26 KILOMETRES SOUTH OF RAMATLABAMA
“Everywhere the announcement prompted spontaneous
and often abandoned celebrations, a nationwide
street party which produced, hangovers apart, the word `mafficking’.”
Lawrence James The Rise and Fall of the British Empire
“Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall”
The Beatles: `Day in the Life’, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
The rain came
but it did not save.
The rain came
but it did not cure
did not save
The rain came
but the blind duo outside SPAR kept warbling away,
guitar twanging, getting great counterpoint on the
old gospel classics in Setswana.
The rain came
turned streets into rivers, rock-hard ground
into a morass
and I wondered, at the border
at our new flag’s edge,
if this is
not the same Africa
I stood waiting for
watching the old, blanched white world
with all its delusions of
rule and Empire
scurrying
under a few strategic stones, I do crawl,
to
hide, figure
things out, find true
self, learn how
we were always
wedded to, rooted in a theory
of blind right.
now
need to sit
this one out
become model
of quiet study.
And the shell-shocked lost soul from 32 battalion
ambushing me for bus fare,
old shoes and coffee
his talk an
incomprehensible mishmash of
Portuguese, Afrikaans, English, Setswana
rich in
idiomatic store
what things has he seen
expressed with a brutality we could not dream leaving his life, his
sanity left way behind him at Cuito Carnivale?
Who were we then
and long before
in those wars that shaped us, which
still shape us?
What shape in the distance, what
Identity envisaged?
Today I walk the streets
amongst the chaos of my reflected humanity,
envisaging new shapes, hoping
to glean
a truth of a history
as I follow the railings down
past to the taxi rank, to the old station
(the line that followed the
contours of Empire, when this place was
strategic, when
this place was central).
along the railings down to the bus rank
past the quick cash places, and lingering smell of excrement,
stuff
imprinted on my brain well
before I get to know about it
floating in
my system, in
our system
mirrored in the mortal soul of
every brother, sister, father, mother
as they walk by, who
just happen to pass.
Where were they
at the Berlin Conference? Why did they not
address all
of humanity
from the floor?
Was
all of this envisaged
by their imaginary
boundaries,
in their paper parameters, the
defining latitude, longitude, lines
of our being
whose stories we
must tell, whose
new kinds we must
endless navigate (new
Homer, fresh
Theseus, old
Odysseus) must navigate endlessly
(and Escher’s hand
painting itself, is
the very emblem, essence of
every self-
referential scenario).
****
So quiet
this town
not
always thus
once
at the epicentre
of that fiction
called Empire
after the celebration
they
danced so hard
that blood
seeped through
the cobblestones,
danced like it was 60s cultural revolution
way before its time
after the celebration, after they danced so hard that
blood dripped onto seeped unto the tarmac, after
as if it were one huge Beatle-jacketed 60s party
with much
coloured smoke, ribbon, acid, mescaline,
they mafficked themselves silly,
victory doves pouring out the windows
of what is now the old museum
and still the tale of
joy and victory, if you
were like the hunter-gatherer you once were,
to follow the trail of broken beer bottles along the Nelson Mandela Rylaan,
once named after a certain
sticky-ending guy called Verwoerd,
yes
my hunter gatherers
go with the flow, jumping
lane to lane, jumping
stops and red robots like a spawning salmon.
And yet, despite our sins, terrible sins if
not of a theological, of a political nature
are we not
despite ourselves
still
missionaries at heart,
committed to proselytize,
to bring to the
word, fresh
worlds and
their creatures?
****
Da
Diddy da
da diddy
diddy
da
da (DADA)
Gospel rappers
Jesus blasters
yours is an identity
lived across the airwaves
hard-raining us
assailing us
answering all
our supplications (no
surer, truer, cooler, groovier path,
for scoring with the babes in
the Eternal Kingdom)
stuck
in a void
but can still sing about it
Whilst, personally speaking,
if at last I may intrude into the world of my poem,
so many disjunctions do I find
this extraordinary Sunday,
making love to you as if
we were
velvet-lined machines, conjoined
souls with perfect gearing,
riding the power, soft
power to a
sublime enforcement
(as is
our duty and
our pleasure).
