When he walked into his cell
(after Eugène Terreblancé)
When he walked into his cell
with the light falling through a small window,
with the jail door slamming close behind him,
the hammer of the judge was still sounding in his ears,
he did not realize that God was waiting there on him,
while his whole world was shattered into pieces
and as the darkness of the first nigh was cutting through him,
he came to a confession
that he had changed and somehow had forgotten about God,
but still God was near to him
and in the raw stench of tobacco and sweat,
a new realization came to him
that the light of God was still shining over him,
that his own pain and longing disappears in the presence of God.
[Reference: Hy Hou Wag (He Is Guarding) by Eugène Terreblancé.]
poem by Gert Strydom
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Related quotes
Falling Out
Written by ricky & marty wilde
What can I say now after all is said and done
You cut me up in pieces when the shooting first begun
What did I do to you to make you turn away
cause now theres nothing left for me
Theres nothing I can say
Now its too late you feeling sorry
Youll never change
And theres nothing you can do about it
Falling out - why did you do it to me, yeah
Falling out - cutting me up into pieces
Falling out - you know that you upset me, yeah
Falling out - you know that Im so hurt baby
You said you loved me, I believed you for a while
You sure could fool the angels
When you use that painted smile
I should have known that it was too good to be true
But now that its all over, you know I wont forget you
Now its too late you feeling sorry
Youll never change
And theres nothing you can do about it
Falling out - why did you do it to me, yeah
Falling out - cutting me up into pieces
Falling out - you know that you upset me, yeah
Falling out - you know that Im so hurt baby
So now its over and theres nothing left to say
The flame that burned within my heart
Now slowly fades away
So dont you ever think of knocking at my door
Just turn the light out, close your eyes
And think of me no more
And its too late to say youre sorry
Youll never change
And theres nothing you can do about it
Falling out - why did you do it to me, yeah
Falling out - cutting me up into pieces
Falling out - you know that you upset me, yeah
Falling out - you know that Im so hurt baby
song performed by by Kim Wilde
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Dark Light Dark
Living nightmare awake
Solitude unyielding
Forsaken forgotten
Cannot sleep
Cannot dream
Reprieve darkness
Praying sleep
Praying dream
Awake prisoned darkness
Time passes never light
Darkness consuming
Broken lost
Waiting sleep
Waiting dream
Light draws near
Light appears
Shineth deliverance
Warm glimmer hope
Darkness retreats
Happiness surfaces
Thorns gone
Pain fades
Shelter amidst light
Dream envelopes cherish
Dream breaks shattered
Awaken again darkness
Scream pain again
Darkness spinning ruling
Light blackened
poem by GMS Pinafore
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Night of the long knives
People now believe that if
somebody like Eugene Terreblance
could be killed so cruelly
it awaits every white person
and that black folks are itching
to rob, to chop to pieces
and to dishonour whites
and to rape women
and that the government propagates it.
It is thought that farms and houses
will be stolen with force
in the same way as in Zimbabwe
and many people now want to leave
and go to other countries
to escape poverty
and avoid being forced
into a squatters’ settlements.
l’Envoi
Friends and loved ones of mine
want to escape the night of the long knives
that they get out of the writings
of visionary Van Rensburg
but still the One that could save at Blood river
walks on my side.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Memory to Eugène Terreblancé at Rooigrond prison
This government slammed a jail door behind you,
caged you in like a animal, locked you behind bars
in the prison at Rooigrond;
when this government took your freedom
a potted plant was your biggest treasure
and the grace that you found on your knees
from the almighty Lord God
and between the prisoners with tin plates,
who were continuously making a ruckus,
they tried to devour your humanity.
In the mornings they gave you porridge,
before prison doors slammed behind you,
in the afternoons again porridge and for dinner pale soup;
but still you are walking through my thoughts,
your splendid poems turn and whirl in my mind
as if they are still keeping you alive
and this government
does not hear the cock crowing three times,
the Son of God was also betrayed and sold.
The barbarians that slaughtered you with pangas
already got bail,
(the one as a child is free from prosecution)
and in a few days your killers
(from Mozambique who brought disorder here)
will probably walk free as heroes into the streets.
By some of your own people despised
you were actually right, your own blood that flowed;
on the hands of black people,
stays proof of it eternally
l’Envoi
and somehow the blacks in our country
has totally lost their senses,
where they rob and decimate
the Afrikaner people and Afrikaner farmers.
