A poem about heartache and memories by David Tombale: My pillow

Memories and longing can make us into insomniacs some nights and that frustration is what has inspired My pillow.

My pillow

Most nights thoughts of you still keep

me guessing, what patch of light falls

across your face, what doorway is made

dark by the breath of your passing?

Midnight passes like this, with worrying

and tracking the ticking sound of the

hallway clock that is not you, that does

not sound like your heel clicks across

our marble floors or the heavy sigh that

strains your chest with fury or some mad

frustration you shall never voice.

Every evening I wait for sight of you like a

lonely comet streaking across the distant sky,

I’m needing you constantly and you need me

temporarily like a postman or a milkman,

some stranger to void the silence until you

leave him, with only tears to mark your

presence and the hollowed shape of your

body still pressed against my pillow.

A poem about memories and heartache by David Tombale: Everglades

The environments we encounter in our lives can make up the background of our memories and our experiences and a poem like Everglades embodies that idea.

Everglades

The trees cast their shadows over me

and beneath their massive bulk scurry

mice and vole and in their passage I’m

reminded I’m alone, on a lonely pilgrimage

to the single elm hidden in the centre

scarred with a heart and our names and

a history not of its own, a past as full as the

waters of the Everglades, the current stirring

with the passage of a gator, in my mind that

scaly prince stalks the quiet world of my solitude,

creeps across the disarray of feelings that reflect my memories

and when he clamps down on my throat it will

be more than heartache that eats me whole.

A poem about travelling and love by David Tombale: Landscapes

Leaving home is a journey into the unknown and that suspense of learning what lies over the horizon is what Landscapes is all about, that and sharing those discoveries with someone you care about.

Landscapes

The hum of the engine is the only sound that

stretches between us, in the pale glow of moonlight

your face hovers like a passing cloud across this

windscreen as the night owls screech in the distance

and we leave the city behind us, it’s lights flickering

on and off like a little flashlight sending out a

message in morse-code, love me, love me says

this code as the whole expanse of the city lies there

like a map seen from the window of a passing plane,

and somewhere above us it flies crossing oceans and

foreign lands we dream off in between our bites of

filling station pies, and cups of luke warm coffee we

sip as dawn warms our freezing hands pointing west

ever west, beckoning our flagging spirits and laying a

promise like a fragile egg in the nest of the landscapes

we’ve yet to see.

A poem about love and change by David Tombale: Gravity

Love doesn’t just make you blind, it changes the way you see the world around you and that effect is what Gravity tries to describe.

Gravity

There are days when even sunsets are more

beautiful than the string of pearls that rest

against your chest, when the sunlight turns

golden brown and the loud hails of taxi horns

recede into the background of forest sounds,

the call of barn owls and the baying of hunting

hounds,

There are evenings when you toss the unruly

strands of your black hair and I wish to crush them

between my fingers and take the scent of you deep

into my lungs like air that clears this poison that invades

my pores and fills me out until small explosions

blind my eyes,

they tore you from me once when I prayed you’d hear me out,

listen now, there is no gravity to hold me down,

no calls to summon me,

the entire world has ceased to turn and there amidst all that silence

is the heavy thump of our beating hearts.

A poem about youth and ambition by David Tombale: The mowana tree

The mowana tree is about the ambitions we have as children and how our initial drive can stall as we grow up.

The mowana tree

Down below the mowana tree lying

prone and silent among the grass

the shadows spread out from my past,

flickered thoughts and memories

spinning like a top, golden bright yet oddly

sad when measured against my dad,

I have grown to slay no giants nor

travel oceans wide and vast, no instead

I’ve filled my desk with piles of books

and promises, tired lines and maps,

I’ve grown old but sown no oats and

wrote no poems that have filled these

eyes with tears but have no fear

because these doors lay open and all

those poets who came before me

have enshrined a dream of fame and

fortune that has me hooked, and

moving forward no bruised eye or

quickly spoken lie will change my course

or lead me off into the darkness of the bush. 

A poem about contemplation and writing by David Tombale: The days

There are times when you intend on writing and yet nothing worthwhile comes out. Moments like that are what The days describe.

The days

There are days when the words will not

hear me out, when the dried out version

of my remembered youth will not fill

a page or ten, a book or a passage in my

Bible, the words fulfill me but the present

needs me so the clatter of my keyboard may

have to cease, may sit out silent beneath the

shade of a blacked out screen while the

white buzz of sound runs out.

I could not write a line that felt like my beating

heart beating out a memory of a summer’s day,

the heat and flight of birds in June,

there is no music, no hope or fury,

 I place my book bag by my dusty window where

the sun will see it, where the wind will blow

against its glass perhaps to wake the thoughts

that rest inside, the note pads full of scribbling,

the pens half filled with ink.  

A poem about love and heartache by David Tombale: Carry out

Carry out is really about the end of a relationship and how that can affect your thoughts.

