Untitled # 2

A cold night indoors

Silence weighs heavy

Upon a pregnant scene

From another time.

Shit in any package remains shit

Distrust is not something else

Love is absolute in a perfect world

And whiskey makes me stupid.

My feet are warm

My head dry

My voice silenced

While my bones ache.

Light the fire in the cupboard

Let’s watch our vanities burn.

FLAWED

The pale winter sun caresses my skin

Glistening harshly on the puddles

Already evaporating, being absorbed

Into the rich dark soft mud

Where birds feed, pecking gingerly as they chirp

Evergreen leaves and bare branches

Swaying imperceptibly in the slight breeze

And beyond in the crisp blue sky

Wispy white clouds drift lazily

Beneath the all seeing mountains’ arms.

Surrounded by such sobering splendour

I am a part of the beauty of nature

Just another organism in the mud and mulch

A speck in the sky, on the breeze, through the trees

Just another isolated part of the majesty

That exists with and without me

Just another creature, another living thing

Neither possessing nor possessed

No different and quite un-unique.

With no make-up or brand names

No fashionable attire to which I aspire

No preconceived attitude and no material desire

I am naked and am thus able to feel

Stilled and silent I am able to perceive

The ghastly nature of your beauty

All painted and plastered with mirthless smiles in passing

Unseeing, untouched and unrelieved

Not in tune with your surrounds

Convinced that your will can subdue your environment

But what you imagine to be your beauty

Is nothing more than a vacuous ugliness

Hastily decorated and utterly exposed

Revealing the cracks in the grotesque façade

That you try so hard to conceal.

I prefer the still beauty of nature

Majestic, splendorous and perfectly flawed:

I detest the revolting nature of beauty

With its deceptive and fatal allure.

Sādhanā

“Yayin is the name of the Lord Shiva” he explained as we smoked: “In the Hindu faith, smoking ganja or charas is our way of worshipping Shiva and that’s why moments like these are so blessed” he inhaled deeply and exhaled a thick cloud of sweet, blue smoke: “Smoking helps us in the pursuit of religious sādhanā, which means a way to accomplish something. Sādhanā both prevents an excess of worldliness and moulds the mind and disposition into a form which develops the knowledge of dispassion and non-attachment. Sādhanā is a means whereby bondage becomes liberation.”

I listened mesmerised by his voice and what he was saying, eager to know more.

“The reason I asked you to stay is because I can sense that you will be able to understand what I have to say while your colleague cannot. He thinks I am the devil because I have profited from my dealings with the devil, but he forgets that he is the off-spring of that devil. Even as my one hand takes from Satan, the other plots his downfall because it takes money, lots of money to fight a revolution. To buy guns and bombs and pay lawyers and to feed the families of the fallen: I am not just a stupid bhai with a little shop on the corner. You must understand this.”

He finished the chillum and blew the ash into his hand which he then tipped into the ashtray.

“I’m sure you’ve heard some of the stories about me” he waited and I nodded: “Without being proud or boastful, you must know that they are all true. I have killed men and I have dined with Satan and I have used everything at my disposal to help to return dignity to the lives of my brothers and sisters.”

He lit one of his cigarillos and puffed in silence for a moment: “And yes sometimes a few had to be sacrificed for the good of the many, but that is what is required sometimes. Sometimes there has to be heroes and martyrs and villains and anonymous benefactors and friendly monsters. It is all Sādhanā.”

BEAUTIFUL...

Is it a fleeting smile

When no one seems to care

Or a familiar floral fragrance

Wafting on the night air?

Is it a solitary flower

Blooming in a barren field

Or an unexpected downpour

That guarantees the yield?

Is it a warm embrace

In a moment of despair

Or a chance encounter

 A special moment to share?

Is it that one flaw

That gives the sublime its character

Or is it the fragile splendour

That could so easily fracture?

Is it what we are able to see

That informs our living artistry

Or is it what we cannot perceive

That defines our comprehension of beauty?

YOU

Embraced by a graceful energy

You stand as one alone

The clichéd rose among the thorns

Your beauty is not only within.

Bathed in a shower of blossoms

Your life extends into the very soil

Eternal youth like wisdom

Only wasted years make us old.

