Changes, Goodbyes, Thank You ~ Uwais Coetzee

Changes

He said he’d always choose her
But now he wasn’t so sure.
He’d seen so many faces,
He’d seen so much more.
He’d found his ways to pass the time
And how to forget about his pain.
But his usual old tendencies had
Seemed to stay the same.
He had his words,
Lived in the dark,
Blocked out the world
But left his mark.
He’d changed so much
And yet stayed the same
and was always but always
sticking to his game.
He missed the way they spoke
But not enough to speak
And he’d found his level of nonchalant
He’d set out to seek.
He was out to live his life
And face his problems in a line
But these days people
Could face two at a time.

Goodbyes

The tears running down our faces
Our unwavering and incurable shivers.
Our tortured goodbyes
Embraced us more than
We could ever embrace
Each other.
Quivering bottom lips
And tears stained faces
Forced us to wander away
From our places.
Out of our zones
And into each other’s comfort
Finding companionship in
Each other’s solidarity,
With mutual pain
Being
The suffering that bound us together.
Tears still rolling and cheeks
Still wet, we were still warm
In the embrace of the fate
Waiting for the cold. The coldest part,
Things are always coldest as soon as they
Separate.

Thank you

Thank you for teaching me, whether it
Had to be via the hard route or not, your
Not loving me taught me how to love.
The depth of your eyes showed me that
There are things more beautiful than
Beauty itself. Your imperfections showed
Me just how ugly perfection is. Your
Existence became synonymous with love
For me ever since we started speaking.
You showed me the love that I never saw
Before. You taught me that love could
Never have been one dimensional, that even
Pain from love is love in itself.
Thank you for not loving me.
It was your eyes and not the sea nor the
Sky that taught me why I loved the blue
And even though I’ll love you more than you’ll
Ever see, thank you for never loving me.


© Uwais Coetzee

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Matriculant 2018

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Destiny, Distance, Dreams ~ Uwais Coetzee

Destiny

Some things in this world
Were just meant to be.
Like the story in a book,
I believe in destiny.
Like the sky was meant to be blue
And the birds meant to fly
And wolves meant to howl
And people meant to cry.
Rain was meant to fall and
Souls were meant to combine
And destiny is always in
A straight line.
If wars were meant to happen
And people were meant to fight
And people who were dying
Were meant to see the light.
If suicide is normal
And time can never change
Is life in enjoyment normal
And suffering is strange?
If reading was always possible
And people were meant to write,
Then the sun would always go down
And it’d be dark at night?
If roses were always red,
And violets always blue
Would living always be this way?
And I’d be forced to love you?

Distance

Physical distance was never
A problem for a yearning love.
When space separate, the soul
Connects. You may never have been
Around but I learned to draw
Your eyes with my mind
And colour them in with my soul.
Physical distance never left me
Empty because imagination made your
Voice and warmth is creatable.
The mind is beautiful
And the mind is wise,
It can be false warmth
And false eyes
And can continue one’s love
To the point of a burn
But the limit of the mind,
It can’t make people love in return.

Dreams

He awoke in his bed
With tears on his face.
He awoke but he felt
Oddly out of place.
Awoke and felt the
World that he knew was fake.
He awoke but really
Didn’t feel awake.
In a state of minor consciousness
He dreamed a dream,
He dreamed of a scene
too good to be seen,
too perfect it was obscene
so, it was deemed fake
or so it would seem, so
it remained a dream.
He saw it nonetheless
Even though it was in his mind
And he realized that life
Could never be kind.
The dream was over
But the pain would remain
She was the only thing
He’d never obtain.
If he worked hard enough
He could have all the money,
If he moved somewhere nice
He could live where it was sunny.
If he waited, he might
Even find a new love
But any chick sadly doesn’t
compare to the white dove.
He couldn’t have her
Because it was out of his control
And this thought left him feeling
Less than whole.
He awoke that morning learning one
Thing from that dream.
That life can never
Be as it seems.


© Uwais Coetzee

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Matriculant 2018

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Connection, Cages, Band-Aids ~ Uwais Coetzee

Connection

If people left their footprints on every
Place their presence had been, your
Outline would walk wonders on
The traces of my skin. Not necessarily
Physically but touches of the mind as if
Touching your body meant less than the
Soles of our feet meant to clouds, less than
Sharks meant parrots or any other polar
Opposite that were never meant to meet, my
touch meant nothing to you because who needs
to feel hands when your souls connect?

Cages

People cage themselves, as if being
Trapped in a box is all we’ve
Ever meant to be. We live holed
Away as if reality was never tangible, as
If imagination and dreams were intangible
To make into reality. Trapped in boxes
Of black and white without ever
Realizing that the colour we seek can
Be found by widening reality to
Incorporate the imagination we’ve always
Excluded therefrom. We were always
On the edge of being innovative, creative,
Separated by our own societal boundaries
That keep us from dreams and hope.
We keep our worlds inn greys and shades
Thereof and staying inside of what we’ve seen
Not knowing that the sky is blue, the grass is green,
The sun is bright, and dreams and hope were always
Meant to have been ours. The sky
Has always been blue but our ability
To perceive it is what needed to be found too.

Band-Aids

When in pain people take the smallest
Things to turn into victories because that’s what
Needs to be done. Little stitches of a remedy
That turn into an entire band aid that
Replaces your presence until love comes again.
People say that something is still
Important if you still cry about it,
I think it’s time my eyes start to dry.


© Uwais Coetzee

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Matriculant 2018
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Energy, Footprints & Habits ~ Uwais Coetzee

Energy

Under a sky of a million stars, I saw
Instead the hope of there being hope.
I sit in a new life with new people
But a strange familiarity as if living
Is what destiny was all about.
Instead of where I am, instead of
What I do, instead of being depressed
And dwelling on you, I find myself
Too busy in expression to express.
Too busy crying with laughter to cry
In torture. My tears instead are
filled with the hope of a hope and
the waves of a light that shine brighter
than the stars I sat under tonight.
They say that energy can never be created
Nor can it be destroyed and only
Transferred. Well now the energy seems
To be mine. It’s our turn to shine.

Footprints

I follow your footprints every time you
Seem to cross this lonely mind of
Mine. I track you as if being a
Tracker was all I was ever meant
To be. Or not to be, because the
Question was never ‘who’ or ‘why’. You
See, those have always been two certain
Answers that go something like ‘you’
and ‘who else?’. The question was
always ‘when’, because it was me who
helped you from the trenches of a
broken heart but as soon as you
stopped using me as a step ladder
for your own gain I fell into those
same trenches of the same pain.
You see, the narrative has never
Been about you and I, it was always
You then I came tailing you waiting
To be in your tale for once. They
Say that Humpty Dumpty broke when he
Fell, but nowhere did it say he was an egg.
Humans can break irreparably too. Maybe
My fall just happened to be you.

Habits

I’ve heard to form a habit
It takes 21 days.
Did I think of you for 21 days
For you to be so thoroughly stuck in my ways?
You became a habit that
Wouldn’t leave no matter how many others
I picked up along the way.
So invested into me that any
Example of love I could find,
You’d be the only thing that
Would crash into my mind.
Habits stay habits because they are
Always around. Frame for frame, game
For difficult game, stride for increasing
Stride and lunge that leads to plunge.
In forgetting a habit, forgetting the habit
Becomes the habit you try to ultimately forget.
Forgetting a habit is like travelling to
A non-existent destination just like me forgetting you
Is like trying to procrastinate procrastination.
We’ll never get there.


© Uwais Coetzee

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Matriculant 2018
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