porcelain peace

I’ve been broken into pieces
and I am not a fool you see
each little piece is me
I’ve been glued together
my soul is porcelain
my heart held in place
with a pin…

but I have never given in
every piece of me
I will share for free
I become a piece
of so many collections
see yourself looking back
these are my reflections

and then I see you
and then I see you

I have been healed
a million ways
a million days
every tear became a smile
and warmth crawled back
into my tired eyes

and then I see you
and then I see you
you glue me baby
you glue me baby
porcelain peace…

Maart 13, 2026 0

I am but the ashes

I am but the ashes

a dream is a magic spell
see me burn, take me to hell
smear my ashes on your lips
lick me up, let’s go on trips
moan my name, like i’m a god
taste me, before i rot.
a dream is a magic spell
burn me, i’ll treat you well
i’m a broken saint
i’m a lost cause
i’m a devil’s pity
i’m an angel’s claws
spit me out on the ground
i am but the ashes
of the lost and found
i am but the ashes
of the lost and the found

Maart 6, 2026 0

Focus, have we lost our greatest treasure?

“What you stay focused on will grow.”
― Roy T. Bennett

“Focusing is about saying No.”
― Steve Jobs

We have lost a great treasure. The gift to focus. We grab our smartphones and doomscroll YouTube shorts. A cat chasing a moose. Scroll. A man feeding a beggar. Scroll. Trump this, Scroll. Trump that. Scroll. How to make cheese with milk and vinegar. Scroll. You get the picture. Information is dumped into our brains and we retain nothing. Nothing feeds our brains. We focus on nothing and it grows on us like a foot fungus.

We try to relax watching a movie, but we cannot focus on it because we became accustomed to watching videos between one and four minutes long, doomscrolling made us incapable to relax for an hour and a half to chill with a movie and or worse, while we watch the movie we have our smartphones out and we doomscroll.

We try to read a book, we used to read a lot. But after less than a page we put the book down. We cannot focus. We have lost our greatest treasure. Even now while you are reading this you get and itch…. You grab your phone to doomscroll. You are doomed. Can you feel it?

Februarie 8, 2026 0

Delusion (Poor wretched you)

Poor wretched you
you have lied so many times
I see you, you don’t see me
but we speak often
I hear your tall tales
and hold my tongue
a liar digs his own grave
but it takes time

Poor wretched soul
I see you are unhappy
you lie about your joy
but your eyes betray you
I hear it in your voice
layered with poison honey
and hold my tongue
as you pave your path
to your own hell

Poor wretched you
I will forgive you
your burden will crush you
anyhow

Poor wretched you
I wish you would love
yourself
as much as I love me
and start to walk in truth

one day, when the path is paved
the grave is filled
I hope that there will still be
beautiful flowers
a smidgen of truth
in the remains of you

Januarie 28, 2026 0

Be the coal, become the diamond.

“Success is not the point, failure is not the end: the only thing that matters is the courage to keep fighting.” Winston Churchill

“throw away despair
throw away doubt
answers will come” Chrystovarr D’annan ‘Answers will Come‘ from the Album, Vox

Sometimes people will not see your worth, or they will underrate your loyalty. It is a given. Trust me, I have been looking down the barrel of that shotgun my whole life. The hard part is still giving your all even if you realise that your commitment is unappreciated. You could give up, but then the people that undervalue you just get their point proven. Not giving up is hard.

But knowing your value in a situation where no one else sees your commitment and loyalty, keeping faith in yourself can reap rewards later. You may never know what life throws your way.

The pains of today may provide opportunities and healing tomorrow. You might stumble onto something that changes your life and when it is too late, the ones that undervalue you for the loyal valuable person you will realise too late they lost something. Just like coal is turned into a diamond under pressure, you too can shine one day.

Know your value, never give up, never give in. Trust in your abilities, your loyalty. Time is a river and go with the flow and trust time to take you on a journey to a shore that will bring you opportunities. Be the coal, become the diamond.

Here is the song Answers will Come, mentioned in the quote section:

Januarie 27, 2026 0

Transformation requires loss

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Viktor Frankl

“If you realise that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to”
Lao Tzu

We all desire change in our lives. Some, sadly, want change to happen while sitting lazily on their butts but change is not supposed to come easy. Our ancestors created myths to make us aware of the fact. In Nordic mythology, Odin was a God who pursues wisdom and when he found the well of wisdom he had to pluck out his eye, throw it in the well, as a sacrifice to obtain wisdom. It is a lesson in sacrifice.

