I want you to scrunch your face up at me.
I dance for you, with a smile I gyrate,
The smell of my moisturiser intertwined with the music you don’t quite hate.
All for the love of that face,
I can’t go out in public without something silly to say, you pray – please try to behave.
It’s all for the feeling I crave,
The love that swerves around agitation, to feather and tickle embers into flame.
You look so pretty, can you give me a taste?
Or even a hug, i’ll take anything, I promise I won’t hesitate.
You always make me glad I came,
Even when death may try to stop me, i’ll live forever in the scrunch of your face, fighting off any grey & playing Jester games till the end of days.
Framing the sun that lives in your face,
The soft collections of hair trailing the top of your ear to its base – Trafalgar side burns that were love laced.
In the end I just wanted to write the truth, love and Cake Face.
By Alpha Maurice Cidade Cauwenbergh
Whitefall
Snow, the cold in a kiss.
Snow, frost bitten landscapes wallow.
Snow, the tears in the ice.
Snow, oceans frozen in sorrow.
Snow, a graveyard playground.
By Alpha Maurice Cidade Cauwenbergh
My favourite thing about writing these types of poems is not knowing what the poem is about until it’s finished. Because the creative process is not the typical one, of responding to a deep need to express something. With these, I here a song from my playlist, and feel something stir inside me. If the feeling in the pit of my stomach is strong enough, I select it to be squared2. Then watch as I start to express things i didn’t even know where residing within.
Yesterday2Yesterday I fell in love, today feels like my funeral.
The past can feel like the end, when isolated pain becomes communal.
I just got hit by a bus, shouldn’t have been so beautiful.
Your impact sprayed into rainbows, then soaked the desert full.
Don’t know why I gave my heart, gave my trust, gave everything.
You think if I had the chance to do it over again, I’d do something different? Make better decisions?
The beast I was before follows behind, close like a night terror only just escaped – the bed of indecision.
Give my all, you take it from me.
Take my all; you gave it to me,
Don’t even replace it for me.
But I keep making the same mistakes before – I see the danger but I go forward.
Repeated footsteps into the abyss, comfortable I’ve become to the darkness, my instincts a miss.
I feel like a killer hit me, the weapon was concealed initially.
Lover, assassin? The bullet thread to both, but at least love initially.
You deserve to feel it with me more.
I feel like I beg with you, plead with you,
My tears, a shallow drop in the Sahara.
I can’t comprehend how you can’t love when it’s so easy too.
Soft is the spirit that see’s the spaces between trying harder.
I thought you could do it, I believed in the naïve in you.
Little dress and footsteps towards me, disarming smiles that came from youth.
I just need to breathe, baby, now I got the freedom to.
First air of the saved, or last gasp of the failed? Love together and choose.
Yesterday I fell in love.
By Alpha Cauwenbrgh < Chris Brown/P. Diddy
This is a very peculiar poem. It came to me suddenly, while half asleep and trying to instagram without letting my phone fall onto my face. Sometimes I really feel that we don’t consciously create art, it just rises to the surface through from a deep uncharted place within. I’m still not sure what this poem actually means…Usually in these cases, it’s meaning is slowly uncovered by my conscious mind day by day.
I resisted the temptation to re-write or ‘improve’ it. Just kept it exactly how it came to me. Enjoy!
The Man Who Couldn’t Do Right.
Here he stood, on a cold pavement thinking of the love left.
Seeing shadows navigate the streets under the colour of magma – the dance of the bereft.
He walked for miles & miles, right foot before left.
Eventually, his strides slowed, there was a fork in the road and a church in the middle – love snowed.
Everything was to his right, he went left.
By Alpha Cauwenbergh
Strangely, this week I felt like delving once more into the old unaddressed sadness i have about my dad leaving us. So I’ve combined those feelings into this beautiful Frank Ocean song in my latest Poem2.
There will be tears2 There will be tears I’ve no doubt, there will be smiles, but a few.
A pain is coming from without, resenting a smile I maybe never knew.
And when those tears run out, we’ll be numb and blue.
