GOLD
Ah! Mr
spokeperson all
that glitters
you shred what
was written
cover to
cover
as aligned with
every slurred devil
every
monster that
blasphemes
and this
before you
even read it
not even a single
painstakingly argued
ruthlessy documented
worth
sent
from ths South
our humble submission
where
all are
savages
know nothing
write anything.
In lands afar, where shadows cast their veil,
South Africa strides, justice to unveil.
With heart resolute, they march to the fray,
Taking Israel to court, to have their say.
As rugby kings, and champions of right,
They face the champions of woeful blight.
Oh, how the irony sings in the air,
How shall Israel maneuver, now, to bear?
With twisted tongues, they’ll surely plead their case,
Beguiling words, their deeds they shall embrace.
Yet, in this court, a reckoning awaits,
Where justice’s scales shall decide their fates.
For Gaza’s plight, the world’s tears they’ve shed,
In this epic clash, hope shall rise, not dread.
From Shakespeare’s quill, new scenes shall now unfurl,
As justice fights against a twisted world.
FEAST
Thank God that guy Pope
never put me in his Dunciad
or any other
South African poets there
for that matter
which is a bit
beyond belief
long since Roy Campbell
Wayzgoosed everybody
from Cape Town to
Durban to Maritzburg
Joburg and Pretoria
enough idiots with pens
and processors around now
to make
any such revival
a royal satirical feast.
FROM THE SOUTH
South gives you an
wrong-way-up perspective
right way up
as we
see it
though
blood rushing
to your head, helps
you think better
in the Tarot
nobody clearer
in thought
more clued up
on the road to redemption, than
eye to the sky hanged
upside
down man
and so
I spoke to this soul
looking for liberation
and he
told me what to
tell you
which I
do relay here:
you are not
free from
and will
never
be
free from discrimination
(by the
sharpest of logical
definitions)
if you
do not
free yourself from
the Liberty
to discriminate against.
CEMETERY ROAD
“may not mean to/
but they do”
I’ve read that
this be the Larkin poem
by any metric
it’s a real shocker
give it its due
painfully spot on
must have
begun somewhere
with Adam and Eve
tragic trace elements
springing out
of the big
bang
catastrophic for
the happiness of our species
and so me
not yet teenage
about to be whisked, nay,
catapulted to Africa
and apartheid
South Africa
at that
far from this little British
cul-de-sac
joy there in the sweet
English place of
pastoral they
call
a pastoral
where my father dutifully
taught me how
to ride
a bicycle
not much interest in my
life
this broken life
after which
my father’s little dream
of upping
roots, defining
his Empire
somehow not
translating
finding purchase, believers,
means of manufacture
will not
let this poem end as
dead at
point blank range
as Larkin’s does
SETTING (for JM Coetzee
on his 83rd birthday)
the pain
is embedded
has become
geological
so
deeply impacted
revelation is going
to be
extinction level
be seismological
and there we are (time
as we now
see
thing quite unreal)
looking down from
the reverse slope of Devil’s Peak
out over the flat suburbs
(dust and sand
of ocean reclaimed)
but your mind is
far into the interior
digging up the bones
that tell us
pain is history;
history pain
somehow they cannot convert
your cerebral into spectacle
no technicolour out there
to match your austere
somehow
intensity here has
of necessity to be
sharp
and sweet
somehow
these titanic currents, seas
meeting
twisting, contorting
all going to
flow ultimately
transformed
in that wash
for now
so precious little melding,
blending
hope
for the rude rudiments
of a comfort zone
(plane almost scraping the
lids off shanties take offs
and landings
whole other, true,
South Africa
cannot just wish away)
and there you are
delivered
of all our quandaries
all our questions
bitter conundrums
absorbing the crimson sunset light
in your paradise of refuge
do you
not think of us recall
what was lived through?
take a
last look our way
scan sky far
to the West where Sun
is forever setting
Sent from my iPhone
LOADSHED
shed shed shed
until we are dead
single dead
double dead
all the levels dead
until there
isn’t a single spark
left in the system
and the
cosmic god of entropy
demon of
true heat-death darkness
has had us
for lunch, supper, breakfast; absorbed
all our humanity (always
a redundancy: ever
the total victim)
poems 2 die for