Carry out

The streets wind and weave begging me to roam,

daylight calls to me but it’s evening that takes me home,

back to the fiery crackle of the logs upon our hearth,

back to the U-haul van sitting upon our curb

There are enough memories left to bury so I might

not make it out, tonight the rain clouds gather

and tonight these wounds begin to hurt

When you are thought to me, when you are some

distant figment that rests like violets around our deck,

it’s I these songs speak of, it’s I they’ll carry out,

past the foyer, past the window that opens on your

pile of clothes that sit beneath our transistor radio.

A poem about family and loss by David Tombale: Invisible Love

The loss of a loved one is a hard thing for anyone to bear, whether it’s a child or an adult and that terrible struggle is what Invisible Love is about.

Invisible love

She lies there whispering like a madwoman

his name repeatedly like a chant or the beat

from a war drum but his love is invisible,

it carries across on the wind like autumn leaves,

shatters against the glass like ice,

it resides no place that the eye can see,

that her hands can touch,

that’s why her thoughts bleed enough to build

a river of blood that her children inherit

along with her hate, a frozen picture of parent,

an absent father as dear to their mother as the

portrait of Jesus that hangs on the mantel but

his love is invisible, it will never hold them,

never hold back her hair like the leather thong

that holds tight her black and white hair,

never raise their son into a man or walk their daughter

down the aisle, there is nothing left but his old boots,

their leather hard enough to creak when

their little boy wears them trying to summon his

ghost from out of his tombstone but nothing lives

but his tears.

A poem about art and love by David Tombale: The kiss of my muse

Some poets are inspired by the people in their lives and the void that grows once those people leave creates the kind of feelings and responses that I put in this poem.

The kiss of my muse

I have no words left,

the lingering kiss of my muse has faded

like the light of morning fades from my watching eyes,

as dusk grays the evening shade

and my love for you takes on the hue of winter,

all white snow and gray ice that hangs like daggers from my

windows.

I have no words left,

spring has yet to shatter the freezing

shutters that keep me trapped in a world

of ash and snow, love and ice.

I have prayed for many months for

some warm breeze to blow,

to thaw these waking thoughts into a steady stream

that might one day ink a landscape of a better

rhyme, perhaps a battle scene,

a ballad of a fallen soul

but tonight I’ll drink alone and wallow

while a single raven perches outside this hollow,

to cry its sorrow across this field of letters and

aging books, their pages curling daily,

too brittle to understand.

A poem about love and contemplation by David Tombale: Cool Waters

I’ve felt a genuine need lately to define love and Cool Waters was one of the answers I came up with.

Cool waters 

Fires burn short and fast much like we do,

much like lovers and poets who trade words

for stolen moments in hay ricks and what you

don’t know is, that it is cool waters that love best,

that take the shape of whatever heart they pour in,

that calmly ease the fevered rise and fall into a steady

beat that will warm your toes during the lonely winters

and wash you clean, salt licking at your wounds in summer,

sun tanning your skin while you lie before me

and love me like a good friend.

A poem about beauty and the night by David Tombale: The beauty of the night

The beauty of the night is about creating a heightened image of what there is to be seen and experienced after the sun goes down.

The beauty of the night

I have often written about the beauty of the night,

of the loving way the moon shines across her velvet

skies or how the stars gambol round like little kids

until their black mother holds them down,

this one a dress, this one a shirt, she dresses the stars

in dreams, in our dreams that spin like spider webs

that join our hums and often mumbled words across

the distance of our homes and sometimes we dream

together, dreams of oceans and birds we pass in

flight.

I have often written about the beauty of the

night and found in the hem of her reverie a quiet

moment to lay my pen right by my side and pass

my eyes across her perfect form. 

A poem about love and regret by David Tombale: Where the palm trees stir

Where the palm trees stir is largely about trying to run away from your problems and learning that you carry them with you.

Where the palm trees stir

Some days the words will not be spoken,

some nights the thoughts will not be shared

but I was there and you were there when

the crumbling walls we built went down,

in the earthquake of too many fights and

the stubborn will of a silence kept and kept

still, for I won’t begin to talk, I turn the key

and the lion’s roar of this diesel engine will

only ask for more.

I will hide my tears amongst the gravel stones

of the great outdoors, hide my love and the crimes

I did in a stolen kiss some place far from here where

the palm trees stir, but when the miles have blurred

and I have loved and left every place I’ve found

I fear I will only mourn us more. 

A poem about writing and contemplation by David Tombale: Falling Away

Contemplating life from through the lens of your pen can give you a fresh perspective and that’s what Falling Away is all about.

