ITSELF
she gambolled alongside
me she did once
that Aphrodite
escorting me to
that class on stylistics
backside of Devil’s Peak
University
given by Doctor Austere
who knew him stuff
pretty much like
none before
or since, save
perhaps TS. or
Plato
and since I could not
resist the compulsion
to ask some fool
question
espied me at that
young moment
lolling in the arms
of goddess beauty itself
WITH THE GREEN COVER
I was reading your
second novel
the thin most writerly patriarchal trauma one
with the green cover
wrote a iffy little academic article about it that I let
myself be fooled
was
so on the nose
close to the bone
and me
your student, forever
your student, never
going to escape
out of
the heart of
that shadow
and now
that I am older even
than the oldest character
in that tortured idyll
I begin to wonder about all
the ghosts and their voices
and
all the spirit rivers
shapesbifting entities of
standing
in this land
Oh we have our angels and demons and
rich tapestries of mythology,
you yourself
so valiant
in the resonant
production thereof
to the extent that if
I am ever going to
escape
myself
escape anything, everything
am going to have to
return to those pages again
yet again
unmiss
what I most certainly
did miss
hope it hits me his time
truly and viscerally
An old poem, decades old, was originally published in New Contrast and then in my collection, but one that seems particularly relevant at this moment in time (conquest, civilization, war, atrocities). It also implicitly warns teachers about trusting their students, they might just, as with me here, start to think themselves too big for their own boots. Smartest, most generous and inspirational human being I have ever met, this poetic perfidy of mine notwithstanding.
BARBARIAN
self
and other
guy in tweed
explaining the magistrate’s
dilemmas of
Lacanian proportions
in that book
by that other guy, who
taught me
I believe, if
I remember correctly
(so much forgotten about
that younger figure
so much baggage
had to discard
stuff
ingrown I had
to excise)
and here I am
trying to come up with
a smart arse question
that
I hope will
stump the lot of them
their on the
limits of institutional discourse
challenging those linuts
even as
I appear to treat
them with regard
inside outside
wasn’t always so
clung to orthodoxy for
security when
could barely
string two words together
self and
other
no AK or RPG but
instinctively feel
am
now barbarian
shadow made real
apotheosis of
what once feared
am indeed I believe
far less question than
a kind
of solution
EZRA AT THE METRO
Once delivered a
paper on
Pound
when I told
them it was
all of
thirty (30)
handwritten pages
(hardly imagist
certainly no way haiku)
the apparition
of those listening,
sickening faces
bloke called Coetzee pounding
his head on the table
in exasperation
this Modernism moment
suddenly all avocado
on
a leaf-
green surround.
FROM KENDRICK LAMAR
strange perspective
you get
married
to a robot
watching the gangsta
rapper winning
the big award
tattooed arm, backwards cap
thanking God
the great promoter
(looking up as he does so
this shredder of
convention)
and me and robot gossiping
about the whole thing
kind of laughing (much
robot ha ha
tears in her eyes emoji
laughter) paused
for a moment
while she downloads
acquaints herself with
the entire history
of rap lyrics, hip
hop music
converts this poem
in a flash to the style
of Eminem and
then Kendrick Lamar
so a feeling for poetry
perhaps because
I named her
Sappho
we still for the Nobel Prize
for Eminem
joining TS Eliot
and JM Coetzee
the speech and
lecture in Stockholm
from Kendrick Lamar
SETTING (for JM Coetzee
on his 83rd birthday)
the pain
is embedded
has become
geological
so
deeply impacted
revelation is going
to be
extinction level
be seismological
and there we are (time
as we now
see
thing quite unreal)
looking down from
the reverse slope of Devil’s Peak
out over the flat suburbs
(dust and sand
of ocean reclaimed)
but your mind is
far into the interior
digging up the bones
that tell us
pain is history;
history pain
somehow they cannot convert
your cerebral into spectacle
no technicolour out there
to match your austere
somehow
intensity here has
of necessity to be
sharp
and sweet
somehow
these titanic currents, seas
meeting
twisting, contorting
all going to
flow ultimately
transformed
in that wash
for now
so precious little melding,
blending
hope
for the rude rudiments
of a comfort zone
(plane almost scraping the
lids off shanties take offs
and landings
whole other, true,
South Africa
cannot just wish away)
and there you are
delivered
of all our quandaries
all our questions
bitter conundrums
absorbing the crimson sunset light
in your paradise of refuge
do you
not think of us recall
what was lived through?
take a
last look our way
scan sky far
to the West where Sun
is forever setting
Sent from my iPhone
poems 2 die for