Akróstichis #4: Growing up is a barbarous business, full of inconvenience and pimples

I have this plan:

Before this mortal coil drops and

Strangles the life out of this deformity, when

Epileptic in death I finally find an equalising, an ached for norm, until then

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Please let me honour women

Visceral women, potent, intrepid, valiant

Undaunted, each one a muse for this imperfect work

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Greet each sweetly (uninvited this tribute, perchance unwelcome)

Positioned as it is, on this landscape of identity

Spoiled, pockmarked, pitted, so

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Let me not, then, to this inspirational marriage admit impediments

But simply say that, to my mind’s eye

She (this muse) is faultless

Jokes aside, she is as pristine as each new moment, as

Opalescent as the rainbow in the morning

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Until now, until now, I am soundless around her

For safety sake wisdom might suggest I ‘van die os op die jas’

Now saying that, of course, ‘die middel kan wel erger as die kwaad wees’

Quiet next, (better be) better be still (thumping, it’s thumping)

For ever keep my peace, this ceasefire, this concord

Must remember, yet, that love is not love which alters when

It alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove.

Perhaps that’s the rub, aye, the irritation. Maybe Spenser held it best:

‘Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time’. Shakespeare (I didn’t listen) though warned me wise

‘Give thy thoughts no tongue.’ I will be still and to mine own self be true.

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Akróstichis are coded verses built on a specific visual pattern in which the first letter, syllable or word of each line, paragraph or other recurring feature in the text, spells out a word or a message. This is one I wrote on 11 September 2015. It’s complex, but not ridiculously so. But to get to the destination you first need to start out, and you and I both recognise that this is unlikely …

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