Untitled # 4

Vestal reams
Psychotic indulgence
Kills
The bounds of convention.


Narcissistic vanity
Revealed
With joy unmasked
The decay is visible.

Tiny cracks
Grow over the years
To consume noble ideals
Like darkness.

Tomorrow was sadder
Than next year.

Unappreciated

The best is yet to come

In some quiet recess

Filled with sound

I too will find.

A small piece of the sublime

Profound beauty revealed

In a stranger’s hand

That does not touch.

Even then the idiots encroach

Insisting that the road will end

Before another sunrise

Can shed its’ own blood.

Sad little fucks

Unable to appreciate anything.

Fuckable...

Strange strangers in my head

Avoiding the things

That should not be said

Because it’s not appropriate

And I am still a reprobate.

Your eyes, your smile

The presence that lingers

Just for a while

I reach out and touch your finger

Your hand, your arm

The soul means no harm

This presence imparts a calm

That belies the depth of passion.

This unquenchable lust for life

For loving and giving;

To create and disseminate

To express with beauty

What could have been hate.

These little things that I embrace

This smile that defines this face

The polluted breath that I take in

Reduces my desire to a sin.

This moment begs to be defined

I am present it seems

But is my state of mind

A consequence

Or an abstraction of truth?

With all due respect

And I say this without regret,

Fuck you my love

Fuck you for fucking me while you did

Instead of loving me always

Giving me always

Being you always

Fleeing me always.

I run too

I run away from memories of you

Thoughts of us

Too many broken hearts

That you could once mend

Then bent into little pieces

Beyond your skill to repair.

The despair always fades

Even when I have nothing

To share with anyone

Of consequence; all nonsense

This life I live

Defined by another sentence.

I tell myself I shouldn’t care

But I was there

When you said forever

You meant never again

This pain drives me sane

Just because you chose

You made your choice

At least you enjoyed it

I hope.

Masturbation...

The company I keep is what I always sought

Pretentious indulgence amounts to naught

I am all of this and so much more

I believe I’m a god and the obvious is my lore.

Embrace your living and design your most

That way you’ll know that I do not idly boast

Take hold of the future as you should have the past

And have yourself an isolated blast.

Let your imagination define your being

Stop! Turn around! Face what you’re fleeing

Take a moment and meet the beast

Lock yourself in a room and let it feast.

And if you try to hide but don’t succeed

Rest assured that if I knew, you’d bleed.

Mister Magic

                                                                     Image by Herb Ritts

The father, the son, the Madiba magic

Hard as it was, your life is not tragic

An icon, an inspiration, a patriarch indeed

And not only since you’ve been freed.

Each time I see you from within the crowd

I am overcome and truly proud

To witness such enduring honour and wisdom

Helps me understand the responsibilities of freedom.

Your life is a testament, a symbol of hope

Opening doors and extending the scope

Redefining the limits of one man’s potential

Your voice in this world is vitally essential.

To me you will always be the one

A father figure even though I am not your son

An example to all of how to live a full life

Irrespective of the reality and strife.

So much to so many in your humble way

How I hope and wish and pray

That all you signify is never swept away

At the dawning of the inevitable new day.

Die Varke...

 

Ek sit op’ie pavemen’

Wegegooi op n hoep

Soes n bollang kak

Wat a’mal mis kyk.

Ek notch net hulle voete

Waa’van my kop is gesak

Blink skoentjies hie’ ve’by

Langs my gevriet.

Die varke is nogal’ie vol’ie

Hulle gedagtes is vrot

Wan’ hoeko’ van hie’ on’e’

Kyk n man tot binne in hulle kop.

Hulle check nogal ek is’ie las

Maa’ kantie, die varke is a’mal djas!

Contra Band

Intense, private conversations

Just a moderate hum

Beneath the inappropriately dulcet tones

Coiling from the speakers.

Alone in the candle-light I sit

Sipping, stoned and waiting

For life to begin I hope

To be moved.

Such joy lies before me

As the band warms up.

Ditto...

Cherished darkness

Remove the harsh angles

Reduce this life

Make this passion more real.

Crazy queen

How far away

Return to feeling

Despite the broken promise.