[Reference: Rooigrondtronk (Rooigrond prison) by Eugène Terreblancé.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Hammer To Fall
Words and music by brian may
Here we stand or here we fall
History wont care at all
Make the bed light the light
Lady mercy wont be home tonight yeah
You dont waste no time at all
Dont hear the bell but you answer the call
It comes to you as to us all
Were just waiting
For the hammer to fall
Oh evry night and every day
A little piece of you is falling away
But lift your face the western way
Build your muscles as your body decays yeah
Toe your line and play their game yeah
Let the anaesthetic cover it all
Till one day they call your name
You know its time for the hammer to fall
Rich or poor or famous
For your truth its all the same (oh no oh no)
Lock your door the rain is pouring
Through your window pane (oh no)
Baby now your struggles all in vain
For we who grew up tall and proud
In the shadow of the mushroom cloud
Convinced our voices cant be heard
We just wanna scream it louder and louder louder
What the hell we fighting for?
Just surrender and it wont hurt at all
You just got time to say your prayers
While your waiting for the hammer to hammer to fall
Its gonna fall
Hammer..you know..hammer to fall
Waiting for the hammer to fall now baby
While youre waiting for the hammer to fall
Give it to me one more time
song performed by by Queen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Thank You For The Light
thank you for the light
i am just the broken mirror
capturing and reflecting
the light to those who
have not seen your truth
thank you for the light
for i am not the light,
i am not with the light
i am in the dark corner
always waiting for your
coming and in your
departure, i am left with
a memory of light and
remain in my shattered
state with all the pieces.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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The Light Through The Morning Window
THE LIGHT THROUGH THE MORNING WINDOW
The light through the morning window
The small leaves of the light green tree
The pale sky waiting behind everything
The night which is gone now.
All these failures one after the other,
Other names other destinies, greater than mine
The single singing I cannot hear
The great prophecies I will not realize.
Others who are more to me
Even than I am to myself.
The morning
The morning again
Words again
Trying to live again
A poem again perhaps.
In a life of many days
In which each small day
Its own struggle
And each night
A night which ends
With morning light.
poem by Shalom Freedman
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing.
quote by Eugene Ionesco
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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When There Is No Light
WHEN THERE IS NO LIGHT
When there is no light
It is necessary to learn to live in the darkness-
I try and fail again-
Falling together is worse than falling as one-
I did not know gloom and doom would come so early-
There must be a way out- but I do not know it and I am not the one to find it-
Two too alike do not make for salvation this day-
I pray to God-
But why should God help me when it is my responsibility?
I am old and sick and sad and weak and in pain and afraid and stupid-
The light – the light
Where is the light?
When there is so much darkness?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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A Warm And Welcoming Light
The light in your window
shines bright every night,
like a warm and welcoming
beacon light,
but I cannot see it.
I am too far away
locked in a prison
for the crimes that I have done.
One day when they release me
home, I am going to run,
to the warm and welcoming
beacon light in your window.
I promise when I get there
I will never leave again,
no more crimes will I commit.
Every bird builds a nest
as cosy and snug as can be.
So I built a home for us
where a fire burns
to make it
warm and welcoming
like a home should be.
I ask myself the question
how long will it be
before I can lay down
in the green grass of my home.
The answer comes back,
but not the one that I want to hear.
It will be many more years
before you can go home.
So I sit in my jail cell
waiting for that day,
when I can again breath
the clear free fresh air,
come running up the path
to see you at the door.
Come to my sweet home
and stay forever more.
22 April 2008
poem by David Harris
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An elegy for South Africa
Weep South Africa
as you are no longer my country
and I live here
as if I am
from another planet
as part of a small minority
in a country where dark Africa
declares murderers as heroes
and act like barbarians
and dance and scream.
At a time the orange, white and blue
streamed proud over you
and people at work,
school to parliament
bended their knees to God
who was their supreme leader
right through hordes
at blood river,
the onslaught of the British Empire
and with God on our side
we would quarter
for nobody and nothing.
Our own culture flowered,
children went through schools
right through university
to distinguish themselves
and you could even leave the doors unlocked,
could make a living somewhere,
the police were a servant and a friend
and we under our own rule.
How many times our ancestors
tried to teach other people of God,
distributed medicine and food
and we even faced
the communists and Cubans in Angola,
till on a day a man
for the wide world a hero,
out of our own ranks betrayed his brothers
and he laid the whole country lame
and didn’t sell it out,
but rather gave it away.
Today incompetents are everywhere in control
of state departments
right through into the parliament,
money is squandered,
a whole generation
through their own choosing
did not receive any school education,
whites are affirmed and impoverished by the law
and criminals and foreigners stream in
from all over Africa
to start a new life here.
Today another Afrikaner son is slaughtered
(one of more than three thousand) ,
what happens tomorrow and the next day?
