Khoi Gxam Productions

Now and Again...

2012-01-16T15:57:00.000+02:00

From time to time
On occasion
It becomes futile to try
Now and again
To express
The self-same
Ill-defined thought
Just an idea
I feel
Ill-conceived it seems
From time to time
Now and again
On occasion...

What's More...

2012-01-16T15:54:00.000+02:00

What's more important? Asking to be forgiven or the need to forgive; saying that you're sorry or wanting to hear that someone's sorry too; wanting to do something or making that small gesture in hope; knowing that you love someone or wanting that love returned; losing the love or feeling it still; saying something silly or keeping silent?

THE SILENT GRAPHITE WEIGHT

2012-01-05T12:18:00.000+02:00

What is the role of the poet
In a world crippled by greed
Ruled and corrupted by might of arms
And diplomatic impunity?

A world where
Form has been perverted
Where beauty is seldom seen
Thriving within the decay.

What is the purpose
Of rhythmic, rhyming verses
Subjective, measured observations
About innocently metered nothings.

What good is poetry
In the belly that needs to be filled
Or in the unrecognizing, expired eyes
Of hope and a mother.

What is the point of trying to make clear
What so few seem to want to hear
So the poets perish in their graphite prisons
And the silence of the virgin page.

CROSSES AND DOTS

2012-01-05T12:15:00.001+02:00

Just lines
Twisted and bent
With crosses and dots
Forming letters
Lined up in sequenced
Unchanging patterns
Of vowels and consonants
Each word a meaning
Each its place
Each sentence a necklace
Illuminating my intent
To share
With you
The entrails of my thoughts
So that you will know
The madness
And the lines
Twisted and bent
With crosses and dots.

DOES IT REALLY MATTER?

2012-01-05T12:14:00.000+02:00

Another year has passed
Unseen I sit and watch it go
Observing the multitudes
Frivolously parading
Inebriated smiles
And fire-cracker laughter
Toasts to good cheer
Reciting a song
Otherwise forgotten
Unthinking into another year
Of business as usual
A tired vision despoiled
Of how to make another million
How to save another million
How to climb and clamber
Onto the backs of the downtrodden billions
To mark the progress
Of indiscriminate destruction
Distractedly focused
Making resolutions
Clutching desperately
Onto the re-used wishes
Taken out and dusted
And polished by a new speech writer
At the end of each new year.

SOME DAYS

2011-12-20T11:28:00.001+02:00

Some days are so familiar
Hard as I look there is nothing to see
No compassion, no heart, no change
Just a distressingly arrogant contempt
In the best interests of those who will not think.

Some days I just want to lash out
I want to shake things up
And scream at the top of my lungs
Or just curl up and cry
Sometimes I just want to die.

Some days there is nothing to smile about
The laughter is forced and insincere
The freedom song strangled in my throat
The martyrs crucified in vain
As I look into your eyes and see the disdain.

Some days I need so much to behold beauty
Yet all I see is the growing decay
As you wipe the dirt from your feet
Leaving it behind as you enter your fortress
Mouthing your patronizing platitudes.

Some days I have all the answers
I know what it is that I need to say
But the sentences falter and remain unspoken
Silenced by the desperate clamour
Of distracted indifference.

Some days the sun just won’t shine
There is no daybreak and no gray light
And try as I might there is no respite
No understanding or acceptance or desire
Just an interminably desolate moment.

Some days your greed leaves me empty
Needing so badly to feed my dream
Needing just to dream; of a better place
Of justice and equality and a future
Of my next meal without worrying about starving.

And some days I do feel the love
Of an unknown brother and a sister far away
Of a fellow traveler passing on their way
A stranger with a heart and mind who is able to see
Reminding me to stop being indulgent.

NAMIBIA

2011-12-20T11:28:00.000+02:00

This journey is rich with memories
A trip overflowing with my snatches of history
From the thick cream to the warm milk bread
The hot-springs and skin peeling sunburn
The sweltering city and the misty coast.

Now I return with another purpose
To shoot the breeze with a father
And siblings who now have partners and kids
To feel their smiles and taste their tears
To listen as they try to disguise their fears.

I needed to come once more
Just to meet and maybe to say a final farewell
To look out at their hazy horizons
Shimmering bright in the distance
Where new dreams are born.

WHEN WE WERE US...

2011-12-20T11:24:00.002+02:00

It’s late at night as I sit here thinking of us. It’s minus ten outside and in here it’s minus you. I remember that first time we met we flirted; touching, kissing; fingers exploring. Even in the absence of a snapshot, the images are clear: I remember sharing a soul, the first time we made love for ever; the first time I broke your heart. I came back to you and you to me, that night of wind and fingers entwined and promises that would be broken.