You have to offer something up to change. If you hate your job, you have to walk the walk to find a better one, if you want to be better at something, you need to put time and effort into it. Not all sacrifices are physical. But there is irony in physical sacrifice. I have heard of quite a few young men who deliberately caused accidents to lose a limb so they could not go to the army or go to war. That takes guts. I guess if you do not want change in your life, it can take sacrifice too.

But what if sacrifice can change your life for the better. What if losing something, maybe not as extreme as losing a body part or an eye, can put you on a path to a better life. Are you willing to lose something, to give up something. Transformation requires loss, what will you give up, to change?

Here is a nice song to end everything off with. Download it if you love it, share it with a friend. Until next time, keep howling. The shadows listen.

Januarie 25, 2026 4

lost in the dark

Sometimes I find myself
in the shadows of the night
inhaling clove smoke
in the dimmest light

I feel your presence near
but there is no fear
we are but two souls
lost in the dark

your taste and mine
lead each other deeper
we get lost in each other
astray, but each other’s keeper

come get lost with me
we whisper in reverie
come and set me free
in love’s mystery

in the quiet night
our screams become prayers
as we worship at the altar
the shrine of alchemy

come get lost with me
we whisper in reverie
let’s set each other free
in love’s alchemy

Januarie 22, 2026 0

Are we complacently murdering ourselves?

Deepak Chopra said: “The most creative act you will ever undertake is the act of creating yourself.”

But with so much media flirting with our innocence like paedophiles, we develop a tendency to become seduced and corrupted. This is what it feels like to me every time I switch on my laptop and open YouTube.

One of my many hobbies is writing in my contemplation book, so I went down the YouTube rabbit hole looking up contemplation books. I wanted to see how others do it , to observe how we differ.

Very quickly, “contemplation books” turned into something resembling a church luncheon for the elderly. Like well-meaning old aunties forcing you to try their dishes because they all have secret ingredients, the YouTube algorithm began flooding me with every conceivable type of journaling.

Reading journals, where avid readers annotate what they’ve read.
Junk journals, where scraps of rubbish and paper are glued into books.
And heaven forbid, there are hundreds more.

All of them copying one another.

They invent new words, which are then copied again, as if they’re creating their own cult language. Some even track stats: mood scales (how was my mood today, one to five), themes (“Rainbow Month,” where stickers are added for LGBTQ+ books read, followed by artistically aestheticised anguish about how difficult it is to exist in a straight world). Many of them have entire journaling ecosystems, juggling fifteen books at once.

They copy from each other until every video begins to blur into the next. It feels like watching a hive mind hivesplain the same content over and over again. You’re trapped in a YouTube time loop, watching originality dissolve in real time.

So I ask: are we, as humans, complacently murdering ourselves?
Are we killing our uniqueness in order to become clones of a collective hive mind? Have we invented a way of killing ourselves without committing actual suicide?

We must rage against copying.

Steal a little from those who inspire you — but don’t become them.
Be your real, authentic self.
Don’t kill the You in you.

You matter.
Even if just to me… you matter.

Januarie 15, 2026 4

The Time I Didn’t Speak

“You are immortal: you have existed for billions years in different manifestations, because you are life and life cannot die. You are in the trees, the butterflies, the fish, the air, the moon, the sun. Wherever you go, you are there, waiting for yourself”
Don Miguel Ruiz

I wasn’t always this mellow, I used to be a ‘rowe bliksem’ (or rough rebel, for the lack of a better translation). I was on a weed run, meaning, I was going to buy some). Back then, everything cannabis was illegal. Anyhow, In South Africa, there are these ‘entrepreneurs’ that have fruit stands on street corners. There you can buy loose cigarettes, peanuts, chips –Crisps for some...), lollypops and sweets (or candy) and many of them sold dagga (cannabis).

As I handed the man his money and listening to his speech that this batch of Mary Jane (cannabis) was ‘good shit’, I saw a woman approaching my dagga vendor. She was in her middle forties, but time and hardship wasn’t kind to her. Her face was wrinkled and sun-flecked, crow’s feet rivered from the corners of her eyes to her worn cheeks. She looked about seven to eight months pregnant. I am not sure, I am not a doctor, I am a writer. She bought dagga too.

