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Best Poems Written by Francois Hillebrand

Below are the all-time best Francois Hillebrand poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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A City In Thunder

Daughter buried in a arm-fold.
Half limp karma, licking at her hand.
Red polka-dot head light…and
Something frightening, found in the sand.

Fairy tales have laid waste, 
in my dormant to rehearse,
when after everything you realize,
that they were written in reverse. 

As the mother once revealed: 
                                 
“And sleeping beauty never wakes up…

 Or maybe it was in the strange,
 
 that she never could finish anything...”


I never bathed her in the cripple color!

Still, she hopes that I’ll never be saved,
and so the survivors of the city in thunder,
who started to cut on the Moses wave.


So now?


…I lie buried to wait for the rain,
A city in thunder confronted again.

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A String of Ears

Line after line
Round after round
Empty shells 
Fall to the ground

City after city
Mound after mound
To collapse
Without a sound

Wrist after wrist
Clang of shackles ring 
Closing veins
Soon to shepard in

Prophet after prophet
Hymn after hymn
Bridging mountains-
Hear the slaves sing

Song after song
Sorrow after sorrow 
Sullen hearts 
No wish for tommorow

Ashen after ember
Row after row
Mouth of War
To gape an' swallow

Father after father
Son after son
Familial lines
So come undone

A string of ears
One after one
Sucked into gravity
Of Hells forgotten sun

A string of fears

On and on...
Round and round...
Mound after mound...

Hear the slaves sing
As empty shells 
Fall to the ground

Details | Francois Hillebrand Poem

The Water Mouse

(Part 1: The South African detective)

The search, I must warn you,
Was led by a Zulu,
A shaman and officer,
‘The pride of Maputo’

Called Mr. Malungo,
They say, ‘a witch he once wed’,
And that he tricked her, just to keep,
The little hili that she fed...

(But the truth, is much stranger,
 for you see, that ‘hili’ was his son,
 and his wife, well, she just left him...
 a bit of muti and a gun) 

And as for ’ubuntu’,
Well, he had it all wrong,
For that term, in izulu, 
Doesn’t mean:’**** you, I’m the one’,

   And so the water mouse,
   Swam against; the trusting current’s dead,
   The foamy figures that beamed below,
   Water mountain stead,
   His little head catching sunlight,
   Dots the liquids edge,
   And as a late, blooming flower,
   Sprouts amongst the round pooling red,

5 divers and 12 gunmen,
Now arranged in Malungo’s shed,
Whispering amongst themselves,
About, the bricks beneath his bed...

Summoned by the State,
To arrest a very sinister louse,
The famed and even ‘imagined’?
...Deadly, ‘Water Mouse’.
Heard of by many,
Seen by so few,
20 dead and counting,
To continue...



PS: Some South African concepts.

“Tsotsi”: means “criminal”
“Hili”: means “demon” (regarded as a sex demon who hides beneath beds that are 
not on bricks and whom grants wishes if caught)
“Ubuntu”: common word in South Africa that means “we are all one”

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Touched By a Harbinger

Doppelganger, you touched me,
From desuetude tales, with redolent reach,
Raising my halo, armoured, 
Beyond all the charm of infallible speech,
Filling my lungs, punctured,
Drawing my breath, vast,
Raising my every hair, 
Beneath, this phantom limb’s cast,

For touched, I won’t preach,
A imperfect tense, gorged,
To signify, a world, visible,

And touched, I can’t teach,
An opulent heaven, waiting,
I can’t answer, what was never known,

And in tongues, I don’t conflate,
An epiphany that’s erstwhile,
With the wherewithal of penumbra’s sun,

For touched, I touch Scintilla,
To become pyrrhic, I pretend a halcyon,

My doppelganger, you touched me,
From desuetude tales, with redolent reach,
Raising my halo, armoured, 
Beyond all the charm of infallible speech,
Filling my lungs, punctured,
Drawing my breath, vast,
To exhale a world brimming,
I am the harbinger,
I am my past,

