Generic Stories
This is a story, a generic one,
About a girl and a boy
About their lives and childhoods
Like fighting over a toy
Like throwing a general tantrum
And crying over a scraped knee
About how the lives of two individuals
Turned into a ‘you and me’
Turned into a tale of love
Turned into a tale of need
About how they wanted to love each other
But no one would take the lead.
No one would make a move,
No one would make a sound,
No one was brave enough to
See what was to be found.
Eventually they couldn’t anymore
And the time to part ways came.
They were merely players
But were forced to quit the game.
A Tale of Two Souls
A tale of two souls
Destined to meet one day
But meet is all they did
As they slowly walked away.
Both too shy
In fear of rejection.
But neither one knew,
Together they’d be perfection.
Like Yin and Yang
Like Black and White
Incomplete without the other,
In need of the sight,
In need of each other
To know wrong from right
Dark from Light
So they could win the fight.
Not against each other
But on the same team
To beat the situation
Or so it would seem.
But life isn’t perfect
And neither were they,
The discomfort of insecurity
Was always in their way.
The doubt of reality was
A real threat
But life thought they’d work,
On them she bet.
They walked away
Discarding it from their mind
And slowly they left
Their fate behind.
The Story
Today I tell the story
Of a man, of a boy.
Destroyed by humanity
And played with like a toy.
Used for pleasure
And for personal gain,
To make others feel better
While he felt the pain.
He wanted to tame the lion,
Pet the beast that was Love.
Too bad it wasn’t for him,
It didn’t fit, wasn’t his glove.
He had dreams of prosperity,
Of happiness. Of Joy,
Of longevity and money
To buy his child the toy.
Of a life better than his
Although his was not bad
He lived in a world of hyperbole
And depression came from sad
And elation came from a smile
And Love came from a like
And a papercut caused the pain of impalement on a spike
And pain became torture.
But this was the reality and
I am him and he is me
And this is the story of the boy,
You see?
Our Stories
Our stories are formed
By the words we say,
The things we do,
The games we play,
The people we meet,
The way we stay,
The way we treat others
That are lower in a way.
We go through life
‘trying to do what’s best for me’
But life isn’t about that,
you see?
Life is about how we treat others,
The ones that we meet,
The ones that greet us,
The ones that we greet.
Because we as humans
Are ‘Breaking Prone”
Because none of us, ever,
Want to be alone.
© Uwais Coetzee
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Grade 12
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