AS REQUIEM

Tags

elegy, Johnny Clegg, Juluka, love, Music, poem, poetry, South Africa, South African, writing

AS REQUIEM

“I’m sitting on the top of Kilimanjaro
I can see a new tomorrow”
Juluka “Kilimanjaro”

I’m sitting on a mine dump
hoping for a clean slate
or at least
where we are not
weighed down by
our mistakes

finally recover from
the tyranny of
Empire, all
dreams of imperialism
learn to embrace
everything about
our human race
yet understand its evil

You sang of
the impi that stood
foursquare against
the machinations
of a foreign power
had their day
in the bloody sun

the one that they hoped
would never set
of their ships, their
factories, their mines
their railways.

So let me
play that song
once more

for
old times, great future,
thrill of enjoyment, and yes,
as requiem

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MUIZENBERG SALTY

Tags

great white shark, Humanity, meaning, MUIZENBERG, poem, poetry, Saint, South Africa, spiritual

MUIZENBERG SALTY

days running out
to become a Saint
before snuffing it

decided to give everything back
to the Universe in a way
would really hurt

so he ran
down to the ocean
(the blue Indian Ocean)
swam out
beyond the breakers
to find a
great white shark

TANNIE ERASMUS

Tags

Afrikaans, Erasmus, Intertextual, poem, Praise of Folly, satire, South Africa, South African, writing

TANNIE ERASMUS

Tannie Erasmus
skryf

Tannie Erasmus
skyf

irons her poetry pages
flat as the Netherlands

folly to
criticize

pick a
fight with her
when she is
this way

better catch her
when she is
outside herself

her soul has taken
a few dance steps out

or as
she translates herself
into (horror of horrors)
an Englishman

mimicking the perversities
of that colonial identity

just
for a joke

to make the desert
more human, this
small life more real.

SAFE

Tags

poem, poetry, satire, South Africa, South African

SAFE
(for all those poets —
they know who they are)

verily glib and
spit and polished

they stand
reading their
latest rhymes

brass-balled the lot
of them, apart
from that not much
think
about

worry oneself over

state of the planet, state
of the State left
artistically disengaged

wouldn’t think that any
space left in their heads
for concerns of
the species and
impending non-survival

as they scramble for a ladder
scurry to find space

there in the great library, and
beside it the great museum

housed in these as
the weather warms, the missiles fall
having paid
the price thrice to

secure admission
they hope
they will
be safe

SO SHE SAID

Tags

identity, innuendo, poem, poetry, South African, wordplay

SO SHE SAID

so she said
(eventually)
could hardly keep
it pent up inside:

yes, I see now
you have become
110% South African
(not to decry)

I laughed and swore
it must truly be
the Cape Town
je be sais quoi
I picked up wholesale

which she pooh-poohed
with much ne
and much pas

saying
she has surveyed
all the evidence

and found her eye
immediately drawn to
the thing that
now distinguishes me
as South African

MY COSMIC SENSE OF HORROR

Tags

Horror, poem, poetry, South Africa

MY COSMIC SENSE OF HORROR

outside the occasional
late-nite gunshots

music of
a car alarm

no cure for
the social angst
the fuels this insomnia

just the possibility
of drowning darkness
in greater darkness
watching some
true cosmic
horror on DVD

the theme here
always what
begins with
mutation
leading to
terrible transformation

somehow it proves so
downright reassuring
that the world should end
evil reign victorious
that all should suffer
when I
can get no sleep

RE-READING

Tags

JM Coetzee, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, South Africa

RE-READING

I am reading In the Heart of
the Country
by a guy called Coetzee

but this reading
is not taking place in
the heart of the country
wherever
that might
be

presuming, of course,
there is one
and indeed, that
it might be located

not knowing what
to look for
that would be
definitive
either in
geographic terms
or spiritually.

DELICIOUS

Tags

death, fish, Global warming, horoscope, Humanity, meaning, mythology, Nazi, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, Poet, poetry, postmddern, poverty, power, Reader, satire, sea, simulation, South Africa, spiritual, Universe, Water, Water power astrological, wordplay, writing

DELICIOUS
(at Ocean Basket, 6/6/2019)

depression
recession
world heading back
to the 30s

I eat my designer
fish and chips whilst
the world goes crazy
channeling inner fascist
like some
scab on the planet

it’s my day for reading
birth charts and
you are all
Scorpio Capricorn Scorpio

so deep water sign and
high mountain goat we go
whilst the Universe
simulates whim, cons as
if capricious

so much to write about but
the pen seems hardly willing, battling
undertow, inertia
up in the clouds you
know it
is death zone but
the age pulls this trick
that there
is no spiritual narrative
may not be
a summit

one falls into space when
opening up to expectation

see: the pen
has written something

and the fish
is delicious

OF THE SOUL

Tags

Democracy, EFF, Marxist, mythology, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, power, South African, wordplay

OF THE SOIL
(“Son of the Soil”
Economic Freedom Front
Election Poster Slogan)

the sky was teeming
with sky-gods
no extinction-level rocks,
however, tumbling to ground

below Marxists
were (as the media
had it) pushing
through soil, asphalt
and concrete
with all the
determination of
Nietzschean mushrooms

whilst in the basements and towers
those busy writing, re-writing history
were completely flummoxed in
the absence of paradigm

at the raw, basic
material level
simply

lost for
words

GOLDEN

Tags

Alien, Apocalypse, apocalyptic, Ending, gold, Humanity, ironical, irony, poem, poetry, South Africa, South African, Viking, Voyager

GOLDEN

the Earth is uninhabited
someone scribbled over the great text of life

but do not fret
they have sent my image into
deep space stuck
to a spacecraft
somewhat
out of frame

my image photoshopped
on the side of beauty
whitewashed (whiter
than I if
that were
possible)

and so, this golden me, made
in South Africans, heading out
across the galaxy
longing for the
embrace of an alien
whose civilization outlived us, surpassed us,
who scans our
record scratched upon that
divine metal
hoping he will
give me

more than just
passing glance

ignoring my complicity in the oppression
of those who dug this metal

who saw the
raw of this wealth, dug
with gnarled,
battered

unrewarded hands