As the desert becomes my heart, I’ll lay still until the dark of the moon.
I can’t be there with you…but I can dream, I still dream.
My granddaddy was a player, pretty boy in a pair of gators.
Like you, fair-skinned –exotic to your own – refined in all his layers.
See I met him later on, I think it was 1991.
An impression left on me, like you – replaceable to no son.
The only dad I’d ever known, but pretty soon he’d be gone (too).
The only one, and not one. On borrowed time for his love too?
Hide my face, can’t let them see me crying,
I shelter a fragile window from a cold wind trying.
‘Cause these boys didn’t have no father’s neither, and they weren’t crying.
What gives me the right? Is my pain worse? I still lay still – not writhing.
Will there be tears?
My friend said it wasn’t so bad, you can’t miss what you’ve never had, well I can, and I’m sad.
There will be tears.
‘I can’t be there’, that’s all you had to say to me was…
Life isn’t fair.
Why couldn’t you say to me, you won’t be there,
Gone with the pretense.
You could of warned me, you wouldn’t be here…right here.
What’s your name in past tense?
No, you wouldn’t be here for me.
Alpha Cauwenbergh < Frank Ocean
I would also like to add a link to a short autobiographical prose i wrote a few months ago on the same subject matter incase you haven’t read it. Something different – an autobiographical piece.
This week, I’ve chosen to use one of my favourite Shakka songs from his Lost Boys EP – Poems about poems is where I’m at right now, and i’ve multiplied this song for your reading pleasure.
You don’t know what you do to me 2Even in the dark, I can see you. – Lost in the spaces between stars, to be near you.
I see you staring at the part of the room that I’m standing in.
Your face, turned towards me – a narrow corner where a lost boy is sheltering.
Even in the dark, I can see you.
As if I’m doing magic tricks whilst you wonder how they’re happening.
Can you feel our future? Or does the eye that you use foresee a different understanding?
Even in the dark, I can see you.
Her eyes got me travelling, Cupids got a javelin.
I came when you called – his plans for us transcending.
Who’s that?
You don’t know what you do to me.
Understanding is astray, a lost child to me.
Who’s that?
I’m out of control…out of control around you.
Violence would be peace in comparison around you.
Pretty bad at one-liners but I’m damn good at shuffling.
You erase my mother tongue; I move my feet towards you – shuffling.
You don’t know what you do…
Trust, it’s better if we dance, if I talk I’ll be rambling.
Fear – together if I dance? I can’t decipher her, the words – they’re scrambling.
You don’t know what you do…
To me, I’m out of control around you…
Lost in the spaces between stars, to be near you.
Alpha Cauwenbergh < Shakka
For my second poem, i’ve decided to go in a drastically different direction, and use hip hop/Drake ‘n’ B as the square root. I will continue trying different formats, styles and rhyming schemes as I slowly get to grips with this new fascinating way to write poetry,
Come Thru2We had the type of nights where morning comes too soon… and nothing was the same.
The proof of us was left in those dark embraces, where no light could separate, like we were the same.
Come through
Watch me, going out of the way when I should’ve went home, only time of the day I get to spend on my own.
Straying from the path well laid, forsaking the familiar, my senses betray the solitude not gained of its own.
Come through
We ain’t spoke in so long, probably put me in the past. I can still get you wet and I can still make you laugh.
Distant memories, do my lips move on mute? A background film from your past? Still I move you to lust, still I move you to laugh.
Come through
Girl you know we got thangs to do,
Come through
Love, no rest while work’s still to be done
Come through
Get your ass in the car and come through.
Why has it been so long?
Time, our extrapolated song.
Why has it been…?
When last did I dream…?
Come through
Who you been crying too?
The tears that I gave to you.
Who you been flying to?
Is that what I made you do?
Come through
Whose bed are you sleeping in?
Could another’s heart be sneaking in?
Someone’s been hiding you,
From the love that I lent to you.
Where have you been? You deserve rounds tonight, come through.