Falling Away 

The window yellows with the light

of morning burning through the

heavy shade of streaming clouds

and it cannot kill the clinging ache

of last night’s drink, it cannot

kill the thoughts of winter that keep

me huddled in my heavy coat and

slippers, the sound of my pen moving

over printed lines that blur against

the background of city lights, the

distant roar of passing planes that

have me shaking, falling away from

sleep.

A contemplative poem about the human body by David Tombale: The Body

I experimented with the similarity of the human body to a pile of clothes and The Body is what I ended up with.

The body

We wear our bodies out like clothes,

washed and rewashed, hung out and

blowing in the gusts of days and years

gone by, and some days our bodies

lean against each other like trees that

grow together, limbs tangled up in

rain until only the sky awaits our lover’s

ache, until we wrap ourselves in scents

and leave our bodies in filth and foreign

sheets, hotel rooms and alleyways,

we wipe our tears with satin, clothe

ourselves in dreams and leave our souls

to molder in the bosom of our flesh.

A poem about love and hope by David Tombale: Resurrecting

Resurrecting is about finding someone to save you.

Resurrecting

I have lost all reason and traded the inky

black of my rain swept skies for the sunny

gold of autumn, hibernating quietly while

she sits silently resting her hands on either

side of him.

The coldness of winter has often lived here,

winked its eye here and felt that the

sinking weight of my falling heart would

look far better frozen but sometimes I

disagree, many times a woman will sidle

up and rub her hands across that ice and

resurrect my beating heart,

fill these eyes with gifts of long black locks

and soft brown arms and someday she’ll kiss

these lips and impart the wisdom of being lost

only to be found.

A contemplative poem about love by David Tombale: Carousel

Carousel is essentially about treasuring the things that matter to you.

Carousel

I like to dream at night of the

fine black color of your hair,

the way you’d write me from

the farthest corners of our balcony,

of the sighing sound you’d make

when my fingers would tease the

ample contours of your hips and

I have sat you down and haven’t

found flaw enough to leave us

broken, to leave us strung out and

forgotten like polaroids and the

silence around that old carousel still

turning in the park, the swings fall

creaking to the ground, another signal

that will not let me down.

A poem about unrequited love by David Tombale: Heartbeat

This is another poem about unrequited love.

Heartbeat

There is a rhythm to her heartbeat,

a melody that makes a whisper in my ear

that resounds like echoes across the wide

blue yonder of our love, and I exist in

the spaces that other faces have hollowed out

and they I think might have loved her too,

once in silence and once in rage but nothing’s

left but pain.

I wish she’d write me,

I wish she’d live inside my heart

like thoughts I leave unspoken so

someday I’d leave them out to

run around the yard like our children,

with my eyes and her lovely smile,

I see them often, but have nothing to

content myself with this lonely night.

A poem about unrequited love by David Tombale: Memory

In some cases the people we love no longer can or will return our feelings and situations like that are the inspiration behind this poem.

Memory

In the soft embrace of lover’s gaze

I see you, steady as the mountains

as beautiful as a summer breeze,

like the last notes of a symphony

that plays beneath the forest trees,

that of cicadas and foxes,

all is silence, all is beauty and memory

and with you I will always remember.

Writing the last lines in this awful

letter trying not to let her fade like

the fog outside my window, she flits

away and something inside me cries

while I’m trying not to let her because

I will always remember.

A poem about the wonders of Africa by David Tombale: Homecoming

Homecoming is about celebrating the beauty of Africa.

Homecoming

My heart swells with a love for

Africa, the thunder of drums

beneath the green canvas of tents,

the roar of lions across the rivers and

marshes, the swell of oceans that kiss

the hulls of oil ships crossing the

Horn of Africa, the rains across

the mountains that slap against

the skin, bracing and alive,

the jazz clubs, the night spots,

Africa why are we alive if not for your

music? Your Mandelas, your cruise ships,

your safaris,

the dreams of little black boys and

little black girls in their school clothes

speaking and rapping in Swahili and Zulu,

Afrikaans and Tswana.

Africa I am the last ship crossing the canal

yearning to run against the sands of foreign shores

but I will never forget you, your sweet morula,

the language of my fathers and mothers barefooted

and straining, tilling the hard soil for watermelons

and wheat.

Africa I see you on the backs of postcards

and upon the silver screen,

Africa I see you as my plane lands on

the tarmac in Oliver Tumbo or on

the runways of Sir Seretse Khama and

all these songs say,

“Welcome back.”

A poem about love and comfort by David Tombale: At the beside

One of the great things about love is that you can allow yourself to be vulnerable around the person you care for and that’s what this poem is really about.

At the bedside

Stifle my grief, when the noonday

tides of passing cars bring with them

an outpouring of memories and tears,

when the heavy weight of sheets

and linen crowd me in, burying me

beneath the clogging scent of roses

smelling sickly sweet upon my bedside

table, she sits with me,

she waits with me while the tired cries

of the neighbor’s cat keep me up at night,

she soothes my fears.