Tag Archives: humanity

OLD JOHANNESBURG

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

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
    

SIMPLY PUT

SIMPLY PUT

am here
for my brain
wash

get a new, shiny
gloss

am so excited
about the process

feel so
out of synch
with the world
        today

everybody
thinking
  another way

so hard to
      adapt if
short on
cynicism
      lacking
stupidity

am here
  for my brainwash

things
    from here
on in

going to
simply improve

CHUTE

CHUTE

if we were
aligned skew
       during manufacture

and so conjure up
a monstrously concocted version
of original divine image

what hope is there
for us to unentangle

the moment of beauty
is exalted
     but passing

no sooner gone than
    plunged headlong again

into
theme of survival

Ah, the cycle:

flameout,
         parachute

rip cord
    again failing

nothing to steer you clear
you clear  of those onrushing rocks

about
  to hit you at terminal velocity

all I can do
       for you: this
         song of regret

WHAT MAKES

WHAT MAKES

what makes
a poem
Shakespearean?

I was asked
the je ne sais quoi
signature
    of the bard
                   indeed

hard to replicate
if you are
           thing digital
disembodied
intelligence
binary being

some residue still
mechanical I warrant

no matter how polished
(like reflective
  sculpted metal)

the lark-like artifice
with
   which you sing

what
   makes a poem
human

hold

     that thought

set play

    to pause

stuff in my answer
I still need to dream

MASS


MASS

leaving before it
all gets sweaty

leaving
before it all goes
bottom up

as if
   it were impossible
to get exactly this bad

as if things
  could get worse
than extinction level

you mumble this in your
corporate-trained best
political voices

as if
for years, millennia in fact,
you haven’t been trying
                        your best

hitting the highway away
out of town, out
of this dimension
                      before
there is no
read to speak of

all of cosmic mind thanks
to our level of care
and consideration

rolled
up, and
squished into an agglutinative mass

LOCK

LOCK

love is that
gleaming apple
too high

up
the tree

it is
the death bed of the intellectual
fatal aporia
kills
their categories

it is the puzzle
with too many pieces
for the box
infinite choice

the blurb on
the sleeve

pity barely any fit together let alone

interlock

and you told yourself
it would be all too easy

are we not
so perfectly designed for this?

THAT WE DO NOT HEAR

THAT WE DO NOT HEAR

we do not hear
the laughter off the gods any more

at our lovable quirks or
(too often) outright
stupidity

or as they jostle for supremacy
in their own hierarchies

at their own foibles and excesses
as we know
from Ovid and
Homer

these almost exclusively
of an amorous nature
as when
Aphrodite and Ares became
trapped and entangled
in a net woven by
Hephaestus, sinned against,
aggrieved cuckolded party,

so engrossed in each other
(and who dare blame them?)
that when the rest of
Olympus rushed
to take in this spectacle
they flatly continued,
as the gods
roared with
rough mirth and yet
were riveted with wonder
at such
a free, fabulous show

where the parties could not have
more consummately represented
their
respective sexualities and
gender polarities

if on this question of
beauty as we riff you

grab my gist and run with it wickedly

in your own imagination

of humans
laughing at gods there is
of this species
no practice, no
hope of
continuation
the mocking spirit of great Aristophanes
squashed at its first sign
dead
in its tracks

killed by those who
believe the gods, all gods
are beyond
any comedy, reflecting
their faith (ludicrous
beyond measure) that

they are
as gods themselves, our history

blighted by the rise of such
self-proclaimed deities, wondrously
inept
holy imperators
whose narcissism no
catalogue
of statues commissioned so that
the love of
the people can be felt
beyond death
continue as legacy through
all of posterity

Oh think, my friends, what the genius
of an Aristophanes, embodiment
of true
human comedy

could play before the stars, which
share our liberation, our
moment of ecstasy

and like all our
false structures are left
helpless to the humour

who knows! teetering
on the edge
veering this
way and that on the brink of collapse