Category Archives: 1, poem, poetry,

LEO B

LEO B (for B.C.)

I can’t be sure,
but I believe that this
poem might not
have been
what you had in mind

when you asked me way
back then “to come
and look
after you”

whilst he who relayed
the request
would be a month
away amongst
the ladies of Spain

I’m not sure if a poem, this poem,
is what you would
have wanted at all

but sensing innuendo
I felt I just
had to decline your
gracious offer
face your lioness wrath
when I told you this
short and sweet
over the phone

short
and sweet

sweet
and short

since I did no comfort
caring back then
I have no idea
what
you think

how
you read this

what shared, interlocked, idea we have
of a poem

and how it is written, delivered
and read

how both parties in
the creation together
forge its
meaning

of what is here
a poem
might have been
a novel

gorgeous entwined narrative
we lived to regret
then revelled in.
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KING OF SWORDS

KING OF SWORDS

I bought an
array of Japanese swords
via my on-line
purchasing app

so that when I walk
down the street bristling
with steel

nobody is going
to insult my writing
take issue with my poetry

and
  when times get hard
and I am inclined
towards seppuku

I won’t be able
to pick out
a blade being
so spoilt for choice.

VIKING

VIKING

when a Viking
turns the
other cheek

it’s to show you
the humongous scar
where the spear
went through

and let it not be said
that Vikings lack forgiveness
many a crazed Viking
has stayed
   his hand somewhat
dealing out death
with much softer blows

lacking a poetic culture that
would civilized certainly
and thus unable
to write
   their side of
the story

I therefore on their
behalf appoint myself their
spokesman to the
rest of us
    ordinary, somewhat
shocked and
non-comprehending members
of our species

since I am no Viking, or
by my reckoning, as
much as half
clearly isn’t

CART

CART

another cart
I am
   tired of carts

keep asking myself
what I am doing wrong
or right
to find myself forever
being stuck in one

pushing pulling
being pushed
being pulled

tumbil, trolley, cart
tired of them, sick of them
whatever name
to
attach
to them
in whatever language
still exists, whatever language
I have spoken

and yes it sounds poetic
sounds cool and
sounds fun

to think
first time I stand up in my cart
see the sunrise
feel the Sun

warming me
back in this life

speak whatever I need to spesk
still have to lean

cart
   around in my head re-
incarnation to reincarnation

EMILY

EMILY

I remember the day
dearly recall

stumbling upon your house
tumbling through your door
crashing
on your floor

lucky the sheaves and sheaves
scattered their to
break my fall
keep me warm
as I did sleep

and sleep I did
for a very lomg time
but time
   is, they say, relative
and what
might have seemed eons
could just
have been
a year

cocooned in that great nest
of all your best poems

and me wandering through
them all
      stanza by stanza
whole of that
dreamtime
           opening door
after door
inside room
after room

upstairs
    downstairs

curved spiral
and spine

somewhere up there
a down there
the box of legend full
of
   smell of death carriage,
bone,  zero
snake
        and sharpest of splinter
of shard
that the eye
might penetrate

this night nurse of a woman
you have smocked and
thereby
          contained

look again!
look again!

     the horror is so thick
it does not need to seep

the whole
of your continent in
usual sweet quandry, yet
one more dead mistake

PERIGEE

PERIGEE

I saw him
last day of primary school
for him
riding his bicycle,
exultant
   down that
street
in Parow

next year
high school
a big brainy
boy now

Mars
at its perigree
his head
full of
Ray Bradbury

nothing in the night sky
redder or
more relevant
than our brother
world with
its dust and its
oxides and canals
and
perennial
alien menace
(though
in Mr Bradbury’s
book it
is we
who colonize you
to our shame and
shock and
terror
(the tribes of the plains
know that
story through and
                     through)

cycling full
of joy
     leaving past
behind
for future

wonder
what come the end
of his days

what of this
he foreseen
what
the one
    foreseen
might possibly remember

this is a poem
about Parow

a God-forsaken place
jam-packed with churches

some of which, it must
be said, has
been said,

have needle sharp spires
pointing perpendicular
up at
the stars
       and the planets

Mars
    singled out high above
red
   as ever

something knowing
about that look
             if this
world of
dreams, and fears,
and desires
    and secrets

could ever look
         ever feel at all