[Reference: Murder on Eugene Terreblance. General condition in the country.]
poem by Gert Strydom
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Not with a machinegun, but with a pen (in answer to Breyten Breytenbach)
Not with a machinegun, but with a pen
I write this prayer
since Your might is greater than any weapon:
What am I able to tell You, Jesus Christ,
almighty Creator, God and upper Lord,
I who are only an Afrikaner in my forties,
since You know every thing, even before it happens
and there’s nothing that I can teach You.
How my country was taken away
by people who pray to ancestral spirits
(who probably are demons) ,
that a man with more than one wife
sit in the highest chair,
that I still pay taxes
when and where I have a job
and that it is difficult times
and work is very scarce
for a white man.
Would I have to tell about a government
that sings give me my machinegun
and a bullet for a Boer
and kill the farmer,
kill the white
as You know every thing.
That my people were disarmed
by the government
and by barbarians
are hacked into pieces
with panga-blades and axes
like you were sacrificed
and even in death
they are humiliated
by pulling their pants down
like You had to hang naked on the cross,
that women are raped
as if every white woman
is a sex slave
belonging to the hordes
that they still throw knucklebones
and think that it brings them invincibility
and freedom from blame.
l’Envoi
All that I am really asking
is that all of these deeds
and the things that they do, say and sing
go into the cup of Your wrath
and please help
my people and me
to serve You better
that the wide world
(like with our ancestors)
can see Your might and salvation.
[References: nie met die pen nie maar met die masjiengeweer by Breyten Breytenbach. Murder on Eugene Terreblance. Murder and violence on white people.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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When times are bad
When times are bad
and I am with my hands in my hair
and black foreigners from all over Africa
overnight becomes citizens
and have more rights as a citizen than me
and affirmative action
puts her claws into my life
then I wonder about justice
and when merit and experience
will ever again apply
where my ancestors Joost Strydom
from Liefenshoek in the Netherlands
as a merchant seaman of the VOC
in 1678 came to Cape Town,
married his pretty well know wife
Maryna Ras who with a horse
could alone ride days long to Cape Town
with whom noblemen tried to have relationships,
where the indigenous zulu-xhosa-pondo-swazi people
are originating from a group
that during the same time
immigrated far away out of the north
from eMbo at the big lakes in central Africa
under the leadership of Nguni and later Dlamini
and then I wonder how
this country rather belongs to them
and they have to have work opportunities before me
and if you now say anything
about the new migration out of the whole of Africa
for which the country’s borders are now wide open
(in such a way that South Africans
must now get visas for Great Britain)
you are seen as xenophobic
and then there are citizens from right over Africa
who become South Africans overnight
attaining more rights than you
who forced by law
get secure job opportunities
and do people from Mozambique murder
Eugene Terreblance,
drug dealers from Nigeria
are caught by the local police
while against your will
you were forced into an army, into a war
still faithfully pay your taxes
when and where you have a job
and the current government
tries to stay in power
while Aids devours its voter numbers
and you as a white man
are despised by the current regime,
are treaded into the ground
while the country are falling to pieces
and then you pray
to Him (the God of the universe) who controls everything
to drastically intervene
rather than rousing people
for a civil war.
[Reference: VOC Verenigde Oost Indiëse companje.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Eugene's Cool Blues
eugene's cool blues
Check it out here comes Eugene
with a hash smile on his face
He rolls around in his blue jeans
with a tooth brush in his guitar case
When I go with him,
then I don't know where I'm going.
Check it out here comes the evil
With him you could sing a song
Hey man, here comes the evil
I'm sure you could make a hell of a row
When I go with him,
then I don't know where I'm going.
Hey man, says the evil
I'm taking home my trusty steed
Hey man, says the evil stay high,
say hi to the night for me
When I go with him,
then I don't know where I'm going.
Check it out here comes Eugene
in a funky plastic form
Check it out here comes Eugene
and he's dying for a liquor store
When I go with him, t hen I don't know where I'm going.
Hey man, waddaya say
we drink a couple of hot shots of whatever.
Hey, and get a handle on that chick problem of yours.
Just sink me
song performed by by Quimby
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Marianito Edited (A Poem)
Slowly the world devours my soul.
Slowly my soul rots in the abyss.
Where darkness looms and emptiness sways.
Deep in the chasm of turmoil
I see no light.
Where is the God Who once touched my soul?
Where is He whom I heeded?
Where is the purpose of my leaping;
into the unknown void,
Where is the light that I felt before?
Where is the ever consuming grace,
Who illuminated me to understanding?