What I give

Is all of me

What you want

Is terminal.

Silence now as we touch

Tomorrow might be lost.

Vitriol and bigotry ...

What was would never again be. The vision had to end along with the spell and after the idyllic inanimate suspension – that lasted for just a few seconds or maybe many lifetimes – I knew with perfect clarity that Africa would not stop burning until every African had a home: until we owned our land again, irrefutably mine because this is where my ancestor’s bones lie interred, but not forgotten. Not yet.

Or maybe until we no longer subscribed to an imposed, capitalist notion of ownership and tenure; of title deeds and boundary fences and land claims and dispossession and repossession: of land having been taken with bloody force and claimed in the name of foreign Kings and Queens who have never felt this African soil against their naked soles – never felt any love for beautiful mother Africa in their desolate souls.

Imperialist warlords, hell-bent on spreading their suffragist tyranny in the name of an atrocious progress that raped an entire continent to fill their stately coffers while Africans were left to die of starvation without home or heritage. Praying to a fairy-tale Jesus sold to us by missionaries who were themselves duped into believing that there was an almighty-something, somewhere out there who wanted us to suffer so that we may learn how to be docile and unthinking.

And today while Africa is still burning their hands have been washed clean as they send boxes of Bibles, convoys and consultants and foreign aid by way of an insincere apology.

The brutish Dutch and British savages who came to South Africa and fucked it up royally before turning around and arrogantly insisting that the natives should be grateful and forgiving, saying: “But we did it for you!”

It’s like kidnapping a child and raping her brutally before giving her a home video of the ordeal and some small change to pay for the abortion.

Looking for a Cock in the Old Church Yard

Nothing much ever happens here. There’s the official reason why people come here, a dead artist’s house that has been turned into a museum: a magical, mystical space that is filled with an ironically beautiful pathos.

An untarred main road, the highest mountain in the Great Karoo, tranquility, charm, animals and about a thousand mostly sad people. Sad because there are few options and no distant horizons – both physically and metaphorically – nestled here in this mostly unspoilt valley.

There is the comparatively mammoth Dutch Reformed Church with its monolithic spire; century old cypresses, pear and pepper trees lining the streets; the furrows that still channel water through the village from the ancient spring high up in the Sneeuberg Range; and at night you have to appreciate the fact that there are no streetlights as the sky sparkles in an unrivaled celestial splendour.

Then there is the old church hall with the old church yard situated between two residential properties: in the one backyard there are chickens and geese and in the other a wily old cock.

I was living in the flatlet behind the church hall and after a walk one afternoon I returned to find one of my neighbours, a dour Afrikaans widower who never greeted, walking down the lane and by way of explaining her presence she announced with a deadpan expression: “I was looking for my cock, it escaped over the fence.”

Needless to say, I had to stop myself from saying what came to mind, but after the urge to laugh had passed and upon reflection, I realized that this random, brief interaction was a suitable allegory for life in this little village.

Many of the people who have either grown up here or who have become one of the locals are unable to recognize the indifferent contradiction that their lives represent; incapable of seeing how funny – and often ludicrous – their views and opinions about the rest of the population and the country are; how their attitude is outdated and part of an era that is gone forever no matter how hard they try to hold on to the past and maintain a status-quo which at least afforded them a false sense of self-worth. They do not even see how their criticism of the government and the constitution and the law is simply indicative of their own victimized apathy and small minded wretchedness.

Everyday it amazes me how in a beautiful little place like this with a population of just a thousand permanent residents, there is so much that is wrong. More than 90% of the population are unemployed, living without hope of reprieve while the rest chat about ‘them’ and ‘their’ lot over drinks and dinner, without a need to define 'us'; sometimes with a sympathetic tear, sometimes in murderous anger; always without the resolve to create a lasting solution.

Maybe the situation in this town is indicative of what is happening in this country…

An ancient, elder innocence...

A smoggy haze softened the harsh, angular edges of the cityscape stretching down the slopes of the Hoerikwaggo to the harbour with its gantries and bustling piers and stacks of containers; the morning peak traffic not yet stalled along the N1 and Marine Drive into the city centre.