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Colossal

I feel

I am widdiful

A bloom of colossal

Making my way to the rooftop

Beneath, stars hung from gossamer

The windows, I pass in flashing strobe

In the stripes of a crook, I face the moon

Treading the prism of the crashing rain

The city darkens beneath my heal

My back, to the rising

Bloom of colossal,

I am widdiful

I feel

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Sky-Scraper

We all hold our worlds in a whisper
For we don’t know what forms they’ll take:
A single snow-globe, that’s cast in storm
‘Could’ scrape the skies with ache,
An’ the twisted, fabrics of a heaven -longed
‘Could’ billow an’ spill forth to unfold
(Across the very, wax wounded mantle
That once kept that heaven cold)
Entombed, our hearts -in a whisper
COULD scream through demons at will
But still, we hold -our worlds in whisper
An’ still, our mouths are still

For we all hold our worlds in a whisper
And we don’t know what forms they’ll take
But until its spoken, an' not through a whisper
For our worlds -we will be too late

Details | Francois Hillebrand Poem

Currents

I grow Strangly, its the wildred blossoming spasms of a deviant
thats carefully slipping into liquidating winds,
and its storming through a world where cracked tibias embrace the neck.

And beneath, hair slowly rising as tentacles,
will be falling on the veins of a careful hearts avalanche,
and the streaming pink currents following,
always resemble a glimmering black pearls submission,
much like a broken wish, lusting for the obliteration of the sun.

And so, an emergence of a head crowned in butterflys...

Can be seen as a play-full reflection in shallow ponds of blood,
where a ravenous limp around a fairys garden,
soon brakes a leg, to mix the shattered wings in with the mud.

A rusty cuff mocks the grinding of the key...

Natural seems deafening when its drowned at sea,
where pale limbs entangle, unknowingly,
and the only horror is what's washed up ashore,
discovered by a innocent, who can't help but too adore.

Details | Francois Hillebrand Poem

Face Your Maker

I wish for nothing. But, in colour
They splash my bones -as flowers, rare
Dreaming still, they brim an’ lull’
On lucid thrones -they dare

Too ‘just’ visage -in blameless fleet
Or cannon a whisper, upon worlds defeat
They fold in cleft -all rooms, to bare 
The dangle of toes an’ the pump of hearts air

But, still only echo -polluted, they groan
Falling ill an’ out an’ moral by meat
On dancing pavements an’ chalked to the stone
Alone they have ridden’, but hopeless they greet

So, face your maker. But, in colour
No labour, fierce angel -for who crowned you so rare?
For if you could shake, this world with a wish
Who holds the power –out there?

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There Are No Erasers Allowed In Eternity...

Amongst our sturdy bricks that we carry as shell,
Our Infinity bows to a death we sooth well,
Like a needle in a car-wrech with an idiot in the hay,
Toe to heal, we're treading, dancing in the grey.

Polarized, I say, mocks eternity of your name,
Love and hate, beside, apart but the same,
Future, past and a cut to the cheek...
A world’s eternal kiss, on the ass, of the meek! 

There are no erasers allowed in eternity...

So wipe this illusion! For it’s never been just,
Defied by a beginning of an ending you'll trust?
So rub a-rub rub until your papers run red,
It's still the smiles of the living, which grow the roses, for the dead.

There are no erasers allowed in eternity...

No prayers to be answered or ghosts to spur aw,
Or to drown in blame under, those feet that you adore,
It’s contrast, my friend, that kept sorrow in-mind,
And this one book of blue, in black, I won’t bind!

There are no erasers allowed in eternity...

And I know this to be true,

So rub a-rub rub until your papers run red,
It's still the smiles of the living, which grow the roses, for the dead.

Details | Francois Hillebrand Poem

The Lantern

A lantern to spill the flaming way
Unmeshed milestones, flooded today
You always record, a thousand things to say
And now, as your wall-paper, their curling away

I’ve left this lantern
An encore to a siren, droning, beneath a factory of glass
To the frowning, reading, repeating what they say
While not knowing? Toe to heal: way my come

A lantern to spill the flaming way
Unmeshed milestones, flooded today
You always record, a thousand things to say
And now, within wall-paper, thoughts withering away...




(This poem is dedicated to all the mothers we lost to alzheimers...)