Alpha Cauwenbergh<Drake
For those interested in hearing the original song Drake – Come Thru
I present my first of many Poems about a poem, or Poems 2. I’ve never seen or read a poem like this (doesn’t mean it doesn’t already exist) so the format, rhyming scheme, content, and tone within a tone are a work in progress, and may differ dramatically in future poems 2. This piece is built from/within the song Dust by Frank Ocean off his mix tape Nostalgia, Ultra.
Dust 2Who’s that talking in my lab baby…? Is that you?
A voice, the familiar but estranged – can it be you?
No, I won’t put you out, what would this place be without my muse? Nothing special.
Every book in here, I wrote.
An empty shell – hollowed out emotions can’t stain – the page is blank – with nothing special.
Every book in here, I wrote.
Some I’m not too proud of, some I wish I could burn – too many pages I wrote, wish I could revise them.
Life breathed through flames, and into the air my shame – rain pours from sky and face the same, wish I could confine them.
But there’s no erasing, and the best advice I got was keep writing, keep living, and keep loving.
Destiny – a woman, her hands – fate – will cradle your arm. With pen still wet, her support is felt behind – violinist and bow keep loving.
When the ink dries, and the pages turn to dust, so will we – turn to dust. So, will we turn to dust?
Dust
Who’s that laughing in my Lab baby? Is that you?
The smile of a thousand un-lived days, is that you?
No, I won’t put you out, what would this place be without your smile? Nothing special.
I fell in love with you girl…you let yourself inside, with no respect for privacy.
When alone the words do come, but sometimes, the barren waste of pain masquerades as privacy.
You said there’s too much on my mind, then you ripped out a page, and set that thing ablaze – I quit writing. I kept living. I kept loving.
The Haze appearing in this place, an atmosphere of dismay, but space cleared that away, I kept living and kept loving.
When the ink dries, and the pages turn to dust, so will we – turn to dust. So, will we turn to dust?
Dust
Alpha Cauwenbergh<Frank Ocean
Together We Walk, Run, Fly
This is my first ‘sonnet’, and it’s about the way my relationship with my body is such that it’s almost become its own separate entity. The suffering we’ve endured over the years and my instinctive inward concealing of sadness, has created a relationship where i communicate with it like a well travelled brother in arms. I think this inner conversation with oneself/body is something that most competitive athletes/sportspeople can relate too.
Feelings of fatigue permeate through the sweat and the truth.
Never have I known a stronger one, of all things – your patience I want.
Sometimes, I don’t listen. I am selfish, a spirit enamored and recluse.
Stay with me and fight, protect what’s held close, and breathe until I can’t.
Remember me when I’m gone, transient, leaving sorrows with you and the earth.
I may be given to another, however, ours is ours, the memories – heroes and all.
Heroes – the first arched goal in the battle for the feather – the return from hurt.
All – your velocity with me from birth, despite that, I surrendered, ignored the voice, your call.
The pause, the return. Eleven point six was the measure of love,
Never before have two embraced as we did that day, a passion forged in the red.
Always my shield, battered, bent, and unbroken. Deflector of the arrows above.
Where now? Glory and death both lie at the edge. If I peer over will you be fed?
Lets go into the uncharted together, what’s mine is mine so take my hand.
Lets love, cry and fear for his sake, what’s mine – his plan – is mine – his hand.
By Alpha Maurice Cidade Cauwenbergh
Untitled
This poem was inspired by a singular feeling the song Gangsta Way – Chris Brown ft French Montana brought about in me. It’s something I do from time to time, and it’s fascinating because I usually don’t know what the poem is about until it’s almost fully written.
This poem is about that moment of sometimes illogical guilt and sadness you feel, when meeting eyes with someone from your estate block that you used to share childhood happiness with. However, now for various unfortunate & not so unfortunate reasons you are living two very different lives and are unable to relate to one another.
I’m in my hood all day, it’s my gangster way.
The forward steps I take, shrouded – in a hood that takes away my pain.
If I obscure my face to you, does it shelter me from the ache that remains?
What do I regret as I walk? The cold that strokes me, reminds me of the same.
The guilt of fame? The miniscule mountains climbed, while in its crevasses you stayed.