For a moment we were both wordlessly transported: Steven consumed by his own private thoughts as he chewed contemplatively with both hands holding his messy chunk of bread, elbows resting on knees, looking out through designer sunglasses shading his perpetually bloodshot eyes from the increasingly harsh morning glare over the bay with the Island in the distance.

I imagined the scene before progress had scarred the landscape or subverted the people. I tried to imagine what it would have felt like to sit there without having to consider issues of ownership and injustice; what it would have been like to be looking out through the eyes of an ancient, elder innocence.

Watching over the herd grazing, seeing family and clansmen-and-women going about their business; collecting wood or drawing water or fishing and hunting – daily activities necessary to survive as a tribe – in harmony with the elements and nature; engaged in a vanquished and vanished, virtually inconceivable simplicity.

Gradually my imagination succeeded in stripping the landscape of the steel and concrete structures; the straight lines of roads and buildings; the harsh edges of aberrant boundaries; the imposed and assumed hustle and bustle and the rapid mechanised ugliness. I looked into an unspoilt past and the past reached out, touching my soul, wiping the grime of modernization and progress from my eyes; healing the wounds and the trauma. For just a moment I was whole and even now that image remains with me, untainted and pristine in my mind, offering comfort and respite.

No remorse, just Memories...

In all of my forty-two years I have not had a single sleepless night about any of the agents of the state whose deaths I witnessed or caused or could have prevented; but there is many a night when I lay awake thinking about Adele and where she is and what she is doing.
We never saw each other after that night and yet in a way she has remained a part of my life. Sometimes as I sit awake staring at the beams of orange light on this cell wall, unable to sleep and no longer able to dream, I still hear her whispering: “I want you” and I still feel the memory of the thrill coursing through my body.

THE CHILD IN ME...

The child in me sits huddled in a corner

Cold and neglected

Damaged and hungry

Looking out from tear stained eyes

At a callous hate filled adult world.

Uncaring eyes studiously averted

Gazing at visions of some other tomorrow

Unwillingly to notice the pain

And the hopeless despair;

That are my companions in this poverty.

Hell-bent on wholesale destruction

That ensures the flow of profit

With which they purchase their dreams

Of comfort and security

While the child in me cries myself to sleep.

Lying curled up in the gutter

Trying to hold onto a borrowed nightmare

While I warm my freezing soul

At the dying embers

Of this smouldering humanity.

Roots Rot!

The problem with roots is that roots don’t give you answers. Roots just hold the truth and the truth is seldom an answer in itself. Knowing one’s roots doesn’t necessarily set one free to grow and become a tree in the forest of humanity. After all, trees do not grow from the same roots!

But there is always the possibility that I am not a tree, standing tall with my own roots planted firmly in the nourishing soil, maybe I'm just a parasitic vine; maybe my conception did not begin with a seed but rather with a cutting; or just a branch of someone else’s tree – rotten and waiting for a gust of wind to make me fall; or a fruit on a branch, or just a leaf? Susceptible to the seasons, waiting to float and twirl to the ground where I will dry and rot in the soil or even worse, in the gutter where I will not even become nourishment for other seeds and plants. Maybe I’ve already been through my life’s autumn and I am already lying in the gutter waiting for another flurry or someone’s piss to wash me away into the sewer.

Unnoticed...

I sometimes think about the things I took for granted: little things that in the moment mean very little until they are denied: and upon reflection the inconsequential little nothings of days gone by take on a magnified significance that makes me feel as if I sometimes wasn’t actually present in the act of living my own life.

I feel as if so many years were wasted going through the motions: years that are marked by grand events and achievements that account for mere days or sometimes even hours and no matter how hard I try, I cannot piece together what I did with the rest of the time.

Huge chunks have disappeared and not through a loss of memory, but simply because I didn’t think that what I was doing at the time was memorable enough to remember.

Another second fades away and is gone, without a backward glance and no goodbye; forever.

The Prize...

I often wonder if you really know how much you mean to me: when I think back on the past we’ve shared – all the time we’ve wasted and every moment that we didn’t. I see the movement of our souls. Dancing slow and sometimes – so often – unsure, but always tender.

