MOSHAWANE

Tags

Africa, Humanity, identity, Mafikeng, Nature, poem, poetry, South Africa, Universe

MOSHAWANE

the dry earth
the surreal blue sky

what stories are lost here
what
words uttered
what lives recorded

what memories are told
as the stars appear
big as
diamonds
(curse of
this country)

what stories of hope, struggle,
redemption of the soul
from subservience poverty

this I ask
still wearing my skin, skin of the intruder,
less than lightly

and yet you
have done so much
to teach
a reconciliation with the rocks, the stones
the caring soil

as I bring my body here
to find (at last) the Sun, the Moon, the stars
the entire Universe

there to unite
as much as we divide

IMMIGRANT SONG

Tags

Britain, British, CAPE TOWN, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, South Africa

IMMIGRANT SONG

after drowning in the ship’s
swimming pool
I grew more distant

disowned the world
the day before disembarkation

the southern Sun greeting me
harbour under a mountain
that, for crimes against humanity,
had been decapitated
(ancient glacier slicing like
a katana
sharper than any razor)

and so
we we here

detritus of the power
that used to the rule the place
at the height of its ambitions

coming back from
the dead
so hard on
my family

my death-knowing eyes
seeing through everything

knowing the secret of our sudden
redemption, elevation

but not yet
owning the content
of the death conversation

what
was down there

so eager to talk
so eager to touch base

and
for my life’s return
setting
absolute conditions

no room with that
power to
negotiate

every human liberation
a life or death matter

an issue of
sacrifice

and absolute faith

CODE SWITCH

Tags

hypocrisy, morality, poem, poetry, religion, satire, South Africa

CODE SWITCH

the preacher preachers to
the prostitutes
tells them
to embrace prosperity
and transform

the preacher preached
bombarded them
with every figure
of speech
known to God
and Man

but in
one ear out
the other, comically
and proverbially
they did
not budge

did not see
their way free
to buy
into his
theory

that rich materially
means spiritually rich
that the cultivation
of wealth
marks the
road to Heaven

this road
and Heaven
not going so well
with women
of the street

upon which point, sure solid
faith
giving way to frustration

he decided to code switch
use a vulgar vernacular
he figured they
could not but
understand

and yet
still the silence
but
wry cynical smiles
where not faces

frozen in
rejection

when it’s boiled down to
common tongue, captured in
unfortunate parable

they could not help
but catch on

see
with new eyes, divine
clarity of vision

or put
as they
might put it

toe het die hoere
lekker gehoor

al van ons hoere
vreeslik lekker gehoor

***
(translation of the last lines:
and so the prostitutes heard all of this clearly, all of us prostitutes heard it absolutely perfectly)

FLOODS CAME

Tags

poem, poetry, South Africa

FLOODS CAME

floods came
electricity went

it never rains
it pours
and pours
and pours
again

the rivers
would agree with that
100, 1000, one
million percent
(that truth
so visible on
our dead
TV sets)

INDIAN OCEAN RAIN

Tags

Durban, Innocence, love, Mahikeng, poem, poetry, Sensual, South African, The Fall, The Garden of Eden

INDIAN OCEAN RAIN

they tell me it’s raining
in Mahikeng

the town has become
Venice of the semi-desert

the roads torn up by
the minor flood
but soon
the dust will swallow
it always does

whilst you and I
are here in Durban
standing illicit in
this very different rain

a summer deluge soaks us
and so no
choice but to
resort to skin

perhaps more than
just our bodies, perhaps
our souls washed by
that warm Indian
ocean rain

and he we are
almost like Adam and Eve
in Eden celebrating
their first rain storm

the lightning from
sky to ground
that just
an icon
of the lightning between them

the raw electricity that courses
through them
manifestation
of an innocence now
beyond our conception

so badly, in that great mythology,
did we fall

so completely lost the memory
of those wilder, instinctive pleasures

which we, in our sublime ignorance,
assure each other that
we cannot but feel

OH SAD ENGLAND

Tags

ENGLAND, poem, poetry, rugby World Cup, satire, South Africa

OH SAD ENGLAND

Oh sad England
they had
a horrific spell
perhaps the
wordy womble
should not
have wished
them well

jinxed them
with his peculiar penchant
for absolute defeat

32-12
being

pretty
complete

CHILD

Tags

Global warming, Humanity, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, poverty, South Africa

CHILD

a stick
insect of
a child

her elderly parents
sharing a small tub of
pap and wings with
some oily gravy

sat at this crude streetside
table not a word between them
victim written all over them

and me with
fresh faces with which to
come to terms
in coping with my
sorrow at
state of
the world and
our human condition

so many
set to
suffer as structures collapse
culture cannot contain

and we slide backwards, backwards
retreat down that ladder
of our evolutionary journey

becoming the thing
we did not see, we never
envisaged
the pain and
joy of
our being

hope of becoming and
we reached out
to the stars to
embrace
the discovery of
all that did make us
our destiny so
clearly delineated
in all those
worlds
to discover

now
swept away, all swept away

HERITAGE DAY

Tags

Britain, Colonialism, heritage, poem, poetry, South Africa

HERITAGE DAY

they have shaven and
shorn our heritage

smoothed out the collisions
made it respectable

I myself am
British South African
worst type possible
one whose ancestors
came here
to pick fights
take stuff
out of the ground

stuff that might
have made your
Heritage Day happier
given you a more
meet to braai
a few extra
dops

left you with
a home and a family
loved ones
to celebrate with

not starved in a ditch
where you are now

WHOLE TRUTH

Tags

Colonialism, poem, satire, South Africa

WHOLE TRUTH

came across the
waves to
teach the
natives to
dance

left a hole in
their souls but
(thank God)

nothing quite
as big
as this
one

UYINENE (second poem)

Tags

death, poem, poetry, rape, South Africa, tragic

UYINENE
(second poem)

like a half-
dead spider
he invited her
into his morbid,
decaying world

it was hard to
even look at her
her eyes blazing
with young light
her mind racing with
medium-is-
the message, film, TV, digital,
everything
global, electronic,
hip ‘n cool
about this media

the door closes like a bank vault
he switches to red, like a
killer creature
like an
attack submarine

the red drowns her out
kills her beauty and
her humanity

for an hour he
has the power
of an ancient, evil god