I’m in my hood all day, it’s my gangster way.
It’s true because my heart resides in the same place as yours.
A language received differently to the sounds made.
You don’t understand me, So I put a smile in the same place as yours.
It helps briefly, do we connect meaningfully? We smile, but it’s a different shape to yours.
My broad shoulders attired in Jackets proofed from rain.
While you, standing just as you were born – cry endlessly.
My life, safe in the hands that claimed me – yours fought always.
Did you tire? You don’t appear as you did those days.
Retire from your path – the gangster way.
By Alpha Maurice Cidade Cauwenbergh
Workplace & Heartbreak…
I remember when you changed; the feeling slowly poured over me – I bathed in a summer’s rain.
It wasn’t you, but the way you reflected into me. Subtle…smooth.
Your smile, your breath – different. Your intentions the same.
Was it folly to choose you? Another you had to love, who invited me into his room?
We traversed the landscapes of unsuitability, the bridge – optimistically built over the deathly hollows of your anxiety.
Work became play and smiles kept our hearts in wait – for love, not the great calamity we became.
Did I bleed on your heartstrings? I just wanted proximity.
I recall late night walks to your abode, courage and faith held hands, and with silver tongue I made claim.
The moon of this late night kissed your face, but it paled to the light I breathed into you with mine.
You, looking up over the clouds within to see me waiting.
You, pushing through the wetlands to find my hand to climb.
You, risking thunder and storm to absorb my shine.
I’d let you find safety in me, surrounding you – my adorning skin your climate.
The failure.
Above the grey still waiting…
Drenched to the waist, arm still aching…
The silence between the rain, is my song, the price I pay.
Our relations, an atmosphere torn away into space.
The courtship months in the making, the ceremony celebrated, letters that make you, scribed into my hair. In the end, the time nature takes to reshape it, not long enough to hold onto – feelings lost to the air.
Blame – Who is to be slain by the well-travelled blade? The boy burnt by the lonely blue flame?
It was too beautiful, glowing its reluctant colours from the corner the stockroom.
Or the flame? Burning those who touch it, knowing very well it’s not one for the contact of skin – just unaccustomed to its own fame.
Welcome to heartbreak.
By Alpha Maurice Cidade Cauwenbergh
The Rhythm And You
To dance with you;
Is to resent distance and all its friends, to want the first step towards you to be the universe’s end.
Is the contact of eyes between a want and need, the smile resting on you is the touch between forever and proceed.
Is the outstretched ache of a mother’s young, fingertips close to feeling the one you love.
Is the warmth that envelops upon embrace, even melody is left astray-floating just beyond the periphery of our space.
We invite it back in – traversing the sway of your hips, to finesse me from naval to lip.
To dance with you;
Is to glide together into other dimensions, lead by guitar and string. To trace the meandering curve of sexual purpose – the waist upon which my hands do cling.
Is to take in the wetness – of skin on your chest or corners of hair.
Is the effort held in our grind, becoming condensation mapping paths on passion’s window.
Is the bridge of fatigue that reigns briefly, the last verse is heir.
Is the silence and stare – a slow mind arriving with just the love of you in tow.
By Alpha Maurice Cidade Cauwenbergh
The Dying Planet & The Prince
The Dying Planet
Starlight, pass me not.
Starlight, silver fingers stretching across the black consciousness in reach.
Starlight, a feel of loss.
Starlight, glitter beyond abyss, tides of time will reach the hopeless beach.
The Prince
Kill, I tried – soaked the earth with my pride.
Again nothing came, spirit ablaze – the level reached, just the same.
Kill, I died – my race I couldn’t save, it dwindled in size.
Again, life replenished anew, legendary form – but nothing was the same.
Recoil did my appetite – disgust, in broiled were the fallen ones in rust.
Of skill, of mind, of everything in time – dishonour, it’s nigh, higher level, must climb.
The God of end – our fates were bent, this power is true, a lake tranquil and blue.
By Alpha Maurice Cidade Cauwenbergh
Everything But The Rain (2016)
Give me everything…
I have lived a life sheltered from all.
