Tag Archives: poetry

GUESS

I guess it counts
as a comedy

albeit one
of grotesque proportions

me in my tiny cell
monk-like, drafting
page of page chockablock
full of strange improprieties

whilst the world
convinces itself
it has
to act under the imperative
of ridiculous warp and
crazy tangent

chasing that absurdly logic
punchline
where it knocks
itself out
delivering a healthy dose
of brain damage
beating up
on its own face.

TWO POEMS: FIVE; RED GLARE

FIVE

water leaks through
as is its wont

cats
do
too

are
ace infiltrators

believe they
possess a divine
right to
do so

have a signed contract
airtight, since the Ark

repeatedly I ask
my own furry frauds
to produce
such a
document

want to
see
    who betrayed his or
her own
species

signing on
that dotted line

****

RED GLARE

standing
at a Cardinal point

expecting a Hail Mary
yet you toss
me a lateral

expect me to run
through linemen
and linebackers alike

reinforcing the inkling
I keep getting, cannot
side-
step, avoid
thinking

that I am
everybody’s
designated target
chilling
   here in the red zone

no one
   (before the
crunch comes) to
have a nice placid
word with

about
    to get spangled
become rocketed red glare

AVEC PLAISIR

I accumulate
years

but what I did
accumulate
over those years

(would you
care for me to
bullet point it?)

well then,
      avec plaisir

starkness
thinness
attenuation

things I thought
as in the economic theory
mistakenly would
trickle
    down in torrents

but was
never favored a drop

too late now
to start scratching
for remedy, hunting
for redress

all
   banked and
pocketed, I am reliably
advised
    can rest assured

and where to now
everything
    end of the road with
closure of
all pathways

gates and fences
        not prepared to fall
in what is left of
my lifetime

only the ironies
remain, if
           you would like
me to
    show you in
what we still enjoy of
this window

it will be my sad sombre pleasure
to be performed
as quasi
ritual

avec plaisir.
         

AFTERMATH

I wonder
if you managed to escape
found a bunker, a hole
to hide in

or whether, like me,
your status is observed
lurking somewhere in
the shadows
yourself a shadow, like
me a shadow,

at least now finally
something in common

our thoughts, our words,
everything we are
we were
dispersed

waiting for you
to appear
talk to me
about your aftermath
(if speech
possible)

the planet still glowing
the winter soon
to blanket everything
on its way

POSEIDON HIMSELF

you still pulling, tug-of-warring
on that single silver strand
(or could it
be golden?)

hoping that something bites
and then everything unravels?

fish
   of fantasy, of your
dreams
  letting itself get reeled in

Yes,
I used to fish when I
lived at False Bay
catch white steenbras
and haarders using
smelly red bait

mainly from the pedestrian bridge just
below the hall named
after Theodore Weizmann

but you
fishing from a boat
and, at this
precise moment
I am there in the prow
practically sitting
next to you

(we do not
have to be inside the theatre
to break the fourth wall)

any place will do
any place
that can allow us
an interface, provide
us with a boundary

special sphere slash dimension
perfect to allow us
negotiate
where we are

so much
     here with a sort of
Old Testament flavour

not Sinai but
mouse mountain and
               my first little
school
   in South Africa
pocketed beneath

both of us
turned confederate
wrestling with that
nylon line
who knows what
tiddler, guppy, denizen,
demon
    we are reeling in, maybe
the great Leviathan (or one
of them) from
the blazing
words of
       scripture itself

maybe
baby
     great white or
sleek and lethal adolescent

or (with outrageous luck)
an eager Nereid, Nemo’s
Nautilus,
      perhaps Poseidon himself

builder of Troy, shaker
of continents,

oozing with the raw power
to remind us
               we are not gods
we are
barely signifiers

but when we cast, we called
          they were
bound
to come

 

BLEACH

crossing a
cultural desert
gun ports
not entirely closed

I come well-prepared:
my sextant and
my astrolabe likewise,
runes for divination,
charms
woven into cloth
and many
a magnetic stone

tattoos, furthermore,
inked from head to toe
all over
my body

a magnum opus, a script
that the algorithm predicts
all of you, to a man (and
a woman)
will be sorely tempted
to read allegorically

yet what we have here
should elicit no parallels
the text
     plainly needs no
code decyphered, simply
proffers illustration
of famous
historical scenes

actual ones, as well as
by virtue
    of being counterfactual,
never actually happening
there solely
     to confound, or
to tease

in this
     the last of my kind I
am without question

such text
as a matter of policy and
dear human salvation

removed from
all my bretheren (sisterhood
likewise)
          purged from
public space erased
by fire, with bleach

****

HOW MANY

how many
more were
than
    waves in the ocean
pebbles on the beach

who scribbled endlessly
fighting that
worst of wars
against silence
and futility?

writing
for themselves, for their
beloved, for
anyone
prepared to read
at all

see
   how hard it is
to craft
something
for the cosmos

words
        lost in the
depths of deep space
                         yet

impossible
not to write at all

and this,
      my friend, I
am far
too sensitive, afraid
to tell you

this is the way
with every act of
creation

this the failure
defines us all

****

BEGINNING

Hamlet died
last night
and
  I died
with him

he at Elsinore
me in the front row
just below the stage

him
   in the light, me
in darkness

neither of us
of the firm belief
we spent enough
time together
to truly know
each other

barely talked, even
thought of establishing
a relationship

and yet
at that meta moment
we both died
and were revived
with curtain call
and, much pleasantries

things
    taking back
to the beginning
yet unable
to erase all that
shared death pain