this too shall pass

       “if i had a hundred of you sitting in front of me right now, i’d say, in three months, thirty will be gone. by six months, sixty will be gone.” ezequiel looks straight at the doctor, smiles at him and adjusts his glasses. they’ve always examined scans together, with the doctor explaining everything as he rolls through the images, this time, the monitor is facing the doctor.

          “you see, we have run out of options. we have used all the better alternatives. i’m afraid, the best thing right now, is to drain the water in the left lung to help you with the pain. but it will fill up again. so, after we drain it, we will put something in that space where the water was, and see what happens.” ezequiel smiles again, adjusts himself on the seat.

        “that’s why you are having problems breathing. you’re virtually using only one lung.” ezequiel feels absolutely no fear. by nature, death is not an outcome but a transition – so, he has no fear of death.  the doctor is looking at him to pick up any signs of what he is feeling, but ezequiel keeps looking straight at him, with a smile on his face.

            “and the liver?”

         “i am afraid there’s nothing we can do about that.” the doctor looks at his monitor again. whatever is on the monitor has strained him.

        “i didn’t mean treating it. i meant, what’s going to happen as it deteriorates?”

            “oh. you’re going to get more tired, and eventually slip into coma.”

           “oh, ok.” silence. then they discuss the procedure of draining the water from the left lung. “can we go get that morphine shot now?” they both get up. the pain on his left side and lower back intensify. for the first time since he has been treating him, the doctor catches a slight change in his expression.

         “i know you are not the type to complain, so for you to talk about this pain you must really be in severe pain.” ezequiel laughs. they walk out of the doctor’s office to the room where the morphine injection will be administered.

           “i know it’s just april, but i will see you next year. i am one of the ten percent that will still be sitting in front of you when the ninety are gone.”

the doctor looks straight into his eyes. gives him a hug. the doctor is trembling.

          “i believe you.” he knew from the moment they first met, and throughout the times they met, that he had torn out the page in his dictionary, where defeat is defined.

fkregie 2017.

sadist – ii

a real man

doesnt raise his hands

against a woman

he raises a woman with his hands.

fkregie 2017.

sadist – i

when you see a hurt woman

as the source of your strength – thats a weakness

for you will neither overcome that woman

nor your weakness.

fkregie 2017.

angel

only three named angels

all male

proof there are no female angels

but here you are – not male

i hear angels dont reproduce – true

so – who made you

i hear angels have no wings

so – how did you learn to mend broken wings

i hear angels have no form – like winds

but you hold back the four winds.

fkregie 2017.

hooked

like the oarfish, his sighting is a harbinger of a tremor. he lives in the deep-waters of her happiness – a deep-lying reminder good things come in waves. but it’s the tides between the waves that rock her skerry. so, you can imagine her feelings when, sitting in her living room on a cloudy saturday morning mid-april, he knocks and walks in. she gets up, hugs and invites him to sit down. as they dispense of courtesies, she is texting. he has an uncanny precognition of her texting habits – he knows she wouldn’t be texting a woman at seven-thirty-six in the morning. she prefers calling her close friends.  as she responds to a text, he looks around the living room – new photos of their three-year-old daughter, new healthy potted plants, new hand-made artifacts in dark hues of orange to match the new sofas, two used glasses of wine on the center table – no lipstick mark on either, a turquoise pair of shoes beside the sofa she is sitting on, a whiff of a male oud perfume … a text comes in, she checks it, smiles and responds. she hasn’t seen or heard from him in three months except for sporadic texts about their child. when he left three months ago, he had told her he couldn’t give her what she wanted immediately. she told him she couldn’t wait any longer – four years was a long time. she knew he had a new flame, but she was tired of fighting fires. another text comes in, she checks it, smiles and responds. she looks at him. he pats the space besides him, she gets up to sit beside him. he seems to have lost a few pounds, but he still looks in good shape in his navy-blue under armour storm rival tracksuit.

            “so.” she turns slightly to face him. from his angle, her resemblance to whoopi is striking. he unzips his tracksuit top. she notices he is wearing an engagement ring – on a gold herringbone necklace. he touches the ring.

            “depends where you would want to wear it. i agree, four years is a long time.” a text comes in, she looks at it, puts the phone aside. she closes the space between them on the sofa, he leans forward, she puts her hands round his neck – to undo the hook.

fkregie 2017.

watermark

“i smelt a fuse burn”

this made me laugh

on a day everything was on burn

mode – like you make me laugh

whenever my mind is on burn

mode – like you make me laugh

whenever sparks fly

to set this fired soul

ablaze

always – instinctually – on the fly

you come to watermark this soul

and cool the fiery haze

like you were born

to give me life.

fkregie 2017.

earth matters – ii

it doesnt matter

where you are

on this earth

only this matter

always – you are

constant in this earth.

fkregie 2017.

earth matters – i

before i met you

i thought the earth

was mine – and that

made me happy

since i met you

this earth

is yours – and this

makes me happy.

fkregie 2017

diary of a mad frequent flyer

i have heard men say they can tell where a woman has been by how she smells. i laugh. well! i can tell from three miles out if a man will smell bad. and the last place you want to be with a man that smells bad is a two-seater on a full flight. you scrub yourself thoroughly, and then end up in a seat beside an unbathed crotch. i am not talking about passengers who have not had time to refresh on long-haul flights or passengers on delayed flights – i am talking passengers on an early morning inter-city flight. if you haven’t had this luck, believe me, you don’t want to be sitting, at seven in the morning, beside a man who had beer, garlicked food and sex for dinner and didn’t even bother to do the ditches. growing up, we could only watch tv in the evening after we have had a bath. such a rule should apply on early-morning flights. look, i don’t detest people with body odor or garlicky breath – every human has a body odor, except you are among the two percent with the abcc11 gene. but there’s a difference between natural body odor or spicy-food odor and the crotch odor of a man with an allergy to water. besides, my last boyfriend was quite mad-rass and spicy. yea, you know what they say, ‘if you want a horse, you have to run the races.’ well, poor him, he was no horse, but how i loved him – spicy-food odor, garlic-breath and … i hear garlic chases away demons, and god knows i had a tad few demons to chase from my mind every time he had me feet-saluting the ceiling god. the short, short, short of it is, i had a nice time with him. i hear communing with the ceiling god isn’t the same when you let your mind roam, you must focus only on the here and now, they say. and i ask, why do we use music to set the mood if the mind isn’t supposed to roam. you’ve got to let your mind roam, and forget in the short, short, short run … geez! my mind just roamed, and in that instance i forgot the crotch beside me. you see, roaming does have its uses. but we don’t have to roam for hours on end, at 35000 feet in the air, on an inter-city flight, just because we are nose up the wrong fork in the tree. they say cleanliness is next to godliness, well, at 35000 feet in the air you don’t want to be that close to god with … well, yes. put in some condition – ‘all ye who enter here must bath first’ – especially livestock connoisseurs. did i hear you say, “bitch please!”

            “hi, my name is mothusi. you are?”

            “arouma.” i hold my breath.

            “as in odor?” i smile. and he crosses his legs.

fkregie 2017.