TEKERE
they let us out for
a few minutes a day
let us stretch our legs
get us
to run around
let off some steam
go wild, let it
all hang
out
as they say in the taal
in that wonderfully apt
phrase:
“gaan tekere”
and, as creatures of chaos,
entropic to the core,
crazy
is the place to which
we need to go
and not to the library
where we would have to
be pent up
and sit and read
everything vaguely vagabond
laced up just like
it were
a usual Church Sunday
and our teacher Ms Blake
(formerly Ms Erasmus)
who speaks the taal
but also teaches English
could finally shrug
her shoulders and admit defeat
every day fresh
books removed, the shelves
less replete
the library a
lost dream of hers
failing, dying
around her very feet
even
her namesake would
throw down his
spear
concede
defeat that crazy
wayward soul no
longer caged
in print to
prowl around
do some tigering
for ideas
too dangerous to
rock
the boat
that keeps us afloat
speak of a freedom
not as
a relaxing of the machine
we all
gears and sockets and springs
playing our part in
even
what gets chewed and gnarled have no text
to cite no words
to speak
only the glorious nothing
death mythology
of automatic capability
and thirty-round magazine
going apeshit civilized
total tekere with
such a thing
(true death joy
a book
is no substitute for
no book
could ever bring)
a few minutes between
the maths, life lessons
and accountancy
they let
us run around, imagine
and scream
poems 2 die for 