Tag Archives: South Africa

JOZIE

JOZIE

hours later
my eyes
still glued to the road

except
this is all afterburn
the road is inside my head

oh Jozie
flashiest of cities
will you
flash for me
as I flash by

naked on the hotel bed
I feel gravity, taste relativity

conjure you up
from every mixed memory
(and
   much mixed metaphor —
woefully so)

the mirror is like
the bottom of the sea

so far inland but
I can hear the waves in
False Bay roaring

but is this dream
trajectory
    or am I now, at last,
speeding homeward?

so many souls leaving
not staying, refusing
to stick around in case
of a grand finale

jaw-dropping twist
in the ending

     like when you
first confessed your nakedness

AFTER THE RAINS

AFTER THE RAINS

after the rains
the grass grew high everywhere

swamped the farm gate so
you can barely see it from the road

which is
frankly reassuring

helps me to feel
I am adequately camouflaged

as I coil up on the bed
communing with my snake self

at peace and in contempt
of all those
evil men of the North

desperately insecure in
their hemisphere of rage, fundamental
scheme of violence

with their drones and devices
submarine delivered nukes and
uranium depleted
ammunition
at the core
of their true being

oh good seed bad seed
such vagaries in our condition

spread thoughout the cosmos
I might believe
zero
to infinity

yes and now your hear me
how could not find me out, search
hard
for me

feeling that the rains the mounting grass
will hide me, save me

in the lack of all basic state
of the art
otherworldly surveillance
and, of course, deterrence

secret
serpent can sleep
at least

ABOUT

ABOUT

so South is heading North
turning
     things
around

the globe
in your bedroom
best turn it
upside down

South on
    the Equator

giving its all
     all that it takes

dreaming
        a new vision

no more
Northern mistakes

so
South
heading North

simple
replacement;
this what it about

MY FLAT COUNTRY

MY FLAT COUNTRY my flat country scrub divided by highway stretching further further Oh, the luxury of a small town with a library chance to drink coffee be philosophical mediocrity entropy won’t say they’re married but rented a room by the hour for much of the night and when it comes, when all stalls at risk of repeating myself Oh, what a night incomparable night

FLOW

FLOW I came because of cash flow problems, ended up on the river which must have had a sacred meaning once despite being the colour of stewed tea but we all had a nice lunch — correction, everyone had a sensational lunch but me taking a turn for the worse tottering off to the tiny aft toilet (adding to the discoloration of the waters no doubt) Oh life, against the current, can be a harshly blended mixture. And me here because of matters of terminally negative cash flow not so everwhere: here houses big as colleges whose manicured gardens sweep down in lush green to the river’s edge and here is one strikes my fancy as an African replica of the Palace at Versailles lost in wonder for a moment of breathtaking economic speculation (Marx on the Moselle) but then time to go home the boat turned around. Post-lunch the workshop am here to facilitate running softly downhill.

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.

WRONG

WRONG

you have
us wrong

you do us
wrong

we are not
the head or leg
or foot or
arm of this

thing or
the other

thpugh we may
undsrsand them
better than
you do

understand you too
better than you

understand yourselves

who once gave us
a weapon
    to destroy ourselves
.
across a chess board in
the endgame

all of one player
use it
     to anniliate all
of the
other

except, by
grace of God and
the smarts in our head

you saw us
     met us in court
               working together

despite your insults and
cheap shots

so clearly
    to your detriment

unless you learn
      what we have you learn
would teach you good

the way is bad
                  but there is another

MAMBAS

MAMBAS so complacent and complacent yet again left-brain, right wing such recipe for human stupidity deluding yourselves into expecting slow worms when we came as mambas — venom measured to make maximum use of every critical drop and prempting rebuttal speed off ths charts impossible to catch us and how you floundered losing your sense of place and actual places slipping into paralysis mamba neurotoxic venom stealing into your system taking slow but incontravertibly catastrophic effect