Sunday
how the bells speak this day
with such brazen assurance!
Then
as if
wholly on cue, the
bells do arrive, earnest in
the summoning, stirring the flock with
much brassy clanging
who pour like a river, released from Eros� grip
stream to the bridge.
***
City of gravestones. Pithy
little epigraphs, circumspect last meanings.
City of potholes, dust and paths disappearing.
City once of
splintering Creusot shells, scattering murderous shrapnel.
City where
herded towards the turnstiles, the people
find, inexorably drawn to that huge sports confection,
everything reduced to its level, to
shared common denominator.
City where,
truth be told,
you are not a
city at all, just
a border terminus on
the road to nowhere.
but a place of despite, a refuge for the gray, the spent, the
forgotten, the unmeant,
perpetual conundrum, pilgrim’s non-progress
domicile to legions of the non-descript who spout ,
sprinkle and counsel all the right noises
sitting (as if super-glued to their seats) for
hours strategically spent thinking
rich development options in a ditch-water-
dull boardroom
for which
i can do nothing, by
which I mean
nothing in my head could ever enliven this
desperately turgid impasse, this
stifled, engine-seized terminally
conflated, convoluted, con-
fusion of a stillborn
situation
there�s always something shabby
about culture ultimately
what it all
fat in the fire, out
of the frying pan, boils down to
City of reductions, obligations, lowest
common denomimators, strictest
bureaucracies, old Imperial traits
still serving
the interests of power
City
take us to a place
(even
despite yourself)
where we
might
see things differently
fashion new beginnings
found whole new typologies
****
Do not think
the stones are silent
do not think
that seemingly inert
they have nothing to say.
Here there was war:
here
is where we fell, humans,
titans, gods in
enduring epic struggle, where
the last echoes still resounding, we
gaze out into the darkness, swept
into cold rapture by
an infusion of stars.
Steak on the griddle: let it sizzle. And
sun scowling down make umbrellas blossom.
suns
are stars that scowl
like flowers
they do wilt
****
Her name is `Casino� and she wears it well.
By your fruit she
would says she knows you, has met you
already.
Has heard, in the shadows, every
spider twist in your repentant tales of predation.
Just
follow her
protocols. assume nothing
in that space
as then
as indeed you must
roll
the dice,
Mr Snake Eye,
diamonds, clubs,
hearts, spades,
sixes,
sparkling diamonds,
zeroes
that betray
makes no difference to
the game that is played. Queen
of your night,
Empress
in a
garden
of toxic blossoms
under her
sign
everything is source, flow, return, beginning,
everything you ever
are with her is
a
broken song, a
sterile
play
a shattered poem.
****
Seraph, Soundbite, Magus, Parasite,
who is the one
who
is always with you, close
as if handcuffed, who
prepares your way; walks beside you
gives you licence
not just to digress, to
describe not
just an arc but
an entire tropical circle?
digress
swing by
follow the arc of
your trajectory
If
I were a
satellite orbiting
were I
indeed
a satellite
such great
feedback would i give you
blow upot the size of a galaxy
the incredibly
small
could see myself blending in. In
my insect-small world a
near perfect fit
thinking thoughts
a scorpion, an ant,
a lizard might consider,
be happy to ponder,
cogitate, relate.
****
Gatekeeper
what falls within your field of focus?
what images sharpen as
night draws near?
Images of closure
are coming full-circle
every path taken is
bringing back to the start.
And me
posing in a Carnaby street pastiche of
an Imperial officer�s jacket
buzzing like a beetle caught in the floodlights
at some imaginary frontier
happy to pose,
pretend,
that I am
some shape-shifter at
the edge of the imaginary. Bearer of tales of
terrible transformation
to tell
at your wedding, to
inflict on your soul shading
towards death
hoisting the mast, ready to set sail
so much sand, so much sand, where
is the tide and
how might we catch it? There are ships in the night but
never in this direction
nothing new, nothing different, nothing
ever surprises
nothing Mr Ezra, professor possum, that
we might create as our own, nothing
that seems to
ask that we
follow
you may
wish (or prefer not) to
follow
and then when we arrive
to dig, excavate, scour, scavenge
see how much the
world has changed
how they thought so differently, saw so differently, how
everything here was different perspective
before the asphalt, before
the diamonds, platinum,
before the gold
and now
the word
changes things in an instant
being electronic
the word
has made the world different entirely
this morning
has allowed me to capture all those pixels, mega-pixels
an entire cross-section, a gallery of
history entirely simultaneous, absolutely at once.
