If I Could Turn Back the Hands of Time......

About the Book

Poetry is a wonderful stage that allows me an opportunity to enact aspects of my personal life, a helicopter vision that journeys back into my past and zoom those intense involvement and self discovery as silhouetted against the background of my family, my friends, my work, my hobbies, my challenges, my areas of development, the world, things I treasure, things I cherish and love and forces outside my control that continues to exert their influence and direct courses of my life. Poems in this book are carefully and specifically selected as they continue to invoke the bad and the lovely memories, mixed emotions and thoughts - a package of everyday life. Despite its challenges, unbearable pressures, unfairness, double standards and imperfection, it is still our beautiful life worth of praise!

About the Author

Simon Mautla Matlou was born in the late 60’s in the Republic of South Africa. He grew up in Ga-Seabe Village, Lepaaku Section in Hammanskraal City north of Pretoria in Mpumalanga Province. He started writing poems while in Seabe High School from 1985 to 1987 and beyond. Th is is his second book to be published by AuthorHouse Publishing Company, the fi rst being BEYOND THE HORIZON published in 2011. By the year 1994 he settled in Sun Valley, Mamelodi in Pretoria. He stays in Durban, in the Province of Kwa-Zulu Natal with his wife, Th oko Merriam and two children, Lesego Romeo and Amanda Tshegofatso. He was greatly infl uenced by Poets like Ridyard Kippling, Don Mattera, Wally Serote, Mzwake Mbuli, Pascal Gwala, John Donne, Percy Besshe Shelly and Butler Yeats. In 2004 he was the runner up in the South African Police National Literacy Competition, the Project sponsored by Pretoria Newspaper, University of South Africa School of Language and Literacy Studies, Metro Home Choice, Van Schaick’s Bookshop and Telkom South Africa. He works for the South African Police Services, attached to the Division Operational Response Services which is primarily dealing with South African Border integrity. He has been travelling extensively in all nine provinces of South Africa on policing duties, interacting and sharing ideas and life experiences with persons from all walks of life. At the end of 2006, he was transferred from Pretoria Public Order Policing in Gauteng Province to Durban in Kwa-Zulu Natal to assist in policing of Port of Durban. He currently holds the rank of Colonel in the South African Police Service and has a total of twenty years experience. Supplementary to National Diploma and Bachelor of Technology (B Tech) from the University of South Africa, he has acquired Masters Degree in Policing from Tshwane University of Technology. He loves to read anything interesting especially poems and short stories.