Right now as I sit here writing these thoughts down in pencil in a notebook just for you, I’m listening to Abdullah’s ‘The Wedding’ and I can picture us – feel us – in each others arms. Still, silent and so completely content.

This journey I am on – this journey of the ‘Tale’ – is a solitary, isolated one. I see the story stretching out all around me and I realize that I am surrounded by the madness of my own creation. Often I feel so utterly alone that I end up questioning, succumbing to the pressing doubts that are an integral part of the process I suppose. I wonder whether the journey is in vain even though I know it is not: even though I know it is vital. And always now, there is you: here with me, transforming the isolation, turning the madness into a sane clarity – a clear sanity.

Often when I explain to people what I am doing, they look at me with naïve envy and tell me how they wish they could be so lucky, yet what I don’t mention is how much I have sacrificed – how much I am sacrificing – for this opportunity. I don’t tell them how torturous the road often is.

As much as Marmaduke is inside my mind, I have to spend even more time inside his mind, inside his cell, inside the asylum. Picking through and sorting through the threads of his madness which in essence is just a reflection of our own collective madness. I constantly worry about the fact that I need people to understand, to care; to fall in love with a fiction that is murderous and who ultimately will never love them back: a fiction that in truth doesn’t and never will care.

I sit alone most nights longing for you: your smile, your words, your touch, your loving; your love. Sharing coffee and moments and conversation and our lives and our souls: sharing our eternity. And while I long for you I know that the road I am on right now is the right one; the road I have to walk alone so that I can truly and forever return to you. One step, one word, one sentence, one thought, and one chapter at a time; just to be with you one day forever.

And right now your being there – being here – for me and with me along this path is more than I could ever have hoped for and dreamed of: and my greatest fear is that my ‘Tale’ will be anything less that extra ordinary for you. You are my Nobel and Booker prize! You are the most important judge and critic. It is you that I am trying so hard to impress and keep engaged and enthused. Just you; and me.

Die Kinders van Vandag!
(Click on the title above see the video clip of the kids singing their song.)

This is a link to the song that I am developing with the kids from the primary school in Pienaarsig where the Arts Project is being run and below, the lyrics...

Ons is die kinders van vandag
Die leiers van die toekoms
Klein mense met groot drome
Jong mense met ‘n plan.

Wees julle tog ‘n voorbeeld
Sodat ons reg kan leer
Wees julle asseblief ‘n voorbeeld
Elke liewe dag.

Gee ons net ‘n kans
Om te leer en te grooi
Gee ons tog ‘n kans
Om te droom en te lag.

Ons will ewe sonder hartseër
Ons will ewe met respek
Sal jy my net lief hê
Elke liewe dag.

With You...

Calm she sleeps

Safe in these arms

Anxiety gradually recedes.

Soft gentle caress

Quietly commune

A pure lullaby.

Carefully I drift

Into an ocean of feeling

With you.

Sweet Dreams...

Removed I sit in wonder

Looking in for a moment upon the days

Silently observing the promised reality

I am humbled by my fortune.

A cool breeze blows this morning

The eastern horizon slowly explodes

But even such profound majesty

Fails to touch the heart like you.

The veiled destiny now asleep

The essence manifest in a glow of content

As I tenderly embrace the body of my dreams

Which is what I’ve found with you.

Each moment a little piece of perfection

Every heartbeat celebrating our love.

Profit!

Two thousand units will guarantee no loss

And that for an unpublished poet

With his head in the clouds

And a song in his heart that doesn’t fill his stomach.

Two thousand copies and a bottle of Scotch

To make this work public, a book on a shelf

At the back of a high school library

Where the secretary and the teachers make out.

Two thousand buyers with a love of words

That will not discover the madness

Or the beauty that silently resides

Upon these lifeless pages.

Two thousand reasons why you love literature

And just one why you can’t appreciate it.

This Morning...

                                                   Painting by Nico Conradie

The morning brings new life

The sun rises inspiring

New visions of familiar scenes

Across the smiling faces.

Frail content consume me

Reduce me to an unthinking joy

Remove all these petty confines

That keep me incomplete.

Sad confusion still lingers

Upon the raving mind

Rare notions of destruction

That stand by my side.

Happy without much concern

For the storm silently building.