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

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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

OF DRAMA AND FICTION

Tags

elections, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, South Africa, South African

OF DRAMA
AND FICTION

weather won
the election

what can I say?
if I had voted, being
a writer
of drama
and fiction

would have spoilt my paper
spectacularly

IN HAND

Tags

District 9, media, poem, poetry, South Africa

IN HAND

They asked to see South Africa
so I showed them
“District Nine”

with which
you took
issue
got a bit mad

tried to
change the channel
but made
such a
fist of
it

you broke
the remote
shattered every
single bone in
your
outraged hand.

MAUSERS

Tags

BREXIT, Britain, Colonialism, historical, History, Mafikeng, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, South Africa, South Aftican

I am here in Mahikeng
(former heart of Bophuthatswana, Victorian stronghold of the British Empire)
up at the very top of
the Blackpool Tower taking
live feed

people there looking out to sea but
unable to spot Ireland
or, for that matter, any
other island

to see the truth with their own eyes
regarding the pivotal role of islands
in the fall
and rise of things

and how each of us
under siege for what we believe
unless
like those men
with Mausers

with AK-47s
wanting to topple such
structures, towers
of imposition

letting the sea claim what
it was unkind enough to bring.

BUT ALL I HEAR

Tags

CAPE TOWN, death, Drowning, Jeremy Cronin, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, South African, voice, Voices of the Land, Water power astrological

I overhear things
have the ear for it

things people say, switching codes
in restaurants, in bottle stores
in chiznyama palaces

so much hope we had
or you, rather

hope you
had

because I came here
and witnessed the destruction of my childhood
drowned in your beautiful harbour
was torn to shreds
by a great white out
in the breakers of False Bay

the sound of death underwater
drowning, screaming
the sea
makes for a perfect silencer

but back to
my private Hell, sound
pandemoniums and cacophonies

mad wife screaming from the other bedroom
in wildly guttural Waffen-SS Setswana
but your Setswana
softly
loving itself

dream-floating
into my telephonic ear

but all that desire going, heading nowhere:
sad truth, perfect metaphor

oh Jeremy you surfed that wave, shot
to fame articulating
those voices
ones of the land

but all I hear are
murmurs, curses, regular
pattern of industrial noises

and that voice, your voice
softly
(how many
times do we die?)

drowning me drowning me drowning me

POEM FOR TSWAGARE NAMANE

Tags

dirt, Global warming, heat, jazz, poem, poetry, South Africa, Wakanda, writing

POEM FOR TSWAGARE NAMANE

dolphin stopped swimming, died
because the sea
changed its hue
no longer blue

or at least as blue
as in your imagination

my friend,
the street noise washes in waves
against my bedroom window

you, surely, could make more out of it
find something in their to
blow from your jazz trumpet in
shades of Miles Davis

we are creatures
who if we do not make sense of everything
are best just passing
unlamented, just drifting away

and this was all
not in my poem, I added these lines
at a later instance, because (I don’t know)
it came to me suddenly
it was a cool thing to do

cool being that word
nearly global-warned out
of existence

cool not being the word
when the heat is impossible
and the dirt and the refuse
grows high
as K2

no fantasy, novelty to
give Mahikeng such a mountain

not hard
to think allegory, to lapse
into crude symbolism when
things devolve
down to dirt

which all our writing
all the world
writing
writing
ain’t ever going to shift

***

It’s a proven fact
(let me get this down before
we lose all power
power
to the politician
and regime
of load-shedding!)

dirt breeding
allegory profanity

whilst this heat
fueling
apocalypse

your jazz solo in my head
winding
through my brain

guiding me towards the light
through this word labyrinth

let’s scan
the stars, find

our
southern
cross

or let our
eyes rove, roam
then fix
upon the horizon

watch the sunset together, ever
alert for those mythical horsemen

as the poem
shapes up to
conclude, have

its last pithy, hopefully not
total dead-end moment

Oh
Wakanda this place
is not

and yet could
easily be

your solo ending on
a high low note

this wall
blank, smooth

wall I can
wrote on (might not
block me, you
the entire

human race
forever and ever)

IT IS ALWAYS SO

Tags

Australia, culture, District 9, film, Mad Max, poem, poetry, South Africa

IT IS ALWAYS SO

It is always so:
history changing the moment
something
smashes
through the screen

my friend told me
how it was they were
all down in Sydney
drinking beer at
the barbi
watching the footer
on the telly

when Mad Max
Rockatansky came
crashing through
the screen

and I myself
was busying myself
buying ChesaNyama
when the District 9
saucer floated into view

parked itself over central
Johannesburg

changed that
skyline

changing us
forever

almost killing me: such
a shock to my system
I nearly choked on my meat.

HERE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Tags

Britain, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, South Africa

HERE IN SOUTH AFRICA

I was too young
to Spitfire

too young to get
panzer getanked
in the Battle of France

way too young to fight
on the Somme (like my grandad)
or here in South Africa

fighting for civilization, law, freedom
and Empire
(none of which
fit together that well)