The intensity of your gaze, the urgent pulse; an electric shock, you became I part of me and I of you. I will never forget.
The moments shared in obscure places, the rare public proclamations, the coffees and whiskeys and the sound of your voice as I listened, before I turned away again.

20 FACTS AND AN INTRO...

2011-12-20T11:22:00.000+02:00

I am often amazed at the way in which people choose to interpret life – or more often, misinterpret it; but having said that I must hasten to add that I am under no illusion that how and what I think is the only valid view. I have to admit that my interpretation of reality can be – and often is – interpreted as lacking. I know this because I fail to take into account so many of the factors that so many people are convinced, is indispensable and integral to having an informed opinion.

By the same token, I am convinced that much of the complexity is merely presented to confuse and needlessly convolute issues which are in essence exceedingly simple.

Perhaps it is the simplicity itself that becomes the problem because we cannot believe that this life that the greatest minds through the ages have never completely unraveled cannot be anything less than bogglingly complex; or at least that is what we have been told to think.

One and one can create endless permutations – endless components of the complex, misdirection and confabulation.

We become the masters of our own delusion simply because we are unable to accept the truth, and we all know that truth is open to interpretation, or misinterpretation as the case may be…

1. We are all prejudiced
2. We are slaves controlled by corporate puppet-masters
3. Politics is a whorehouse under surveillance and politicians are the whores
4. Freedom has been reduced to a personal space
5. Religion is a foil that keeps the masses blind
6. There is no ultimate truth
7. Neither knowledge nor education guarantees intelligence
8. History hasn’t taught us how to be more human

NEW NOISE

2011-12-20T11:20:00.000+02:00

I listen intently to this new noise: running water, birdsong, insects and dogs; random snatches of passing conversations; an occasional car or tractor or horse; and the valley breathing.

The story shifts to encompass wide-open spaces and the rushing inanity of urban threads are reduced to a receding mindlessness.

My thoughts slowly calm and the assimilation begins, one moment at a time I become accustomed to the crisp, clear air and the smells of things barely tainted by the decay and destruction.

The fatigue of the journey weighs heavy in my limbs, but I know that I will soon be revived. I smile as I wonder how the story will begin.

THE ROAD

2011-12-20T11:18:00.000+02:00

There is a road down which I used to walk
Many, many years ago in amazement and wonder
I used to see the other children playing
Care-free and with abandon
Under the watchful eyes of doting parents
And I wondered about mine.

There was that road down which I walked again
Many years ago in confusion and rage
Observing the crumbling facades
Corroded by time and neglect
Under the bitter yoke oppression
And I wondered about time.

Now that self-same road upon which I tread
Has been restored to it’s never before glory
As I am overcome by the familiar smiles of the aged
Mere children grown old before they’ve matured
By the blinkered wisdom of experience
And I wandered on, down the line.

OH AFRIKA, MY AFRIKA!

2011-12-20T11:16:00.000+02:00

Oh Africa, my Africa
How I wish I could wipe away your tears
To alleviate, no eliminate your suffering
To return you to your former glory
Help you to reclaim your exalted place
In the annals of this epoch.

We’ve defeated the colonial slave master
To be ruled by mindless martyrs
And greedy, blood-thirsty bastards
Whose only desire is personal power
Achieved through the murder of innocence
And callously maintained with armed intolerance.

Where now are the people’s leaders?
Where are the revolutionary ideals?
Gone and buried in the blood-soaked fatherland
Forgotten amid the greater carnage of commerce
And crushed beneath the grinding wheels of progress
As we all look on so helpless.

Stand tall sisters and brothers
Honour the memory of the father and mother
Together we can stem the tide
Let the children live with pride
United we can dream again
Freed from the shackles of relentless strain.

Once more to claim our place in the sun
Without fear of persecution and harm
Our voices can be raised as one
Ubuntu! Uhuru! We will sing freedom’s song
Of Africa, my Africa
The struggle carries on!

Mosselbay - 24/12/2010

2011-12-20T11:12:00.000+02:00

I awake to the sound of the Indian Ocean lapping lazily at the sandy shore. I’m still trying to fathom the journey that brought me here.

Thoughts of a full breakfast reduced to coffee and juice by an onslaught of cereal.
I sit looking out over a pristine white beach quietly observing; after a few wine-glasses of tepid Limousine brandy with gassy Coke Zero and only yearning thoughts of ice, I speak to a member of the staff and am given directions.

I stroll along the beach slowly filling, smoking on my way to town which is familiar even though it is my first visit. Holiday-makers!

Bananas and peanuts; and a roast chicken with fresh, baked bread; and vodka with juice and ice: the afternoon passes sipping away, watching. So many toned bronzed bodies; as many flabby and pale; everyone has children. Holiday-makers!

