well past the hour of nine o'clock if you so chose at any time you so chose.  Many of you up to only a month ago were attending band launchings going till what ever god forsaken hour the next morning because that was your right.  Yes you exercised caution.  We all do when we are going out.  I did not hear any of you saying "Let me leave this band launch before nine because crime is just too high"...Not at all, you shook your waist even lower to the ground, continued to sit on that bar stool or enjoyed your poetry, christmas party, conference, reading, recital to your leisure and then left at the end, what ever time that may be.

So step down from your soap box for a tiny moment and let us all assess the major benefits of removing the rights of a nation with over 1 million people to clamp down on crime:

1. More criminals will be off the streets.  I find this a major plus and indeed I am heartened by the fact that over eight hundred assumed criminals have been taken off the street.  Lest we forget, these people can only be detained for as long as the SoE continues.  At the end of this "he who alleges must prove" and if you cannot prove that these assumed criminals are such then where pray tell are they going to end up?  I suspect right back on those same streets that you are afraid of treading.  Those same streets that you are so afraid to tread that we need a State of Emergency, but oddly enough not so afraid that you are willing to miss Tribe Band Launch for.  At this point I have to ask if this means that the real plan is to leave us in a permanent state of emergency to aid and assist in the clamping down on crime.  This leads to to ask what is the function of the police service.

During this highly publicised event, I have seen the police and army herding men and women into the back of their vehicles...these "Known assumed criminals" this must mean that they were tipped off about these criminals.  Okay so question...couldn't you get the tip off and arrest these persons without a state of emergency?  What is that you are saying? You have no proof, just the tip off?  So what you are really saying is that you cannot wait to get evidence and proof to arrest persons.  What then is the position after the SoE is lifted?  Where is the burden of proof?  For me, I am all for gathering up the criminals but no, not at the expense of my liberty.  What happens when a tipster is merely getting back at an accused person?  What happens when a person has a grouse with an army or police officer?  If you have no need for the burden of proof, where does the madness end?  Why can't we allow the police service to do their job?  Clean them up and allow them to do their job.

2. Their will be a significant decrease in criminal activity.  Naturally, this is what will happen if you are under a state of emergency for its duration.  Currently the curfew hours are between 9:00pm and 5:00am because you say that this is when the bulk of the crime occurs.  If that is the case then I must have dreamt up the recent spate of murders and rapes in broad daylight.  One young lady was raped at 12:00 noon and her case was not an anomaly.  Daylight crime is not an anomaly, how does your SoE solve this?  That is all I will say on that one.

3.  This will succeed in getting the guns and ammunition off the street.  As I write it may very well be that we have collected over twenty (20) guns.  You heard me.  This is substantially less than one normal raid in 1/2 day and this is what we have to show after nine days of snatching away civil liberties?  Where on God's green earth are containers of guns that people say were coming in every day?  Your intel cannot be so bad that you have only found under fifty guns in nine days.

For me, this SoE has less to do with political affiliations and more to do with a people willing to give up their civil rights in the name of an initiative that is not clearly defined, poorly planned and horribly executed.  I ask which of the over 800 people nabbed could not have been with proper police work and evidence gathering?  Which out of all the captured really required a SoE to be launched?

I am baffled by a people so willing to give up all their rights, without fully knowing the desired goal at the end of all this.  How long will this be for?  What do we expect to see at the end?  No we really do not know.  Their is no justifiable need for for breaking down my door other than a tipster does not like me or I offended and army or police officer so now they are so inclined.

As I write this I ponder if someone in a high position decided to brand me public enemy number one, would there be any recourse for me.  I would be detained until the SoE came to an end, with no necessity for the burden of proof.  What then?  Who champions my cause?

I ponder if I happen to live in a "hot spot" have no criminal links whatsoever  but have the misfortune of  having had a tiff with a vengeful neighbour...then who helps me?  I ask myself if someone does not like what I write and is sitting in an influential position then can I be informed via a press conference to report to the nearest police station?

As you read this, they can be about to kick down your door, you have no rights currently.  None of us do.  Why have we assented to people removing investigative works and proper policing to be replaced by an undefined measure?  Why are we content to kill all our mosquitoes with bazookas?  How is it we are insistent on burning down our house to get rid of the roaches?

Unlearned

Morning broke
Knowledge pledged that
walking was the best solution for this end
Knowledge said that
the new journey had only just begun
All aligned in simulated cosmic bliss...

Then in that open space, the caricature of what was
Mimicked my very existence
taunting the owner of self sufficient thought
Ridiculing my attempts to free myself of what held me so strong
Dancing on my scar tissues
Ripping open sores

My view on each side
Obscured by hollow emptiness
That engulfed my chrysalis
Cracking the cocoon in mid transformation
Shadows of my former self spilling out un-renewed

In that split second
The music that comforted my soul ceased
The silence wrapped my wounds
fresh pain searing at my broken soul

Looking out of a broken pane...

Avionelle Lindy Calder 2011©

Lessons Learnt

I've been writing this for longer than I can remember

Breaking the boundaries of a twisted mind

Simple acceptance is simply blinding

watching the colours spring to life

I look back on that day

With bitter release

wanting the occurrence to be null and void

yet now I see what is to is... must is

Mistaking childhood beauty

for adult want

ends mostly in painful misery

tortured beyond the bounds that reality has set

I slipped

off the edge of quiet solitude

into the web of childlike glee

condemned to create a greater mistake

than anything that went before

Still I looked to you

reaching for a saviour

touching an accuser

Too late the dream mingled with reality

coming to save what was left of my soul

still I turned to you

sinking deeper into the morbid darkness

that swallowed your world

I retched the deceit you fed me

drinking truth in sips

striking the iron of my misery

breaking the end of old fallen love

It was a process

I needed to absorb

A pain 

I was meant to swallow

fed the bitter to taste the old love

Now I walk