****
Suddenly, like
a returning pendulum,
we are back
with the lovers (in
our default position)
watching, listening, observing,
how distinctions are dissolved, with
every touch,
caress,
eroded, displaced,
this our great
lesson.
swing
like a pendulum
be both Sun
and the rain
****
After the service
came the RAINBOW
but the rain
did not refresh, did not
answer prayers.
Before the service
an irreverent dust devil
swirled provocatively before me
snaked disrespectfully, contemptuously,
across stone and sand like
a reborn Hebrew temptress.
maybe
I�m a dust devil
swirling provocatively to
offend
all and sundry
am the wind from the sea and the stones
come from far far away
****
The rain came
but the blind gospel couple
with organ and guitar kept twanging away
for all the SPAR patrons
to repeat the old promise of salvation, absolution,
and the cars swam
like gondolas (for the duration) along
the canal streets of Venice. And
following this logic we
have a dream sequence, find
clues for
a future, missing
pieces of puzzle
lines from a script
inexplicably missing and
in the air
so much dust
filtering the sun (around the
tree that
once was, where
before chopped down, where
many swallows gathered).
****
Where did it start? Where is
the beginning I will have to go back to?
Where did I
leave through some corridor, pass
through a door
step out into the light, put
myself squarely
in the picture? and where
now, Great Caesar
is the coin unto
you that
I should render?
Da
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
And this a thought
I leave for you
(camera panning, tilting, shock
sight of boom microphone)
the blind duo at SPAR,
nothing concluded there, but
still singing away
whilst the rain
when it falls
falls
without due regard, without
discrimination.
And
when
that
rain
falls
all roads evanesce.
****
Behind those eyes,
your eyes,
what do you see?
What songs
in your head
are songs that need singing?
What in
your heart
has no need of
translation
will come
straight to me
faster, more sure
than anything I could possibly anticipate,
could ever have imagined,
words full of wonder, could
should
spirit me away
like a balloon, like
a kite
on last
great journey, like sacred ibis North
to Anubis; everything
receding into
the distance,
scrape away
the layers
find new space, to
paint under to
paint afresh
plot a path that has meaning, has beginning, middle, end
conclusion (in which we come away with
resolved meaning).
steeple people far beyond, not
feeding back into, fuelling
ancient enmities that
still slither, set
boundaries, tear
the body divine limb from limb, scattered
like so many stones whose
voice now
so many voices, ghost voices,
take us to a place where
past finds a future with which it might settle,
where all
that is stored, remembered,
stacked in lost
archives of hope
is finally delivered.
here
to take stock; to take store
to ask
(and answer) the question:
What did we envisage
lay across
the horizon?
what above, what beyond
did we believe
would appear?
waiting to defer to our special shaman
much schooled in metaphor
to transport us through
what would ne
our very last portal
back to the place (and all its future forms
extending way beyond this life span)
place where
these words sprang from
pale shadows of what
we need yet
labouring with love
to speak the speak of desire
****
there is a tide
but
we have missed it
are told to return
assume the
default
position
learn
what can be learnt
teach
what can be taught
remember the lesson
if it is
a lesson at all
strewn everywhere
pieces of the puzzle
the stones are silent
the stones
have broken out
in a sweat
appear
so agitated
cannot stop talking
Beatle-jacketed
looking for all the world
like a foppish, dandyish
parody of
some silk-pyjamaed elite
I was panel-beating, shaping
a bronze icon
of the Sun
wIting for its mastercopy
to ascend to its apogee
things
at their zenuth
the light comely
and effulgent
wedded to self-confidence, authority, certainty
Location, location, location.
26km South of Ramatlabama
as good (or bad) as anywhere
a place to be.
poems 2 die for 