Scrimped and saved all year maybe; or more likely just saved or blowing the annual bonus; privileged, not in their whiteness but in their ability to afford a holiday at all: and yet they don’t see themselves as being privileged any longer, just holiday-makers enjoying the seasonal migration of the herd to dip their manicured and wrinkled toes into this salt water of their content.

A tipsy and toasted Christmas Eve drive into the unadorned heart of the community where old friends and neighbours become new acquaintances over a smoke and an uninspired conversation: the old days are alive in the dying moment, dying because the passage of time doesn’t ever change the grinding reality of impoverishment and drugs and the bemoanable truth of apathy.

The stars are dulled by ambient light as I lay in my narrow bed, drifting to the crash and thunderous hiss of the surf pounding away at the shoreline beyond my open window.

GROWTH

2011-12-13T12:52:00.001+02:00

Perfect isolation
Calm and wild
Now that history recedes
To create new memories
Of yet another tomorrow
That will undoubtedly grow.

This familiar ocean
Always met anew
Deceptive beneath the surface
Dark unfathomable depths
Conceal untold mysteries
Untold secrets
Forgotten.

SAME-OLD, SAME-OLD

2011-12-13T12:52:00.000+02:00

The reality has shifted

Yet it remains the same,

The landscape’s developed

Yet seemingly in vain

As the country struggles to breath

Beneath the yoke of greed

And callous avarice.

Laws that prohibit

Even a slight gesture

Walls keeping you safe

Oblivious, unable to register

Setting the stage

For another disaster.

Personal, political

The bitch gives birth

Little and large

We are all a part of tomorrow

Sorrows that stunt growth

A broken oath, a pact shattered

In denial.

THE SINGING LESSON

2011-12-13T12:51:00.000+02:00

A place of healing
A space for cleansing
A moment of reflection
A time for introspection.

Removed from the rush
And the mindless madness
No suspicion or fear
No heartless callousness.

A place of birdsong
A space to create
A time of expression
With no thought of aggression.

Removed from the stifling striving
And the endless slog,
Embraced by nature
Learning the Mother’s song.

IMMORTALITY

2011-12-13T12:49:00.000+02:00

Immortality my friends
Is not a reference to me
Of eternal life
Or never having to endure
Death:
No, immortality for me
Speaks of another state –
An altered fate
Where the love of the living
Lets our souls thrive;
Where the effect of giving
Sharing our honest expression
Keeps the love of the other
And the memories alive.

CAN YOU FEEL IT

2011-12-13T12:48:00.001+02:00

It’s late at night,
The laughter has dies down
Leaving behind just a nagging electric hum
And the sound of regular breathing;
Sleeping, drifting away.

So many thoughts to share
So many moments of inspiration
Such comfortable, comforting intimacy
So much said with fingers and eyes
So many words painting tender images.

Such intensity gazing out from within this moment
Looking into tomorrow’s future
Tomorrow’s smiles and tears
And the certain knowledge of continued laughter
Unselfconsciously with belly-aching abandon.

This day will become a new morning
That will turn into another night
Filled and fulfilled in the embrace
Of our time passing but lasting
Love growing old while staying young.

TALKING TO MYSELF

2011-12-13T12:48:00.000+02:00

I journeyed slowly at the whim of the wind
Leaving behind one true love
Just to be consumed by the other
Leaving behind the urban asylum
To be alone with my madness.

I arrived to the sound of birdsong
And the breeze caressing the leaves
Greeted by a warm smile and a handshake
And the truth of a soul’s eyes
Speaking kind words of welcome
To comfort a weary stranger.

And in a matter of days
That seemed to encompass many lifetimes
The soul is completely refilled
By the scream of Mother Nature’s silence
I am able to converse with myself.

THE CANINE CONDUCTOR

2011-12-13T12:47:00.000+02:00

In a lush green valley
Feet sinking into rich, black fertile earth
Leaves mottled yellow, red, turning brown
Drifting gently to brush the ground.

Khaki koppies capped with tufts of fragrant evergreen
Ancient rocks proudly displaying the cracking scars
The life giving muddy water flows after the rains
Sighing and grumbling along ancient riverbeds.

The wind-pumps are stilled
The leaves have stopped their whispered song
The grass is no longer dancing
Waiting for the orchestra to strike up its gusting refrain.

Then a solitary ray of sunshine
Warms the lands’ troubled heart
As all of life once again begins its chant
To the accompaniment of a lone dog’s bark.

SOMETIMES I CAN

2011-12-13T12:46:00.000+02:00

Can you imagine a world
Untouched by greed and destruction
Where every effort is a part
Of a greater, living art?

Can you imagine the other
A distant sister or brother
Without fear and prejudice
As someone to love and care for?

