CHILD’S PLAY
like a child:
but did not mean
infantile
did not mean
psychotic
did not mean
projectile vomit
all over that globe spinning
in the living room
did not mean
you blood-painting
yourself
into a corner
all the while selling us
your story that you
are
responding to
Tik Tok and text message
direct
from above
GENRE we presupposed it was fairy tale it was a natural presupposition we were not well acquainted with cosmic horror and understandably, who expects the great ancient demigods to claw their way up to the surface right in the midst of a military campaign of ethnic cleansing fuelled by religious demands for mass extermination clearly we need to learn much much more about the spectrum of genres
NO EASY MEASURE
there are many ways
to start a poem
maybe an image, a theme
a rhythm
bouncing
around in your head
snake-like
rasp of word
many ways too,
to enter a poem
linear or
non-linear
syntactic
or symbolic
feeling your way
set to full tactile
or up
for helicopter shot
to view
as mosaic
put
everything
in perspective
then
fill in the detail
induced, deduced
seduced
at your pleasure
although
linger on
this thought
if you will, let us dissect
this
dark treasure
only
fair to point out,
to leave a poem, however,
(speaking
of seduction)
is no
easy measure
here is the poem
here is we are
unexpectedly
together
not so many ways down
from that height
this height,
routes
out of the labyrinth
this
labyrinth
safe and
without cost
hardly enough
to count on the
fingers
of one hand
so many surrendered
to the poem, dissolved,
got
absorbed by
poetry
something about
the beauty
of this python still
to comprehend
as it
closes the circle
you now mine forever
OLD JOHANNESBURG
waiting by the roadside
in old
Johannesburg
maybe
resurrection
will
befall me
maybe redemption
will come my way
failing which
perhaps
a circus or carnival will
come
round the corner
sweep
stubborn old ideologies
off the street
as serious joke or
perhaps just giggles
a parade of Zizeks
tumbling past me as if
Red Square
comedy
where figures from the
Commedia del Arte
are here
to replace tanks
look
seriously at the world and
it suddenly goes
Toy Town
confirmation bias
on open display for
everyone to see
fat
conspiracy here:
buses passing every few minutes
not stopping for everything
the drivers
believe
waiting for the curtains to open
waiting for the means
transport a boardgame
on my back
set
of lewd Cluedo
for whomsoever might
wish
to join me
help me
to survive
life on a billiard sphere
hustling to get by
wanting to be Master
always
a slave
waiting for the lights
to darken
have
lost the book
in which
I was made
****
after a
while
everything
slithers
snakes and
ladders
perhaps better to
devote time
to generating boardgames
rather than
squandering my existence
writing
poetry or composing fiction
****
bumper to bumper stacked together
owe it to them
to not close my eyes,
keep looking
or everything before me
will disappear
and this funeral procession
miss its target
some poor
exclusive dignitary
about to skip his rendezvous
with captivating tombstone
of proportions extreme
so much here
so mechanical
yet so many
vital nuts and bolts
****
bureaucracy
is horror
bureaucracy
is death
I sat with
Slavoj Zizek
through yet another sunset
telling jokes
about philosophers
telling jokes and
the end of the Universe
(not that this necessarily
implies a causal connection)
today the lawyers
of old and new Johannesburg
are
heading North
with a holy bone to pick.
I sat by the roadside
play after play
oodles of
words, scenes,
dialogue
even
still in my head
ghosts of tales
still
to be told
(media marvels yet
to unfold)
old Johannesburg
TUXEDO
tuxedo
is name of
the game
you file your suit
hoping
to agree
of definitions
promise not to fight
over whether
this or that
homonym
accidental or
intended
all puns here
quite intended
but here they all are
creatures
of the South
my fellow-travellers
fat portfolio in their satchels
speaking in each codicil
humanity out loud
arguing
that a single sluk of
this evil
can
erase angelic face
pollute the God-given concept
of eternal, outright righteous
hold mirror up to Emperor
to deconstruct
all mind of god
yes
a time when
courage must be superhuman
to vouch for
civility, decency
to put us on the spectrum of
one indivisible being
and this to argue
before history, in
tuxedo
lest the lie, the quite lie
the brutal lie, the truth
denying
crushing line
find its path to become supreme
RUBBLE
my poem
lies under rubble
dead, asphyxiated
would be on
life support
but
there is no life
is no support
my poem
is getting
amputated
will lose a whole page
has already
lost
stanza
after stanza
without antibioticd
without anaesthetic
each line screams
as they cut
through
bone
you will have forgotten
these words
and the mass graves
of those
that have
spoken them
as you stare into the sunset
across the Mediterranean
from
your beautiful
seafront property
looking out towards Greece
the rubble
of great Troy
and the gods
of Homer’s world
SHOOT
shoot
what moves
you can wash
your mouth out later
top
up again, be carefree
who cares what
you did, what you said
still out there
got stuck somewhere
but maybe
water not strong enough
need to
liberally swish with
concentrated acid
something stronger
than any dream juice
than you could
possibly imagine
take you head off before
full rewire
THORNY
so much
ice in nice
in splice
and lice
barely
suffice
and there it is
in police too
shows what the brain
can scrabble through
a rose
by any other name
would be as thorny
thorns can do pretty much
all the bad
that barbed wire do
OF DARKNESS
devil poet
of the children
of darkness
yes, I can
live with that
coming from
the mouth
of such
a monster
of light
except
there might be
a conundrum
of physics
here
absolute confusion
and conflation
of fire
and light
not to
mention so
flagrantly angelic
in your
contempt for the law
CHARLES
wanting the dream life
of a poet
Charlie L
put his faith in Spinoza
write with determination
and thd Universe
will determine
the world will
find its way and
death will come middle –
aged
find him
at the poverty shelter
under his pillow, big
as a gong,
the poetry medal
he once won
not
by a lomg shot tragic, nowhere
near the world’s greatest
not even
an also ran, but
despite myself
I care
poems 2 die for