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Best Poems Written by Beverley Abrahams

Below are the all-time best Beverley Abrahams poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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Butterfly

Butterfly


In the silence of regret, we lose our faith
In the noise of anger, we lose ourselves.

Find me a place where faith is healed
A place of refuge where I may grow like the wings of a butterfly,
Where my metamorphosis will empower my flagging will.

Let me feel the beat of your angelic wings against the cheek of my heart,
So that I may know what it feels to be loved.

Fear not my unawakened soul,
In you it will find its complement
Then only will I be complete...

Details | Beverley Abrahams Poem

Warriors

Warriors

Peeling back layers of guilt and regret
Like flaking paint off old walls
Looking for that core resistance 
That sacred bit that never falls
Taking that mortality and draping it wide
Letting it cover you in renewed pride

I lean, stumble and sometimes fail
Working through tears and lingering pain
But fortitude grows when love is planted
Those seeds in others doubled, supplanted!
I sow words of poetry in hungry minds
Looking to release gender-based violence 
Tears turn to pearls as hearts tumble and crack
And a new warrior is born, each time I step back!

Details | Beverley Abrahams Poem

Blue

Sky Blue

Blue deepens into blue
Depths unfathomable 
Stretching unseen lines
Sifting space softly
Slow sink into safety
Blue-bathed skynet
Space gently redefined

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Mind Drifts

Mind-drifts

A wedge of moon flowers in a fading sky
Floating above a stained swathe of drifting cloud
Mind-drifts in starts and stops
As dark deepens in delves and dips
Cat-steps in dry crunchy grass
Cicada-song shrill and sharp
Starlings tweet in social chat
Crow-croak bass resounds 
Light ripples across my mind
Shifting thoughts, drifting wide.

Details | Beverley Abrahams Poem

Moments

Moments

I sit in the stifling heat of the car,
Taxi’s block the entrance like a boom bar,
Walkway broken, crowded with hopes.
An old white van stutters up ahead,
At back stark white coffin with gilt handles:
Family sit, heads scarved and drooped,
Red flag of death flickers, a torn bit of time.
Moving glances slide off the coffin like invisible tears,
Sorries unsaid, fears relieved, if only for a moment.
Death sits in an empty coffin,
Waiting to receive the spewed remains of Life.
Is this what it is at the end?
A moment of silence in the roar of today?
A young man jumps out the back of the van,
Appraises a young woman passing by,
Glances cast like invisible smiles,
They speak of hope and love and maybe’s.

Details | Beverley Abrahams Poem

Rendered

Rendered

Render me in colours
Reflected by the moon, 
Let the white of my smile shine
Against the brown of my frown, 
Let the curve of my chin feel the touch of your hand, 
While the feel of your breathe warms my soul. 

See the dip in my collar bone, 
Fill it with your need, 
While the slow drip of your desire
Drops in pearls down my spine. 
See the dent of my belly button, 
The disconnect from my beginning. 
Do you see the bulge of my belly?
Childbirth leaves its scars...
My legs like brown branches
Slope down to my toes.

Render me in Colours, 
Soften the blow with shadows, 
Spray heart across my soul, 
Wrap me up in cotton wool.

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Memories

Memories

I tuck memories into corners
Saving them for rainy days
When hope heaves 
And spills like tears
Those days, those days
When light flickers into dying-light
And borrowed dreams are redemption 
When faith wavers, faint as echoes
Rebounding off heartbeats 
Slowed into sadness
Those days, those days
Slowing time into slow-mo
Till memories erupt like fire-flies
Filling the night sky with angel eyes

Details | Beverley Abrahams Poem

Jacaranda's

Jacaranda's 
A gap in the sky where Jacaranda's  bloomed, 
Just yesterday, only yesterday, yes yesterday! 
I awoke to chainsaw screeching, 
Rising and falling like crows screaming. 

The groan of branches brittle with age, 
The sharp crack as big bones break; 
The whoosh of castles of leaves flailing,
The crashing fall of life unwanted, 
The whisper as a tree is stunted. 

Did you hear the crack, the crash, the cruelty? 
Did you feel the breaking, breathless, dying? 
I feel it in my bones, that premonition of crying, 
I hear it in my heart, that soulful sound of moaning;
And in my head the whispers, 
Of loss, of loss, of loss, of loss;
Trees falling, crying and dying; 
People losing sight in the rising pyre, 
Blinded by the smoke of brash hunger
Greed overcoming life's rightful fire.

Details | Beverley Abrahams Poem

Moving On

Moving On

Those flitter-bits of memory
Still stab me in the eyes
Gritty bits of broken maybes
Floating where they cannot be denied
Like sponge, I soak them heedlessly
Broken spirit akin to broken skin
I wipe the tears with patience
I soak the spills with downcast eyes
But broken and restructured
I've lost the Angel's reign
My feet feel life so differently
Now that they trample on she who cried
Soft souls squeeze through my footsteps 
Bathed in my ancestral sands
The one where life found meaning 
As the boulders broke the bride
But footsteps are like spider webs
Weaving dreams where pride has died
They falter through the fire
But never give up when it's time to die

Details | Beverley Abrahams Poem

I Belong to Beautiful

A glistening sun-baked day
Blue sky reverberates into deeper blue
Light shimmers in pixels 
A yellow butterfly flutters against the petals of a flower,
Like a piece of paper caught in a breeze,
It lilts and lolls and lifts lazily
A dog shifts on the cool concrete floor
Stretches legs and rolls over murmuring
On the edge of the shady bird bath, 
A Cape robin pauses, flashing eyes, a red breast
Then it dives in, wings whirling like windmills as it sings sweetly to the silence of a summer day
I watch from the stoep as life eases and settles into a rhythm of peace, 
Slowly unfurling:
An African day winds down, seamlessly
And I feel the solace of true belonging
Not the myth, not the stories
Just the letting go of all it's pieces.