Can you imagine yourself
Living to fulfill a different role
That encompasses more than your own security
A life of purpose untainted by impurity?

Can you imagine how it would be
If every one of us was a leader
Unchained and unscarred by preconception
Conscious and creating all that can be imagined?

CONTAINED

2011-10-19T21:35:00.000+02:00

I’ve been imprisoned from the moment I was born: imprisoned by repressive laws and a barbarous system that has criminalized my existence, rendering me a fugitive in my dreams.

Cowardly thieves, sneaking around undercover of broad daylight with a righteous indignation and baying regiments of uniformed henchman who are deployed to silence the voices of dissent in the dead of night: the bloodlust will not be sated.

The oppression and murder were not enough, I had to be confined even further: regularly detained and occasionally arrested; interrogated and routinely tortured; humiliated and maimed. Murdered!

You thought that you could strip me of my soul by tearing off my clothes you tried to demolish my unwavering conviction that yours is the mind enchained.

Despite your relentless, tyrannical persecution, you fail to strip me of my humanity.

Broken and bleeding I embraced the cold concrete and steel; the pain and the imprisonment; you wondered when you saw me lying there then, you thought that I would break but I didn’t.

I was prepared.

I had been prepared ever since you enslaved my ancestors and detained my elders; kicking my mother and beating my father; I was prepared and it scared you further. You thought I would break but I wouldn’t.

The hours and days and years pass in the distance while I count out the seconds to the sound of your footsteps up and down the corridor.

It makes me smile.

I see you there deep inside your own demise, unable to leave; not thinking, just marking the passage of my every thought, imagining a better world; a world I know in which everyone is free and able to live and die with dignity.

And you do not even realize that you are there with me, in this prison and in my thoughts; you do not realize that it is you!

You who is not free to leave because your fear and your guilt and your mindless bigotry has enslaved you and made you ever vigilant, ever watching and unseeing!

I am released and you remain. Serving your time for a bastard father who is dead yet remains to demand your body and your blood and your thoughts and your soul: bowed to the dictate and demand of a despotic patriarch consumed by its own ravening will, being consumed.

And through your bars while you look at me maybe you’ll see the mother; maybe you’ll see another father with a child who is smiling as it points a tiny finger to the future.

I cannot believe that you did not realize that your laws and your jails and your boots and your guns would never again enslave me: the concrete and steel and razor-wire were never enough to restrain me; your plots and your schemes and your lies and false dreams never once fooled me.

I am the spirit of freedom, of equality and justice; I am woman and man, I am their child. I am greater than your futility and prejudice and violence; I am conscious, I am humanity and I will no longer be contained!

Nieu-Bethesda

2011-10-19T09:56:00.000+02:00

I seldom write poems about places

My poetry is inspired by the spaces

Seldom unique but always resonating

In my mind: with my soul.

Places are found in history and legend

Spaces we nurture in secret with a smile

And what it is for me is seldom what it is for you

Yet similar in what we profess to hold true.

The poems have been written

And the verses have been sung

The quiet, the calm, the peaceful charm,

The blanket of stars that don’t always shine.

I walk these paths now

Where a different history is mingled with the dust

Just faded clouds of memory in the distance

Changed and changing with every step.

This place is divided and set apart

The space is complete fulfilling this traveler’s heart

The people I’ve met whose smiles have touched

Beneath the surface there lurks so much.

So sad how many can gaze at beauty

With a jaundiced eye mired in iniquity

Perfection cannot exist in a bubble

Denial does not take away the trouble.

Yet hope perseveres in the flowing river

The crisp clean air and the humble giver

The stars that fill the firmament above

And the brilliant glow of selfless love.

So I thank you all as I find my place

Humble and honoured I share the space

Where the dreams of a hundred ghosts roam free

And the past and future are allowed to be.

LITTLE THINGS

2011-10-08T20:57:00.000+02:00

It’s the fleeting smile at the crack of dawn

Standing amongst the crush of commuters

On your way to a job that you really don’t like

And your thoughts are at home cuddled up in bed.

It’s that random act of kindness during the lunch hour rush

When you finally get to the front of the queue

Only to discover that your money is in your desk drawer

And a stranger ends up buying your lunch.

It’s an anonymous word of encouragement

Just when you are about to give up

That makes you dig deep into an untapped reserve

That sees you across the finishing line with a flourish.

It’s the look of understanding that bridges the divide

As you teeter on the brink of depression

Bringing relief amid the heartache and tears

And your soul’s sigh is transformed into a smile.

It’s the acknowledgement when you feel most unappreciated

The whispered words or the gentle touch

The phone call and the email or that letter in the mail

Or the jaunty knock of an unexpected visitor

It’s the hand of friendship and the compassion gesture

The simple little things that remind me that I am not alone.