Where is the Love that called me to accompany the Pain?
Where is His presence that shredded me to pieces?
The Awareness that engraved my soul
With his pitiful presence?
I am already gone, is there nothing more than this?
I already have no more strength, nothing more left.
No more life to live or give.
No desire:
To breathe, to waddle and to remain afloat.
I remain in the turmoil of the world’s darkness and pain.
Always stabbed and wounded to the core.
I am already shredded… what is there more to break?
Alas my dear poor soul.
When is will all these end?
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Now It's More Than Seven
So maybe I thought that I could be satisfied
I assure you, I tried
But my heart would not corporate
Even though I have yet to even recuperate
From old scar and old pain
My heart still throws itself every which way
I seek a peace I cannot attain
Because the evil of my heart is becoming my master this day
It tries to lead my life and my soul
It tries to lead me again as a whole
Because giving into darkness is natural
Because there's a piece of hell
In the innermost parts, locked away, locked- but not secure
Locked because there's no cure
Striving for light is what is learned
Striving for light should have turned
My darkness into that light
But instead I'm overtaken by more darkness- blackness of night
Darkness, that can be felt, darkness that can speak
I've found the opposite of what I seek
And now it's more than seven
And I feel farther from heaven
Now I've almost lost count
I no longer know that amount
My heart is like a mirror
First darkened and filled with horror
And then shattered into pieces
And each piece only a fraction of who I once was, if that was anything
Criss crossed and broken heart? no more
Shattered
poem by David Knox
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Until I Fall
After years of pain
And months of crying
I finally stayed away
With you not beside me hurt
But my broken heart healed
And my life changed for the better
Until fate once again
Turned that upside down
You came back and in seconds
The life i knew shattered into pieces
With you came the pain, tears, and unwanted memories
I tried to escape but you wont let me go
Until i fall with you
I realize now i cant let go of the life you brought
And you will never let me go until i fall in the darkness with you
poem by Kerrie Maurer
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Dark and Light
Darkness and Light
Too different to be friends
Too much chaos to find the ends
Darkness chases off the Light
In return Light brings a fight
Darkness hides all your fears
Where no one can see the tears
Light brings hope and better life
Cutting Darkness with a knife
In the Light, my body you will find
While in Darkness resides my mind
Oh How She Shines
(doug johnson/pat bunch)
Darling I have a true confession
I ran into an old flame today
You wouldnt like the way our conversation
Turned to how we let each other slip away
I was reminded of a half forgotten feeling
One I shared with her so long ago
Since honesty is one thing we believe in
Let me tell you something you should know
Oh how she shines
Shines a light on you
And in that light I see
Just how much you mean to me
Oh how she shines
There was a time when she was all that mattered
Long before I gave my heart to you
But standing there only inches from her
She touched my hand and suddenly I knew
If there was a time I ever doubted
What Id do if she walked through my door
Could I turn around and leave without her
With all my heart now I can say for sure
Oh how she shines
Shines a light on you
And in that light I see
Just how much you mean to me
Oh how she shines
Oh how she shines
song performed by by John Michael Montgomery
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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New Girl
I want a new girl
The kind everybody wants
The kind that shout it out
And then we laugh it off,
Ill be her terrorist
And she will be a looter
Eye of fatima painted on her motor scooter
She puts on eye shadow
A deeper shade,
A deeper shade of blue
And then she gets in bed with you
I want a new girl
Who can show me how to have a good time
And get closer to my lifes design
In the darkness candle light across my face
I feel myself fall into grace and
She puts on eye shadow
A deeper shade,
A deeper shade of blue
And then she gets in bed with you
Man, sometimes I get to feeling so left out
And then Im here again
Im crying in my beer again
Loneliness closes down like a jail,
This is a lonely tale,
Im singing in my jail cell
Shes got a smile so wide
It eats the pain
The pain Im going through
And then she gets in bed with you
Shes brand new, shes brand new, shes brand new
We walk manhattan
In a dark, silver suit
In the blowing wind
No demons persecuted
And in the darkness candle light across my face
In my mind I see...
Shes got a smile so wide
It eats the pain
The pain Im going through
And then she gets in bed with you
Shes brand new, shes brand new, shes brand new
Man, sometimes I get to feeling so left out
And then Im here again
Im crying in my beer again
Loneliness closes down like a jail,
This is a lonely tale,
This is a jail cell!
She puts on eye shadow
A deeper shade,
A deeper shade of blue
Im barely missing me and you
Shes got a smile so wide
It eats the pain
The pain Im going through
And then she gets in bed with you
Oi, oi, oi
song performed by by Third Eye Blind
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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