About CC

Zahrah Loukhnati (1970) born and brought up in Cape Town, South Africa. Since childhood, she has loved reading. She has always written songs, lyrics, poems and stories to present as gifts to her family and friends. She is a member of Dystenium, an online poetry journal. She can be contacted at zahrahloukhnati@gmail.com.

1. Bound in Blood

I’m hurting

I’m a fool

Who would want me anyway?

I’m just a sponge...Always have been

And here I am...

trying to make something of myself...

All the while clinging

To this dream...

this hope that they want the same as I

But they don’t

So...

Who am I to want a family united?

A family strong...together as one

Loving and fighting but united in love

Bound in Blood

I don’t have any proud moments to display

Never achieved anything but cause them pain

They’re on their own paths

Cringing in pain at old hurts and rejections

“Don’t speak of it again...”

My time is coming

I feel it in my bones

Finally my moment to atone

for those hurtful dark moments...

so numerous and sharp

I’ve already started

I really do have a heart

It beats a rhythm of its own

I never felt it until I was alone

...alone...just me

I took some time out and the world let me be

It’s still an ongoing moment

I don’t mind if it never ends

‘Cos the journey is so much better than the end.’

2. Behold the Advances

Sitting on my arse all day

Living in my head

All I want to do is play

Matrix all about me

Queen of it I’ll be

Exposing my breast to your beating

My heart all a-flutter and weeping

You abhor my advances

Yet un-resisted the chances

Of affection you shun

Pull me back, I’m at One

Unshorn and unwoven

We be cloven

Un-beholden.

3. Moving On

Bring us the past on a silver platter

Basted with heartache, we won’t let it matter

To the one’s we adore

We’ll dish them some more and

Watch as they crumple, stumble and fall

Under the burden of it all

Yes, so bring us that past on that silver platter

Basted with heartache, will we let it matter?

4. Simplicity

A much better place could this world ever be?

A world to be proud of

For you

For me

My perspective a-changing

Cataclysmically re-arranging

All I ever thought I should be

Much-needed bother, toil and sorrow

Unfolded a clarity, a certain sanity

Within the essence of my hollow

Do away with the stuff!

Will we ever have enough?

The answer is “NO!”

Illusion tells us that’s the only way to go

Be successful for that other

Never mind about your mother

If we look, we shall see

All the signs that abound

Our Father left them strategically to be found

So dear sister and brother of mine

Let’s stop wasting this precious time

Let’s beware of one another

Take care of the world like we’re its mother

And I’m sure we shall see

A world to be proud of

For you

For me

5. Absent

How many lifetimes will it take to understand

And come to grips with the past?

I try and try my best to live for today

But it never lasts

I’ve toiled and I’ve strived

Efforts in vain, tried to achieve

All the while clinging to a belief

A hope, a dream made of whispers and fog

So much to live for, yet boundaries

at the edges of my bed and

Self-inflicted

Barbed-wire bleeding venom from my head

Saturating my essence

With lethargic lead

Contradiction

Renders my muscles catatonic

As I crawl and slither in oily isolation

Reaching no conclusions of purposeful elation

I am alone

Rationed to One

Reduced to

…none…