INADEQUATE!

2011-10-07T13:35:00.001+02:00

Green is such an inadequate word

Unable to describe the colours I see before me

The adjectives and superlatives fail to capture;

The shades and hues are far too real to express

And when seen like this across a windswept spring-scape

The best I can do is say: “I wish you were here!”

One word is inadequate

Unable to describe the abundant nuances of the seemingly mundane

A whisper that can be described in a hundred different ways

Without ever conveying what was not said

And I look at everything happening around me

The best I can do is say: “I wish you could see this!”

Inadequate is the word that best describes

How we continually fail to perceive that our will has been reduced

Reduced to a race of unseeing watchers, mere spectators

Unable to embrace our potential for fear of failure

And I hear your facts and stats and scriptures and lies

The best I can do is say: “I wish you would think before you talk!”

All of these inadequate words

That fail to illuminate what could have been an adventure

Stringing sentences together like a chain-link handrail

To which we hold with all of our might

As we allow ourselves to be led, unthinking

Along a potholed path into the gloomy, treacherous future.

CAN I AFFORD IT?

2011-10-03T16:13:00.000+02:00

I was conceived in the blistering heat of the golden African sun; born beneath a celestial field of diamonds; with the silvery, full moon illuminating the darkness of a pristine nocturnal African landscape.

But I was raised and became another kind of man in the bowels of the earth, mining precious metals which seldom adorn the mantel above my hearth; the back-breaking labour under a yoke of tyranny to furrow and sow and reap a harvest that doesn’t fill my stomach; my life reduced to a disposable human resource in the employ of a brutal, relentless economy whose bounty is made tenable by my sweat; my future and the future of my children, sacrificed to secure success for strangers who will never know my name.

I cannot afford to own land; or build a home; yet I must pay for my child’s education: mostly I barely survive, but I do take comfort in the fact that there are so many who have even less than me and in that abject certainty I end up owning my lot and my suffering.

But with that harsh reality, comes an uncompromised clarity – a sensitivity.

Detached, I am able to really see. I am able to see myself for whom and what I really am; I see us all beyond the constricting confines of stereotype and statistics and an imposed identity that we are all constantly persuaded to assume: no longer am I just one of countless millions living below or upon the breadline, on the street or in a shack or a sub-standard block-house where the cold wind keens through the single chink in the night’s armour; the cracked and crumbling walls, frames with cardboard windows and beneath the leaning door.

I am able to see what is happening in the world, what is happening to our ailing humanity; I see what is going on and what has gone wrong; and while we fight these fragmented, meaningless wars against enemies and demons that we’ve been sold, there is another beast watching unseen – unseeing – gloating as its omnipotence swells, sustained by avarice and the wilful ignorance as we bare witness but miserably, doggedly doubt the veracity of the evidence. That we are the unthinking, suffragists that fuel the fires of this capitalist democracy that we inherited through negotiation between urbane warlords with their own interests at heart; a settlement in which small men have become leaders through coercion and corruption, ensuring that my lot remains unchanged.

I still warm my brittle bones under the golden African sun, I still lie prostrate beneath the celestial blanket of diamonds which is my forefathers’ gaze, upon the rich fertile soil: embracing all of my wealth; the irrepressible spirit of my African soul.

This African soil where the dust of my ancestral memory lies decaying with parents and sons and daughters, buried beneath the convenient text-book lies: the powdery flaking white-wash ineffectually trying to conceal the story of an age of African prosperity.

Sometimes as I watch you turn away – unable to face the facts – I wonder ‘what is the price I have to pay for your dignity?

“Can I afford it?”

TIME TO FEEL

2011-09-29T12:27:00.002+02:00

Rain clouds gather

Rolling from the horizon

Carried by a brisk, moist breeze

Ruffling the feathers of birds

A story being written.

No walls, no traffic

Just the sounds of abundant life

Without the cacophonous clamour

Of modern, city living

With pollutant smog.

Time to be

Time to feel

Space to breath and think

About the magic

Sitting beneath a tree.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS REVISITED IN THE 21ST CENTURY...

2011-09-24T20:36:00.000+02:00

1. God is supposed to have said: I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before me, you shall not make for yourself an idol…

Now imagine if your wife, or husband should say the same thing, what would you think?

I am your wife/husband, you will not look at other women/men, and you will not think that anyone else is more good looking or sexy than me!

2. Do not use the Lord’s name in vain…

Interpreted could mean: Don’t call me I’ll call you! / Don’t backchat! / Don’t even think about it!

3. Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy…

Stop drinking, tomorrow’s work!

4. Honour your father and your mother…

If you know who they are!

