Tag Archives: South Africa

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

CASCADE

CASCADE weaponize this poem harshly weaponize it softly need to defend the indefensible suck good blood truth (and hashtag) out of my thumb opposable entity, fattest of fingers and hey hey Deleuze happy hanaka Hegel me in line with arm raised high to deflect legal contention from terror, my accomplice me now in bed waiting for breakfast, as simple as a one slice two slice open-face sandwich making for an interesting dialectic, however you elect to interpret reader writer master slave blurring of these categories, until, who knows?, look to the East! Look to the South! maybe a cascade

BY THEIR FRUIT

BY THEIR FRUIT

I have such trouble
writing this poem

my words swell fat
like overripe fruit
burst on
   my page, on my fingers

covering everything with
sap wet, thick
and sticky

in colour and feel
indistinguishable from blood

and these
    are the same words
the golden children of the law
use in the court room

where
      such words do
not explode, do not
shatter the auditorium
with blood-juice
          and bomb shrapnel

proving
     (sadly, sadly)

that there will always be something about poems, about

poets
and the power
of their poetry

that remains forever
                          at a distance

tragically unreal

OLD JOHANNESBURG

OLD JOHANNESBURG

waiting by the roadside
in old
       Johannesburg

maybe
     resurrection
will
     befall me

maybe redemption
will come my way

failing which
              perhaps

a circus or carnival will
come
     round the corner

sweep
    stubborn old ideologies
off the street

as serious joke or
perhaps just giggles

a parade of Zizeks
tumbling past me as if
Red Square
           comedy

where figures from the
Commedia del Arte
are here
       to replace tanks

look
   seriously at the world and
it suddenly goes
Toy Town

confirmation bias
on open display for
everyone to see

      fat
conspiracy here:
buses passing every few minutes
not stopping for everything
the drivers
             believe

waiting for the curtains to open

waiting for the means
transport a boardgame
           on my back

set
of lewd Cluedo
              for whomsoever might
wish
to join me

help me
to survive
life on a billiard sphere

hustling to get by
wanting to be Master
always
      a slave

waiting for the lights
to darken

have
lost the book
in which
I was made
        

****

after a
while

everything
slithers

snakes and
ladders

perhaps better to
devote time
to generating boardgames
rather than
squandering my existence
writing
    poetry or composing fiction

****

bumper to bumper stacked together
owe it to them

    to not close my eyes,
keep looking

or everything before me
will disappear

and this funeral procession
miss its target

some poor
exclusive dignitary

about to skip his rendezvous
with captivating tombstone
of proportions extreme

so much here
so mechanical

yet so many
vital nuts and bolts

****

bureaucracy
is horror

      bureaucracy
              is death

I sat with
Slavoj Zizek

through yet another sunset
telling jokes

about philosophers
telling jokes and
    the end of the Universe

(not that this necessarily
implies a causal connection)

today the lawyers
of old and new Johannesburg
are
   heading North
with a holy bone to pick.

I sat by the roadside
     play after play

oodles of
         words, scenes,
dialogue
                                even

             still in my head

ghosts of tales
still
     to be told

            (media marvels yet
to unfold)

old Johannesburg