KINO YVES

KINO YVES

Yves
you swallow continents
pedalful at a time

expending more energy
than the whole of Europe
(no wonder
      you eat so ravenously
and with such
miraculous delight)

Morning you guys. Let’s
get going  Onward to Lusaka!

moon buggy astronaut of
the whole of
Africa
    Emperor of handshake
in his slowly slowly chariot
of joie de vivre

“are you
    for real?” they ask him
and
   he does alter perceptions
pre-define reality

inexorably, beautifully
     edging your way down to
Cape Town

     bringing
out the best in us

all of South Africa it seems
waiting for you

screeching to an ecstatic  emphatic halt

    when, to their total belief
they see you, catch you,
pass you
     dodging through Mother
City traffic

munching lunch
   in their neighborhood

his little candle bringing
light to
     us all

slowly, exquisitely slowly, guys,
wending its way
       from France to
Agulhas

cape of needles, furthest point
South where
           oceans meet
         


PLACE OF WORSHIP

PLACE OF WORSHIP

I achieved
my spot

in this place of worship
found a pew to myself

unlike the time
when they had locked the door

had singled me
out for exclusion, railed
from the pulpit

my face published
in the prescriptions
nailed to the wooden door

silly me
        to overreach
not to comply, my soul
(so young) still
deeply
   wed to chaos, disorder,
anarchy

anything that reeked
of liberation

schism
       with blind authority

COLOURS APART

COLOURS APART

cold world
cold war

trillions in debt so
we go submarine

stalking as only the most.
lethal can do

we are
in uncharted waters
following some sacred map
which shows no
colours of
possession

only rivers
and mountains

you can look to find
inhabitants but
they are
     to small to be seen
to inconsequential to
be detected

even with
sonar, infra red
space telescopes,
electron microscopes

should you
       prefer to use a magnifying
glass be careful
not to
     focus that white
sunlight
  incinerate carelessly

Oh that mentality
guess it comes with
is what you
get
   with the studied
inculcation
of desire logic
             labotomy

got to a place
here
    where the labels don’t
stick
  paradigm corrupts

and there we
      look for and find you
spread-
   eagled across all spectrums

split up through a prism

coming to me here
     for plausible deniability

your only failing (not a sin!
not a crime!)
    your unshakeable supremacy

SADALMELIK

SADALMELIK (Alpha Aquarii)

I tell
you that the stars
have Arab names

and that we might
calculate their distance
thanks to your algebra
.
Zero too
    is a

beautiful concept

so much zero here
across these desert sands

there was life
but something subtracted it

bodies abound
        even the sky fireworks
and shock waves

somehow
       fails to wake them

arabesque
algorithm

the stars, the bodies
have Arab names

luckiest of the lucky
   down to zero this night
in Palestine.

I tell you
the stars have Arab names.

RETURN

RETURN

how do I read
your great stories, grand tales?

today I found you
crafting a supreme narrative

left me wondering if
it should reach me
how I should
withhold access
strive for
it not to get to me?

do not wish
to be accused of
complicity in this affair
subterfuge
in this region

stuff
   deeply subtextual, skimming
my surface,
            dropping decoys
                beneath all radar

returning deeply

EQUATION

EQUATION

forces colluding
world’s colliding

alternate universes
splitting off, shearing away
whole
    new molecules
springing into existence

as we
      veer away, heading off
from the seismic to the cosmic races

all our mass turned
to chemical and photoelectric energy

by that short, titanic equation
that explains it all

WHAT A WAR IT WAS

WHAT A WAR IT WAS

what a war it was!
existential:
    you alone, standing
against humanity

a brutal battle, which
Praised be God you won
with your
       devilish déception
heavenly weapons and
sublime technology

annihilating everything extraneous
              alien to
your big picture
outside
    core prophecy

returning the species
back

   to the Stone Age
those few straggling remnants
you suffered to survive

what a war it was!
down
     in the edicts
   since Cain
    first slew Abel
back at the blood dawn of time

PRAY CONTINUE

PRAY CONTINUE

I am badly wounded
haemorrhaging everything

waiting for
your coup de grâce

drenched in blood
surrounded by
scraps and
pieces of what was
once humanity

bits of bone
embedded in the
brain-spattered altar
in this place of shelter

I am not quite dead yet
so pray continue

lest
I bear witness

still a mathematical possibility
I might survive

FOOL YOURSELF

FOOL YOURSELF

don’t fool yourself
you are

not worth anything
not according to
this system
of reckoning

able to be given meaning
taken into
consideration
except perhaps
as casualty, as fatality,
statistic to be loaded into
collateral damage battle
assessment to
figure out the balance
of power
how our beautiful law
of attrition is
shaping up,
       working out

how your slaughter night
be the absolute difference
between defeat
and victory

and
with victory
absolute vindication,
proof that we are fighting
on the side of God