5. You shall not kill or murder…

Unless the MF deserves it or you have armed troops who can do it for you!

6. You shall not commit adultery…

Unless he/she is too damn hot and then make sure you are not caught and don’t take any diseases home with you. And don’t make more babies; and use a fucking condom!

7. You shall not steal…

Unless its public funds and or an African country’s natural resources and its people!

8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour…

Unless you have a couple of friends who are willing to bear false witness with you!

9. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife…

Unless she begs you and he is not at home; your neighbour’s husband on the other hand is a whole different kettle of fish altogether. And use a fucking condom!

10. You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbour…

So stop trying to keep up with the fucking Joneses!

2011-09-24T19:43:00.000+02:00

UNTIL SUCH TIME...

2011-09-22T22:02:00.000+02:00

Humanity is crippled

Limbs lying broken with shattered bones exposed

Ripped flesh, wounds gaping and rent

Spilled blood soaking the earth

Flaked skin blown away.

We turn away

Unable to comprehend

Not willing, refusing

To take it all in, to accept

We condone the raging hatred.

The words we use are of peace and love

Our actions the syntax of another idiom

An alternate tongue that informs our apathy

Forked and venomous, dangerous

Buried beneath tombs of a castrated knowledge.

Desensitized, cold and far removed

Looking in through the double-glazed glass

Not quite seeing the muted inaction

Breathing, the vapour, the curtains closed

Closed doors, closed minds, terminally unthinking.

Still-born, stunted thoughts un-living

The pretty decay of in-substance

Turning away again

Convinced that nothing’s happening

Dancing in a crowd after the band’s stopped playing.

Graceless epileptics’ grotesque antics

Twisting and twirling and scaring the children

Unwilling to stop or drop the baton

Unable to do what really matters

Un-named, unconscious and faceless.

Not willing, not able

Unthinking, not stable

Holding desperately onto outdated views

A concept of faith that’s intrinsically skewed

Believing the lies while the executioner smiles.

Until such time that we all wake up; that we all face up

To the unavoidable fact that we’re just playing bit parts in a terminal farce

Fulfilling our roles with a gormless aplomb while humanity dies around us

We will continue to look at real life as if it’s a screen-saver

Pointing a crooked finger at an indistinct reflection, convinced that its entertainment.

"What is this place?" - From The Exodus Motel...

2011-09-19T22:12:00.000+02:00

Sarge : Officially this place doesn't have a name, everyone just calls it ERF twenty-seven, but I like to think of it as the Exodus Motel. Don't you like the sound of it? The Exodus Motel... It sounds like the title of a movie or something, right? (HE CHUCKLES AND TAKES OUT A CIGARETTE.)

Braam : Please blow the smoke the other way, I don't smoke...

Sarge : (HE EXHALES IN BRAAM'S DIRECTION) Sure thing captain...

Braam : (SWIPING TO CLEAR THE AIR) Why do you call this place the exodus motel?

Sarge : Exodus, a noun meaning a departure of many people. Motel, a noun meaning a roadside hotel for motorists; you mean you can't put one and one together?

Braam : (HE FROWNS CONFUSEDLY FOR A MOMENT.) I don't understand...

Sarge : Well obviously, it’s not quite a motel in that you are not exactly a motorist right now, but I sort of like the whole roadside reference...

Braam : What are you talking about?

Sarge : The Exodus Motel, the last stop on the road to your destiny! That's almost pure poetry for you...

Gwi tells Sasha about Love - Gwi's Version of Why he had to Retire on the Thirteenth Morning....

2011-09-16T23:41:00.000+02:00

“Everyone deserves to find happiness my dove, but it is pure foolishness to expect to find it through someone else. It’s the same with love; everyone always says how much they love whoever else, but no one actually can tell you exactly what they mean because the whole concept of being in love is pure vanity. “

“That’s a bit harsh.”

“Not really if you think about it. I mean take the words I love you. If you break it down, you can write an autobiographical thesis about just who ‘I’ is. Only then can you move on to love because love doesn’t exist autonomously somewhere out there; it only exists within the individual. So without a true knowledge of the self to begin with, you cannot even begin to define what love is and what it means to love or to be in love. And then, after all of that, you have to start from the very beginning to get to know the person you claim to be in love with. It’s insane and quite presumptuous to even begin to imagine that it is truly possible to remove your own needs and wants so much that it is not a defining part of any relationship. I mean you don’t say to someone, you are loved by me: you say I love you. I first, then you afterwards: that’s just how it is.”

Excerpt from Gwi's Version of why he had to Retire on the Thirteenth Morning...

