Gert Strydom, 21 april 2016
After making love your skin glows
and your have energy
as if something is living in you
and with fire in your eyes
we quarrel, being two separate persons
and I frown at your words
that are hurting, but they belong to us
and with a sweet kiss you smooth
my troubles away and we laugh
while you lie naked against me
with your nipples pressing
against my chest
and the room cools down,
while darkness is sheltering us
and outside the rain falls
as without end
and while you sleep
in the moonlight I trace the lines
of your face
amd feel you breathing against me.
Gert Strydom, 20 april 2016
I walk in the veldt near to Majuba hill
where once farmers in battle stood
and the morning wind has a chill to it
where a bullet hit a British general true and good
and all that I feel is the lost,
the lost without measure and the severe cost
that British forces made women and children pay
and here at this outpost,
not even at the sight of the greatest victory
can I find any peace in me,
even if I fired that selfsame gun
that killed major general George Pomeroy
or drilled a hole right through
1st EarlHoratio Herbert Kitchener
it would not take away the killing, the homicide
that the British brought
and the terror, the injustice,
the inhumanity will never be gone.
[Poet’s note: This poem is written in remembrance of the twenty thousand (some figures are as high as thirty five thousand) innocent white Afrikaner women and children that died in British concentration camps, after their farms were scorched by the British in the Anglo-Boer war in South Africa, which includes a great grandmother of mine. For a clear picture of these atrocities read my epic poem “Through the eyes of a field coronet” which is based on the eyewitness account of field coronet JJ Potgieter.]
Gert Strydom, 19 april 2016
Vain are the words and deeds that are mine
when they are not inline with Thine
and in this life when things go really bad,
when little by little my faith does decline
You are the omnipresent Deity
that does daily dwell with me,
who with selfless love brings me back
to answers that I did not see
and although it feels as if I am on my own
You do never leave me alone
and when all people do me forsake
You are still my friend, the only one
and although I daily struggle to survive
You do continually bring sense to my life.
Gert Strydom, 18 april 2016
When I do find no place of peace
then Lord, You are a place of rest to me
and in the depth of pain and disease
You do from all evil set me free
and in the depth of all my woe
when it feels as if I am dead,
when my hope and strength is low
You do still clear the way ahead,
even when it seems as if my world is destroyed,
when it seems that all that matter is gone,
that life is an endless bottomless void
then You do still lead on
and when my heart is broken and full of fear
You still do control my life’s tormented sphere.
Gert Strydom, 15 april 2016
They were tough men who believed in God
who used the holy word and the rod,
ancestors from Dutch and French Huguenot stock,
farmed with vineyards and livestock,
and our language and customs, to some odd
came from centuries that were harsh and hot,
where people herded sheep into a flock
from frontier life, where small children could cock
a rifle and could the hinterland unlock,
could fire at moving targets while at speed
but the British came to cause some amok,
destroyed women, children saw the need
to plunder, pillage, to burn, to kill, to shock
to make Christians, another nation bleed.
[Note by poet: This poem is written in remembrance of the twenty thousand (some figures are as high as thirty five thousand) innocent white Afrikaner women and children that died in British concentration camps, after their farms were scorched by the British in the Anglo-Boer war in South Africa, which includes a great grandmother of mine. For a clear picture of these atrocities read my epic poem “Through the eyes of a field coronet” which is based on the eyewitness account of field coronet JJ Potgieter.]
Gert Strydom, 14 april 2016
Lord, only in Your footsteps there is life for me
and Your life sets me free from all of my iniquity
but every day I do struggle and fall
to stay step upon step with Thee.
Gert Strydom, 13 april 2016
An orange-red sickle moon hangs low
above the light speckled darkened land
while all of the neighbourhood is asleep
and thoughts do into my mind creep
when I hear great paws walking outside on the sand
and in my heart a speck of fear does grow
as if something unknown wants to from the darkness reach
and everything outside is not how it does appear
when there is a rattling at the pane and a violent scratch
and in the blue-white glow of a lighted match
an unknown black predatory form draws near
while far away the waves roll in and out on the beach.
Gert Strydom, 12 april 2016
Far too quickly time rushes on
and the happy days of youth are gone
and the company of your love does disappear
and you are the only lonely one
Gert Strydom, 11 april 2016
Like any other person my hands are stained by Your blood
but every sin and my own will
and everything that can bring separation between us
are covered by Your wondrous blood.
Gert Strydom, 10 april 2016
(after George Gordon, Lord Byron)
She has a kind of inner glow
that is reflected in her eyes
a kind of beauty that gods only can bestow
that is purer than the different hues of the skies
and wherever she goes people she does impress
with her sweet-hearted company,
with her cheery ways, how she flows in a dress
and yet her imperfections are many
but she has a quality that is lovely
that continually does stay with me
and she is so different
in the ways that brings to her grace
and comes over as innocent
in some of the expressions of her face.
[Reference: “She walks in beauty” by George Gordon, Lord Byron]
Poetry
Prose
Photography
Graphics
Video poems
Postcards
Diary
Books
Handmade
