Nature – poems 2 die for

STALWART

one day
not upon a time
the plants
elected
to row straight

electrifying with joy
stalwarts everywhere
every
treacle-thick politico
in
wotlds known
and worlds
unkown

fairy tale
and the political
racing
to conclusion
running in parallel

Oh happy day
exclusion of the middle
extermination
of the extremities:
it’s so
axiomatic, lowest-
common-denominator
raised to the heavens
square
root of zero
dutifully delivered

and in the woods so
much smoke
the trees so
covered in soot you
cannot see the leaves

but
Pan’s man, fabulous
Guillermo has
set a fantastic trap
they are
bound
to fall into

surrounded by thorn bushes
in the light of their shadow

you could not
do anything to look
more enchanted
surpass the mystery

conjuring up
a string of images

burrowimg in
wormknv deeo

teaching us how
to align, accept
the imperfect, rough
and smmoth

how to accept what is
for what it is
become part of
the picture

native to this place

WICKED WAYS

On the farm
lots of the things
that

go bump in the night
are seldom ghoulish,
hardly ever extreme

just Nature
unflexing, having
a little fun, making
some sport

reminding me
who’s boss
should I
ever
presume otherwise

keeping it clear
should I have naively
allowed myself
to
forget

justly accused
of having a nerve

to overlook
the terrible abundance, syrup
lips

all she can take
all she

can give

the wonder
of her wicked ways.

FRESH FRUIT

On the farm
I wonder

about the ideology
of a tree

the entire tree:
roots, leaves, branches

cannot
escape asking myself
what haiku currently
courses
through the flowers

Of course
    this is (dear reader, I
do recognise) a
category
   mistake
of the first order, and will
no doubt, none too late,
be brought
   to my attention amidst
much
wild snarling

and thus forgive me
my contextualizing in a poem
how much theory
pervades
everything (truly
it is in
its nature
to be an invasive species)

and Fall and Autumn and
all those mellow feelings
much
written about

some ode or other
that leaf to dead leaf
is
remembered

all the wherefores and whys
as to how
this system getting greener
came
not just
to be but
into conscious being

ruthless and polite both
stuck in a rut this day whilst
supposed
of infinite variety

and my voice
estranged, coming back

to me alien

as if
freshly arrived, in awe of
all capacity to
shift the
word of perspective

see things differently.

PRODUCTION

on the farm,
perforce, we
put our heads together

everything under the Sun
puts is head together

wheels
set in
motion

as
word speads

and Heraclitus of Miletus
stops by

a number of things
brings to mind

solid argument inclusive: that
all is
twice, thrice,
there is nothing that
is not in process

meanwhile (forgive the inadvertent South African
colloquialism) not
back
at the ranch
but in the heart of Johannesburg

they are staging a production
of Euripides’ The Bacchae
have
already
launched into
the opening scene

which very instant, being
in the audience my
mind
thirsting for
ecstasy
veers towards chaos, entropy,
fractal mathematics

as we suddenly welded into one
sift and exchange
that whole Pandora’s box
of memories and
recollections

whispers and ghosts
the very
incantations that
pull aside the veil, strip
off the veneer

speaking for myself
but
perhaps all

hardly able to wait, kill
that terminal longing,
set eyes
upon the mask
that is
dark Dionysus’ face

FAT

soon, everything
will have had
enough of us

the planet
will refuse to look us
in the face

species by species
they
die on us
fall
by the wayside

so fat on the proceeds
of this treasure-trove
we have
allowed ourselves to grow
refuse
to stop growing

CLOUDLESS

a cloudless sky
stopped my scarlet red
Citroen
to open the farm gate

cannot pretend to
understand the physics of
colour or
indeed, the physics
of sky
you lost me as soon
as you spoke of wave-lengths
and light diffusion

but here we are (or at least, here
I am, your presence with me
somewhere
between metaphor and
simple rhetorical gesture)

here we are
as if shielded from
the Universe (which is
the case exactly) virtue of
us being
(no clouds
to distract me) right
at the epicentre of
a surrounding sphere, looking
out from
inside the skin, the translucent
skin
of a beautiful blue ball

expanded to a size, a height,
that just works for us perfectly

reminding me
as this time of ultra
advanced return
of feudalism
of the music
of the spheres

with all that economy
with all that cosmology

nothing in a million years here close to
that darkest conclusion

that things beyond this
blue bubble

moving away from us so fast
they are
beyond
all
   Doppler red-
shift
     beyond very
                  speed of light

and
so

back down
to Earth as always
for
sheer preservation
of sanity, not

let all this here
overwhelm me

wanting
those clouds back

wanting not to imagine myself
inside the skin
of anything

wanting
to just go
where it is all heading
commit
to that glow

light speed beyond
but (blessing of
relatvity) with it

one
feels

just
floating

moving in one’s mind
from
incarnation to
incarnation

no desire
to be laboured by

understand
the physics at all

FARM TALK

FARM TALK

let me
withold words

surrender
poetry

thus may I
figure out what
the farm is saying
the trees speaking

catch
these voices
hitherto drowned out
by my insistence to
delve into
the depth of my
faith in language,
human
linguistics

so many different ways
of writing, talking out there

OF BELIEF

OF BELIEF Thought I should write love poem to (and for) the world but it probably will not end how I think it should how i wanted it to thos is the issue with creation never turns out how you hoped or thought and there is no going back to the drawing board Oh the architecture happening right now in my brain, my head, lying naked on the bed in my tiny house on this farm curtains closed lights left off (even if out of loadshedding but a moment before) imagining I could just rachet up the sensitivity and feel the flowers grow hear them breathe and talking (thinking) of nakedness, my dear, is yours not overdue? but hold that thought even worse news from the Middle East streaming in pictures of Dantesque horror words of insanity, of satirical vulnerability everything up to the max pushed to extremes (not what Aristotle was thinking what he figured on teleology would derail poor Socrates in his project of self-knowledge and moral sphere) things here so naked, exposed in all their ugliness (by every metric) bleak intensity things the world of the farm would not believe and so naked as I am speaking to you calling out to you wondering what your good self might make good or best and even better in whatever illogical gradation fullness of our together might sway the nature of belief.

GREEN

GREEN

the rains

       the rain
       the rain
        the rain

have given
the grass, the trees,
the plants

a lush edge

the green fingers of
the gods responsible
for green

have grown
greenier

and me
on the margins

liminal
as usual

feeling both oddly alien
and strangely at home