I Am A Pretty Face That Covers An Ugly Heart. Poem by Thabani Khumalo

When am I going to become completely leery of
everything that goes about in my surrounding?
When am I going have a full view of the what is called life?
I need to see life like I'm looking at it from a picture frame.
I will have to get stronger than my weaknesses for me to be immune to my pain.

When I try to scrutinize the characteristics
of my beautiful mother at the fullness of her age,
I go to see foibles beyond explicable proportions of logical metre.
How is she going to manage to raise her grandson within composite rationale?
for she keeps whiming inculcation of guilt into his five year old mind
and I rise in wonder how this boy will be able to discern the issues of truth.
How is it that everything he does is always wrong by my mother`s judgment?

When this happens in the morning,
my whole day deigns under a mar of an urgeless will of survival.
I still don't know why she is cynical towards philosophy and math.
But we only got to grow in the love
for life when we died in romantic grace
and the only thought of life that lingered in the mind
was the question on how best to build a home.

So just like my mother,
I am a pretty face that covers a bitter heart.