BREXIT STUFF

BREXIT stuff
is old hat

heard my
father and mother
talking like that

many years ago

just before
a

whiter
than white
rabbit popped
out

saying we
were on
our way

to apartheid
South Africa.

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MONKEY’s WEDDING

mixed blessing
monkey’s wedding

an unseen hand
adjusting the clouds

let Mr Darwin
say what he can about wealth
as the day is evolving

mixed blessing
monkey’s wedding
(unless, of course,
the other
way round)

LEMONADE (BEYONCÉ MADE)

Lemonade
Beyoncé made

stuff
dragged from
Southern swamp

made to rock, soothe,
enflame, stomp

for
our time
a most
personal, political romp

MODIEGI MCCALL

how did my humanity
get so bleached?

when my wife
last put it through the wash
she used tropical
fabric-softener

those deft fingers digging in
yet not added much to
my melanin

TO IMAGINE RAINBOW NATION

EXCERPT FROM “SPECTRUM ANALYSIS”

SPECTRUM ANALYSIS

 
The hero of the hour
is levering apart
the bars of the rainbow
 
now, bent back upon itself,
we can at least see the light
for what it is:
the last sad flurry
of a buckling sun
 
and if we hurry up enough we
could well be in time”

Excerpt From: Garside, Damian. “Zero Gravity.” Xlibris, 2014-02-10. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

JOINTLY FLAVOURED

WHITENESS

so my whiteness
is an issue

no scourer
can scrub it
out of me

she
cannot
fuck it
out of me

it’s there
in my mouth
that old colonial
taste of distaste

that says
we got the
Shakespeare and
the Gatling

and you
just got
arms little better
than Roman Empire

(we did
tell you we
got the Gatling)

soon US drones
will be in my face
in my airspace
and Donald
even Hillary
will tell me
to protect
my whiteness
that this
is the price
I will have to pay
(pay as pretty
penniless white
person)

but my sister-in-law
Ntombi’s baby
is white
so is this a kindness,
a courtesy that
extends to
her likewise

Oh Shakespeare, my Shakespeare,
you sensed that
raw racial edge
with your persecuted Shylock
your too-faithful Othello

sensed perhaps how
the species is too
riven, too
jealous of
power, uncomfortable with
difference

afraid of the thou-shalt
and shalt-not God to
think
beauty of melange

INFINITE SPACE

the road into Joburg is
first Diepsloot then
gated community
after gated community

each so alike, each
a fairy-tale Renaissance city
state bereft of
any sense of society

here in Mafs with stark spiked
palisades we must make do:
just two shades: moldy green
or brutal maroon

but these we need to protect each place
yet someone
living in a
yard, in a caravan

I suspect some
local Hamlet in a nutshell
with the withdrawn intellect
to think himself
a tyrant
of infinite time, and space

THE ALIENS ARE LEAVING

the aliens are leaving
going back
to their homeworld

we have
hated them and feared them
loved them, respected and
despised them

they are taking nothing with them
the structures they are leaving
will soon be ours
and ours alone

I saw my alien wife and
half-alien children off at the airport
the shuttle launches from
a site in the Urals the
day after tomorrow
to rendezvous
with the giant mothership
close to the Moon

the aliens are leaving
and a new chapter in
history, a fresh human history
free of their knowledge and
cursed interference,
lies ready to be written
and I, in all honesty,
can hardly wait.