2011-09-16T10:21:00.002+02:00

And so the lost souls arrive at the gate without a clue. Bereft of substance and presence, desperate for answers which only they can provide and yet they persist with their futile enquiries. Has it always been like this? How sad; how sorry: what is life without the certain prospect of death? And yet it remains a surprise to the unsuspecting fools, these corruptors of words who remain fumbling in the dark because they cannot explain what it is that they think or feel with all of their pretty words dressed up in their deceptive Sunday best. And I must just be patient, lest I in my haste condemn their souls to eternal damnation.

SILVER AND GOLD

2011-09-13T23:13:00.001+02:00

The day fades unhurriedly

To the accompaniment of a riotous avian symphony

While the setting sun explodes

Its crimson hues violently tainting the clouds

The breeze expires, finally exhausted

A cacophonous quiet embracing the dying day.

Like the dawn, the dusk is a time of reflection

A time given to a different calm, of contemplation

But the mother tonight has different designs

As from behind a hill with a wisp of cloud there rises

On the Eastern horizon a silvery, gold-tinted moon.

Smiling demurely like a self-conscious lover, teasing

Delicate, revealing, suggestive charms; the night’s eye watching.

COURAGEOUS COWARDS

2011-09-11T20:08:00.000+02:00

The willfully ignorant

Opinionated and ill-informed

Soullessly faithful

The blinkered believers

Deceptively constructed

The arrogantly educated

Rhetorically intelligent

The conversational acrobats

The guiltless jugglers

Socially irresponsible

Thoughtless fakes

Mindless followers

The unquestioning masses

The unthinking public

Blissfully unconcerned

Endlessly forgiving

Pathetically accepting

The foolishly brave

Collectively audacious

Separately bowed

Individually impotent

The grinning shadows

The skeletal remains

A crippled society

Singularly unjust

Blindly intolerant

Complacently complicit

Courageous cowards

Selfishly inhumane.

BRUTHERS EN SUSTERS...

2011-09-09T22:56:00.002+02:00

Bruda’s en susta’s

Ons sit hier en bek verkoep

Nog one-way bymekaa met die ding

Wat moet sukkel om te kan is.

Ek en djy is mos vol gedagtes

Ma’ eintlik is ons koppe kla’ vrot

Met al die kak wat ons gesien het

En al daai’s waa’ die oë toe was.

Tong en lip is nog altyd’ie n bewystuk nie

Die ouens sal volraak met jou trap

En daar waar djy ‘n nwata dala

Sal ek jou nogal reg help.

Want alles kom op een ding nee

Die laaities se liewens wat ons raak.

The end of the tale...

2011-09-09T16:56:00.000+02:00

And as the first draft of this Tale of Extra Ordinary Madness draws to its conclusion and my time here in Nieu Bethesda draws to a close, I am already dreading the return to the city.

Just this afternoon I was walking with Spooky and Gump - my walking companions - as the sun was setting with the sound of the wind in the trees, the rustle of leaves, birdsong, geese and chickens; a wind pump, the water flowing steadily in the furrow; timeless and soothing.

Soon all of this will be just a memory and I thought about the constant, furious, cacophonous rush and fearful vigilance of life in the city and my soul sighed with the wind.

My last few weeks here will be filled with a sad nostalgia for the beauty that I have been privileged to be a part of. The people, the children, the souls' calm. Talk of stock theft and petty crime will be replaced by sirens and burglar bars and the constant fear. No more moonlit walks, no more silence, no more tranquility. Just the rush...

WHERE DO I BEGIN / THANK YOU

2011-09-08T22:16:00.000+02:00

Often life’s journey presents so much more

Than all the anticipation; exceeding every expectation

More even than can be conjured by my most vivid imagination

Such is the case within this landscape which I now traverse

Which has served to restore my faith in the universe.

I came to this place with a singular focus

Intent that nothing would detract from my purpose

To record a tale of my own mad creation

A tale of pain and triumph; a story of this nation

I travelled alone, companioned only by my own jaded preconception.

From the moment that I arrived I was made to feel at home

Here where a part of my soul will now always reside

A solitary wanderer but no longer alone

Amidst the silence and birdsong and the freedom to be

Amongst strangers, no longer, where I could just be me.

And from that very first moment I’ve been struggling to put down

The words that would suitably express my heartfelt gratitude

My deepest, humble appreciation of your kindness

For having had the honour and the pleasure

For having been granted this opportunity to be a part of this beauty.

And still the words fail to convey all that I feel

So instead I will just say my Thank You to you now

For your open arms and the bounty of your hearts

For sharing your lives and your love and the ready laughter

But thank you most of all for your honesty and being all of you.