And in that time I forged, all I asked of you was to pour…
I need everything…
I scream hopelessly at the four walls that confine me,
Your face – my escape but the pain it reminds me…
Of everything but the rain.
Yes, I have felt your call as you pound my chest ‘till my will is numb. But succumb I cannot…to your will? I will not. I will hold you there, my slave and my prisoner, for over here is my face and a hope for the…The future in which I give you everything…
Everything but the rain.
You cannot stop a force born from life, to do so is to existentially cannibalize ones soul.
I will erode you away leaving nothing but blight, in doing so – traverse reality and the plains of sorrow you’ve sown.
I’ll take everything… Everything but the rain.
Will the winter slow you?
Bring peace that’s soft and white like snow?
Or will it just become another part of the faces of you I know?
With a frost that feels bitter even to stone?
And pain that bites like fangs from within where ice dragons roam?
The cold will take everything…Everything but the rain.
By Alpha Maurice Cidade Cauwenbergh
Solitude (2015)
Fortune does not favour me, maybe because I owe you…A singular existence is all that is left, your breath is now as the wind, both blowing in the spaces we left.
A contradiction are the memories that own me, to love you is to hate you…Without both I don’t know myself, and just as morning with night know they are the days that God left, I know love from the last time that hate left.
Moving quickly through grief we hope for the strength to fight and syphon the truth away from a hate that past. Am I a travelling through life as light? For looking back at us is like seeing sins refracted in broken glass.
If this mirror is sand perfected, than does the truth of my flaws belong to coastal lands? Did the waves of perpetual doubt beat on our foundations until they became sand?
I do not know…
I wonder what is to come, but do not fear it, as I feel within that this solitude is welcomed.
By Alpha Maurice Cidade Cauwenbergh
Clear Skies (2015)
Clear skies, lighter than the air that steams my windows…
While my weight crushes me to the floor and I can barely lift my head up to see the people I ignore. I wish that I could be everything you are.
Clear skies, beautiful from within and a vision of something greater from without, in the day, evening or night your passion for life is constant like the drumming of a seraphim’s heart.
I am now dark inside where hope once was, illogical feelings fill me up as I stare into the nothings that becomes…of the TV, of the music, of the hobbies that would always playfully occupy my thumbs. I wish I could be everything your are.
Clear skies, you stay above all those below, never bowing to the mountains howl, so strong is your touch it can enclose the world, protecting it from the burn of the sun. Even the light of stars must pray for your permission before being allowed to shine on the surface your will has brought to rust.
I have been bent out of shape by the trauma in the muscles that move my bones, the memory of a touch on my chest before its caress on my toes is distant, and that plight has weakened me so much a glazed look down at my phone is like a bow to the demon’s in my head. I wish I could be everything you are
Clear skies, you are able to cry when you feel saturated and let your rage shake the fabric of the night when temperatures overwhelm.
I am stifled by forces I cannot explain, no tears can fall to drain the pain, no screams can be made to release the hate and I wish I could be everything you are…Clear in mind with hope spanning the breadth of human sight, this and everything you are.
By Alpha Maurice Cidade Cauwenbergh
My Star
When darkness covered my sight, your voice was my light.
When incapacitated I was from pain and upright I could not remain, your smile was my light.
When months of mediocrity bruised me and my fate confused could not move me, with your breath I breathed in your light.
Describing you white as light seen through ones eye is injustice of which I am guilty. Though it illuminates all that its rays caress with its spectrum of truth, that’s an explanation said to briefly.
Your light, being one of consciousness I experience differently, it cannot be confined to the heaven or surface of earth. Instead has penetrated my heart and soul, brought me hope to my darkest nights, most solitary moments, hopeless thoughts and dejected glances.
Because of you a glow started inside me, one radiating off a flickering spirit that fights the changing winds. I need you Kalina, you fill me with the strength of a star. I now burn of you with love true, constant, refracted in me and forever reflected in you. Ton bebe pour toujour xxx
by Alpha Maurice Cidade Cauwenbergh
Waiting to fall(2011)
I stand at the precipice waiting for someone, or some feeling. My mind is clear but my vision is hazy at the precipice waiting for that feeling.
