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.

SHARK BLESSING

SHARK BLESSING

a shark blessed me
this morning

but first jumped me
as I wandered the town
in the morning like
the crazy person
I am,
have become

they grabbed me
asked for money, unfolding
a butterfly knife (which
they assured me
was about to
stab me)

but then realized that the
one they had trapped was
some kind of
broken soul, penniless
wanderer

and so
blessed me

and
left

DASH

ran out of dash
but then
bought some
more

so much booze
to dilute (and
so little
time)

so we talked pussy
whose baby mommy
was best
in the sack

but then there were
tanks in the street
and the TV
exploded

luckily
we went out earlier
to buy more dash

(note: “dash” = South African slang for any mixer like orange juice, lemonade, cola etc)

SHADOW STRADDLED

we stand in the shadow
of a colossus
well, not so much stand, as
scurry like rodents, everyone
now Boesman-and-Lena-ed

scratching an existence under the
impervious eye
of he who
straddles us, taxes us
to the poor limits of
our endurance

DIGGER

DIGGER

let me
dig for you

can dig through
to to the Antipodes
can dig right through
to China

can dig all the gold out of
the Witwatersrand
shoveling my
way

past the bones
of so many miners

LEAVES FALL

leaves fall
like Empires

except
they do not cling
to what they were, where
they are, what
they know
as fierce as limpets

the law of Nature, rule
if gravity
this the city teaches
it is how it masters, measures
controls
I myself have

a smidgen of
that learning, an incomplete
picture that now
the gallery is
closing
is being
taken out
the frame

and yes,
whilst we are
in this realm of
analogy we must

add how
it is
that trees topple
but not
never (meaning
hardly ever)
of their own accord

STUDENT

student
put the
fan on

blew the
university
right away

student
stared
at the mask
wondered if
he put it on
would hear
himself speaking

didn’t think
was wearing
a mask already
one they sold him
at the
convenience store

student felt stifled
clammy skin
thanks to
global warming

no one
switched on
in any boat
that was leaving
the water pouring
through the
burning library door
(no cops around with
tape for masking)

MINING ECONOMY

still geared to
a mining economy
still hook and by crooked
to the land

the universities burning
toddler bodies turning
up horribly mutilated

you will
have to dig very deep
(scalpel, please!) to
excise the cancerous
corruption from
the national mind

26 KILOMETERS SOUTH OF RAMATLABAMA

I

The rain came

the blind duo
outside SPAR warbling away
great guitar twanging counterpoint on
the great gospel classics

and me
listening, poised
uncertainly at
the flag’s edge
where falling
off the map
is not unheard of

Oh my
place of stones

your history
surrounding you
like the
ghost of
a ghost

along your great pioneer
hunter-gatherer trail
the usual museum-
worthy relics of
a lost civilization: condoms,
9mm cartridges, Castle and
Black Label labels
still legible amongst
the smashed glass

but this was no
celebration to
rival that
of an Empire
mafficking itself silly

thinking (for one crazy
deluded moment) of
the world
dancing in the street
from Cape to Cairo

no more
time here for
word of miracle
of fish, loaf, contract,
RDP house

here
under shadow of
omnipresent tombstone

the page behaves like rock
my pen bleeding ink enough
to save every pothole

so great a flow
it reminds the gods of
our time as
primeval sea.

II

Ah, let me
embrace you, my
Taung ancestor
(no point
here nor
place for
the niceties
of race)

fellow citizen, brother
consumer, heading back
from town with
painting under your arm
perfect to fill
that dining-room space

remember us
shabby poets, artists,
in that
strangely defining
Altamira genealogy

skipping between worlds like
trickster shamans
metaphoring you
again, again a
tale of
renaissance, rebirth,
of the beautiful pain
of deepest human desire

****

Gospel rapper
Jesus blaster

riddle me
why

Sunday must
rule supreme

spell out
the ding dong code
of our spiritual
sexual bodies

and what if
history
breaks its glass
exhibit case, walks

the street (like a
brash prostitute) brazenly, openly?

takes a stroll down to the taxi rank
guided by the smell of excrement
the very spaces so
well-memorized, internalized, now
radically defamiliarized

bringing
the next hotly revised metaphor
to take us, transport us
to head-place
of thinking differently

****

catch the breeze wonder
how many prayers
are kite-like floating
to Heaven on
the updraught

ballooning to
the size of Zeppelins as
they rise with
confidence, smugly
secure

****

city of potholes
of reductions, obligations
bureaucratic solutions to
lowest common
denominators

a
motion picture revelation
of hard Germanic economic truth

truth hard as
splintering siege shrapnel

as
crucifixion nails

as bad, beloved
British bayonet.

Steak
on the griddle

learn to forgive
forget
just
let it
sizzle

let the book close even
on stars than groan, stars
that scowl

be the poet
philosopher of
Minerva’s (now
featherless) owl

****

maybe I’m just
irrelevant

maybe
just waste

think thoughts of purpose
as the Sun sets behind
that huge, absurd
amphitheatre of
a sports confection

imagining an afterlife
trapped in the turnstiles

no chance to
flow, ebb
fall,
rise

something less even
than Cartesian consciousness
carried across
scratchy airwaves

than the life
spirit that

umbrellas in the rain
mushrooms under Sun

III

her body beautiful
but fading badly (pressure
of market value)

drifts in and out
of visibility

leaving its mark, mark
of ancient sexual
Empress
every time (ca-ching!)
there is a sale

Oh dark tonight of
the planet, dark
side of the Moon

garden of sweetest, urgent,
toxic blossoms

jungle in which the
dice always roll
snake eyes
(card is always diamond
trump is always spade)

and child Caliban clutching
your Kruger coins
already know will
have to
make do with ersatz,
with fake Miranda

whilst the wizard builds
banks on the
back of every storm

****

Meanwhile
who is the one
stalking you
following you
hop-
skipping behind you?

his poetry is full
of desert, there is
sand on
his lyrical tongue

if I were
orbiting or
strategically
positioned satellite
I might
give you feedback

tell you how
exactly you fit
(camouflaged/un-
camouflaged) in
this arid, self-
obsessed world

even though
you
strike me as
ant-small, lizard-
cautious, busy-bee
scuttling buzz-beetle
as you
drone your
way (every
day)

***

toll booths
taxes

proliferation of new
(imaginary) barriers
(but perhaps
frontiers)

things changing
words fading

war and
death
not inconceivable

let me stop
this Pharisee
stone cold ask
him

what he sees:
who will
cop it last, first,
fire the
corresponding shot

so much resting on
this or that

swinging like
a pendulum
marking
time

****

the rain came

put paid
to swirling
dust-
devils

as they conspired
to taunt the
parishioners
with thoughts
antithetical

thoughts outside
their frame of reference

and the SPAR couple
nearing a conclusion
yet still
twanging away

and a writer (perhaps)
writing with bone
the words
of ending returning
to beginning

finding the nowhere Rome
to which no
roads lead but

all return.

POETRY PUBLISHED

Poem “Rilke echoing” published in the June 2016 edition of New Coin South African Poetry