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: 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 love and longing by David Tombale: Across our window

Sometimes there is a certain tone to the way we remember people from our pasts, with a type of longing and that’s what this poem is about.

Across our window

There is a hollow ring to the way she speaks

my name, not like you, not like you did in

the last moments before the light bulb dimmed

and we were only silhouettes entwining,

one form into another against the white glow of

moonlight across our window. 

A poem about love and death by David Tombale: Enough

Death leaves behind all kinds of questions including whether a heart can ever heal after losing someone and that’s what Enough is about.

Enough

Years from now when we come to place

flowers by your window I’ll beg you to

replace it, this stain on your mother’s

heart, she hasn’t slept in months and

your school clothes hang unwanted in her

closet, gray skirts and white shirts and

this odd image of you laughing with your

friends.

The summer winds have blown here,

have barely ruffled this frightful heat but

the winter blues have settled, have set

themselves like a feline by our door,

smoothing it’s night black hair and fixing

it’s gaze upon our tears like sorrow.

There is a coolness outside like a storm is coming,

like the rains might tarry above the city,

might bring a refreshing wind to blow aside these dire days.

Some years from now when we think of you

I wonder if some new love will come along to

replace the one I’ve loved and will that new love

ever be enough?

A poem about childhood by David Tombale: My Childhood

My Childhood expresses a yearning for my younger self and a past that seems so much more beautiful to me now that I’m grown.

My childhood

My childhood shimmers like a

single penny in the filth of mud

and longing, the sight of smooth

soft legs and pink rose lips.

My childhood sits upon my mind

rocking its legs, back and forth,

back and forth in the cool white

waters.

A poem about misery and memory by David Tombale: It's like misery

Misery is one of those common human experiences so maybe in this piece there lies something familiar and comforting.

 

 

 

It’s like misery

 

It’s like misery,

 the cold burn of past days that

 lead these thoughts astray,

 when you and I are two

 words together, two comets passing

 in the blackness of the night,

 when I won’t miss you,

 when your name doesn’t hang upon

 my lips like grapes upon the vine,

 sitting fat and black and waiting to exhale.

 

 It’s like misery,

 the way you’re leaving,

 the way you look at me like

 the inches have grown to miles,

 the miles to seas and seas to oceans.

 

 But I won’t miss you because

 the days have talked to me,

 they’ve reminded me that we

 don’t exist, we are two wanderers

 in an endless pool of majesty that

 nobody understands.

 

 

A poem about home by David Tombale: A love for home

Some of us are lucky enough to get a chance to spread our wings but home can be where you will always feel the most loved and that is what this poem is meant to represent.

 

 

 

A love for home

 

A love for home is hidden in the

 raindrops, it’s hidden in the roughness

 of my father’s hard back books.

 

 A love for home is a promise of days

 to come and days gone by,

 it’s in the way I touch your arms when

 you fold them, it’s in the leaves that rest

 beside my father’s battered truck,

 all smeared over with the awful smell

 of goats and cows.

 

 My love for this place is

 hidden in the way I leave it,

 running fingers over weathered stone,

 picking paint chips off my shirt, they’ve

 been falling from the walls and

 I know I’ll miss them all.

 

 

A poem about emotion by David Tombale: Many nights

Many nights is about a situation when it only makes sense to cry but something holds you back whether it’s pride or something else; that gulf between how you feel and how you’re able to react can be huge.  

 

Many nights

 

I have not cried in many nights,

 pacing the curtained confines

 of my single room, trying to track

 the shapes spilling from the light

 of a crescent moon.

 

 The tears have not run their trails

 down my sun kissed skin, my feet

 occasionally kicking child hood dolls

 into the corners where they lie sprawled

 out and forlorn, abandoned these

 many years in boxes we never open.

 

 It feels like yesterday when these

 boxes were filled with armchairs

 and plastic pieces of swing sets,

 some screws perhaps still roll around

 beneath my bed.

 

 My nephews have grown too old for

 them and perhaps I have grown too old

 for tears, too old to cry over forgotten sins,

 memories that stretch out like shadows

 born of trees.

 

 I fall bonelessly upon my bed,

 thinking nothing, only to welcome

 the cool refreshment of a falling tear.

 

 

A poem about growing up by David Tombale: Without you

Without you is about being young and what we first learn of girls as boys and where that can eventually take us.

Without you

There is this place in my hometown
called Thema, and there I met you-

you were just a little girl and
I was a boy too young to know what
Woman meant but I still needed you.

I needed the way you’d shove me,
the way we’d wrestle, the way we’d laugh;
now riding round on these mean streets
in Gaborone I imagine I see you happy-

a handsome boy has his arm draped
around you and you’re looking at him
the way I dreamt you’d once see me;
as if the brown of my eyes was as beautiful
as the night skies glowing with the pinpricks
of stars going on and on long into eternity.

I imagine you somewhere in Pretoria in
an outdoor café drinking an espresso like a
grown up while he talks loudly about his
job but then a feeling strikes you,
a sharp bite of longing sinks in so deep
that it makes you bleed but only in your soul.

You’ll turn your gaze towards the west
and your mouth will dry and somehow
you’ll know that I’m somewhere close
walking on without you.

 

A poem about nostalgia and life by David Tombale: Sometimes

Life can sometimes change so drastically and so quickly that it leaves us dazed and longing for the familiar past. SOMETIMES is all about those feelings.

Sometimes

I find sometimes that I think
about the taste of ice cream
and watermelons

the drenching wet and rapid fire
of sprinklers as we sprinted through
them hand in hand.

Sometimes I think of Saturdays
spent rolling round, the tv’s on
and I’d play Hogan and tear my
shirt to bits, (at least I’d try).

Sometimes I think of Star Wars
and Indiana Jones, the days you’d be
Macgyver and I’d play the villain

sometimes I think of life before the
evening news and they’d frightened us
with bulletins and bullets,
car bombs and anthrax,
Ebola and the latest flu epidemic.

Sometimes I think things were easier
when the bad guys dressed in black
and the worst things we ever saw
were those damn commercials before
the good guys won and the credits rolled.