It shocked me, as I have never seen a pregnant woman buying herself dagga as most pregnant women do not drink, use drugs or smoke dagga to avoid harming the foetus. I did not give her a dagga-while-pregnant is a sin speech. It was in public and would have humiliated us both and the vendor, it might have called attention to the cops and then, sometimes, your gut tells you that it is not right to dictate opinions to someone you have never met before.

We started talking, actually resonated, became friends, buddies even. She invited me to come have a smoke with her and her husband, and I did. I was friends with her for years until I moved away from that neighbourhood, the child was born, perfect. I never gave that lovely woman a speech about being pregnant and smoking weed. Which is strange as I tend to warn people of things that might be potentially dangerous.

There is a lesson in this somewhere. Maybe that we, humanity, are beings of randomness and chaos. We sometimes don’t talk to people about what we see as wrong. Weird lesson, but that is what I am sticking to it.

Or, sometimes we choose not to judge or hand our justice out to people. Yes, maybe that.

Here is one of the songs by my band, Chrystovarr D’annan. Just because. Listen to it, download it either for free or if you feel giving, pay for the download anyway.

Januarie 10, 2026 2

Memories of a country mouse

“Think about the beauty still left around you and be happy.”
Anne Frank

Like the classic children’s tale of the country mouse visiting the city for the first time, I too was once a “country mouse.” The year was 1985, and I was in Standard 5 (Grade 7 for younger or international readers). I was on a school trip my parents had saved up and paid for a journey from Tzaneen, where I lived, all the way to Cape Town. One of the stops along the way was the city of Pretoria.

I had been to Johannesburg once or twice before, but only briefly. This was different. There were no parents -just other kids and two teachers. And teachers, if you were clever enough, were easy to avoid. I remember sneaking out of the hostel with a few friends. The hostel was in Arcadia. We walked down Church Street – a long road leading to Church Square, about ten blocks away.

I remember staring up at the tall buildings and the architecture, ranging from the 1800s to more modern styles. When we reached Lion’s Bridge, I stopped. On either side lay copper (or brass) lion statues. Seeing them felt surreal – almost magical. It was as if Aslan, the lion from The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, was guarding the bridge.

At Church Square, right in the centre, stood a statue of Paul Kruger, former President of South Africa, dressed sharply in a top hat. I fell in love with top hats that night – which probably explains why I own two today.

That night was magical. The city revealed its beauty and quiet wonder to a country mouse seeing it for the first time. Now, nearly forty years later, I find myself living in Pretoria, in the suburb of Magalieskruin. The spell this city cast over that country mouse never faded. I am just as in love with this beautiful city today as I was on the night I first fell for it.

As always, I share one of the songs I wrote. You are welcome to download it, if you like. It is free, you are also welcome to pay for the download if you want. The choice is yours.

Januarie 6, 2026 2

Let’s reflect: If I could become invisible…

“The true nature of your character is what you do when nobody is watching”
Charles Caleb Colton

If I could become invisible, would I? It is a question many people ask themselves. Let’s look at it from a moral standpoint. Do you believe in personal dignity? The reason why you should ask yourself that question is because some people would become invisible solely for perverted reasons. Sneak into someone’s house to watch them undress, bathe or use the bathroom… Morally, that is wrong. We all want to be respected, right? Is it honourable to spy on someone at their most vulnerable? Would you watch an innocent person get naked without their consent?

Look, we all enjoy seeing someone naked, but the purest form of that is if they give their permission. Then it is an act of mutual trust, yes? I appreciate the beauty of a naked woman as much as any person, but I also want to preserve my own integrity, and hers. There is shame in crossing that thin line of breaking someone’s trust, even if they will never know.

Jesus said that if you look at a woman with lust, you have already sinned in your heart (Matthew 5:28), so from a Christian perspective, the idea of watching someone while invisible is already answered.

I am not religious, I am spiritual. But I believe in that old Spider-Man proverb: “With great power comes great responsibility.” If I could become invisible, I would. But I would prefer to use that ability to help someone. I would use that ability to make a difference. Not to exploit. Not to violate boundaries. I want to live with self-respect, and I want to be able to look at myself honestly.

Here is a song by little old me, have a listen and enjoy, it is free to download, or you can buy the song if you want. The choice is yours.

Januarie 5, 2026 2

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