Tingles in my heart, butterflies at the start, the dance of that feeling…
I know its name i’m just waiting to fall.
The heart is deep, out of which I could crawl I know its name, that feeling… I’m ready to fall.
The times nearing, even at a whisper I can hear it. Although deaf to the meaning, when you speak its clear that its you that draws me here.
When you smile I know that its my heart you own, when we rest or play all doubt I fore go.
You raise my spirit to a point I envy the rain, falling so care free with no fear of pain. But you can wash it all away, new emotions I shall obey, like gravity for rain your love is the reason I came.
Futures untold as our story unfolds… Future is safe, I feel it when in your arms i’m enclosed.
Your cares and affections are to me like a womb, I will stay there where its warm…and let your heart play me a soft tune.
No longer fearful of my impending fall, darling there I will stay as my emotions form…until the day love is born.
By Alpha Maurice Cidade Cauwenbergh
Run Slow
This piece is probably a bit of a strange one to put on this page as it was not written as a poem, but instead as my first foray into rapping. Which to be honest wasn’t very good in terms of flow, delivery and energy I.e. rapping ability (because i have none). But I did think it was quite strong lyrically, hence why I’ve posted it here. As my style of writing is not always very transparent I will tell you the songs meaning, especially considering that if you do not know my football history you may not be able to make the connection. The song is an emotional, physical and mental overview of the suffering I’ve experience due to chronic hamstring injuries.You might be thinking that it’s a strange topic to rap about, but i think its best to rap about the things that have deep meaning to you and this is certainly that.
The instrumental we (me and my cousin) used was from one of my favourite Kanye West songs called ‘Drive Slow’. Other than the fact that was in love with the song’s production and lyrics, I chose this track because I could feel a symmetry between the songs message of moving through your life with caution, in the way I felt I had to play football at the time.
Anyway here is the link, hope you enjoy! https://soundcloud.com/alpha-cauwenbergh/run-slow
Françoise
Bonjour Françoise…today you came into my life.
I walked down our flight of stairs, to see you there and at your silhouette I stared.
Not a smile you offered or a gaze you gave, well not in my direction so there I stayed.
I’m already under your spell of straight faced claims to beauty shining throw your frown, but had I understood it was the road less travelled that I were about to head down?
Bonsoir Françoise…today I learnt the truth.
In my attempts to gauge the distance to your heart, I discovered this Journey had to be halted before its start.
In truth I felt a little sad, already knowing the news had to be bad.
Your heart belonged to another, this story is not new but just another.
Another tale of unrequited lust and affections, or at least those were my expectations.
Bonne nuit Françoise…tonight i learnt the real truth.
After months of admiring you from a far, transfixed on you as though looking through a jar, at a specimen of female endeavour, vigor and elegance.
I see it’s impossible now to relieve myself of your infection, so instead I pursued you in hope of a cure for those feelings, desires and cravings. As I drew nearer to the answer it felt as though i could hear the Gods of fate sing.
Sometimes your mere presence overwhelms me with your smell intoxicating, your conversation electrifying and your beauty awe-inspiring.
Your existence in my life is an assault on my senses near to the point of insanity, but a cure I did find in this reality, for no longer was this moment confined to my head…finally.
The cure for you was found in your kiss so sweet, soft and laced with passion my single life I would not miss.
Enjoyable it was to be in your embrace, soul fulfilling I found it to be in this place.
P.T.O
Now a new page, chapter and verse can begin…
Bonjour Françoise (the morning after the night before?)
To be continued…
by Alpha Maurice Cidade Cauwenbergh
© Alpha Maurice Cidade Cauwenbergh – Storyteller, Poet & Intern at Wordsmith Inc. 2015. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Alpha Maurice Cidade Cauwenbergh – Storyteller, Poet & Intern at Wordsmith Inc. with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Storyteller, Poet & Intern at Wordsmith Inc. 
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