DESIRE'S SPEECH - FROM 'WAITING'

2011-09-06T23:05:00.002+02:00

(STANDS AND BEGINS TO CARESS THE DRAPE BEFORE TYING THE FIRST KNOT) Men believe that they are the stronger sex. (SNORTS DERISIVELY) They believe that they have to go through life conquering anything and everything with their dicks. Look at what’s happening in the world – in fact think back on what’s been happening all along. Men have been running the show for forever and look where it’s left us; wars, ignorance, hatred, poverty, suffering and the ever present fear. Most of the time, they are all delusional and yet they believe that they are wise and powerful. Fucking arseholes! They wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between night and day if they were not told. They really think that they are Kings but the truth is… Women are Goddesses and our vaginas are the altars at which men bow down and pray. (PAUSE) When I was just a little girl, life decided to teach me one of the most valuable lessons that I would ever learn. I had to sacrifice my virginity and my innocence to a stranger who turned around and told me that it was my fault that he had to rape me. (DERISIVE LAUGHTER) Sometimes life’s lessons are sweet and endearing, but most of the time, the things we are taught are cruel and heartless. I learned that no matter how powerful men may think they are, women are even more powerful because we are the mothers and nurturers of creation.

EVEN WHEN I DIE

2011-09-05T10:18:00.000+02:00

The band is still playing

Even though some of the musicians are dead

The melody is unchanged

While the harmonies soar instead.

We dance closer than ever

Every pore receptive to the sentient certainty

Of the immortal accord of this love that cannot die

An immortal love that embraces this mortal union.

Your skin burns beneath my fingers

My tongue tracing poetry upon your body

Your ragged breath, the primal groan and your unerring gaze

A minor harmonic trio at the heart of this sensory symphony.

Our beings emptied, drained and refilled complete

Two parts of a single soul once again abounding

The past and the future crystallized in the perpetual moment

The present, an ubiquitous ideal; assiduous perfection.

HOCUS-POCUS

2011-09-01T23:11:00.000+02:00

The tooth fairy and the Easter bunny

Sat drinking one night in a bar

When Santa Claus walked in with a swagger

Already drunk and disorderly and itching for a fight

After Snow White had given him shit again

Because she felt guilty that she had been with Mowgli

And Casper the barman had to raise his voice

To calm things down as Jesus walked in with Goldilocks on his arm.

Outside the dwarves were on their knees

And the giants with their swords held high

Were mowing them down left and right

While the sun and the moon were having high tea

And the king was fucking the queen’s daughter

Behind the farmer’s barn while the cows looked on disapprovingly

Asking each other what had become of the world

When even the raindrops were falling skyward.

When I grow up in a million years

I’d want to be an ophthalmologist at night

And during the day I am going to be a conjuror

I’ll charge all the near-sighted followers exorbitant sums

To open their eyes so that they can see

That all the hocus-pocus that they claim to believe

Has been designed to keep them blind and dumb

Like the animals on the farm who live together in harmony.

HANOVER PARK

2011-08-30T22:53:00.002+02:00

Daa’ loep Tiema, sy’s wee’ met die lyf

Windjie waai en mince haa’ kuif

Voete’s vaal van al ‘ie loep

Winkel toe om brood te koep.

Die kinnetjies speel buite by die blok

Pa het lankal uitgeklok

Hy’t ee’ste uitgegooi op die hoek

Lekke’ líewe, vríet net koek

Kan’tie sy naam was heel tyd in die boek

Te veel mense het hom ve’vloek

Nou is Tiema stok-siel allíen

Soek ‘n burk om míen te spíen.

Wan’ die líewe is swaa’

Al’dou is djy waa’

Die sukkel hou nie op nie

Soe o’s drink ma’ nog ‘n doppie

Gevríet net ma wee’ in die sand

En hulle sê is o’s land

Soe ‘it is mos o’right om kak te vríet

Drown die sorrows en ve’dríet

Totdat die ouens wee’ begin’e skiet

En nog ‘n laaitie moet al wee’ djiet

Mang toe as hy lucky is

Onder die grond en weg met die lus.

Die Droomdief

2011-08-30T22:47:00.000+02:00

Developed with the pupils from the

Lettie de Klerk Primary School Arts Project

in Pienaarsig Nieu Bethesda.

Die Droomdief is a work-shopped children’s play that will be performed by the pupils of the Lettie de Klerk Primary School Arts Project which is a voluntary community outreach project coordinated and facilitated by Michael Wentworth. The story was developed over a period of four weeks with the participants in the Saturday drama component of the project. The cast is comprised of students between the ages of 9 and 11 who are currently in grades 4 to 6.

HIE’SA

2011-08-30T10:21:00.000+02:00

Van hie’ bo

Lyk die hele spot befok

Me’nie liggies en skuitjies

Daa’ver.

Van hie’ bo

Klink die hele spot befok

Me’nie shoesh en toet-toet

Daa’ ver.

Van hie’ bo

Voel die hele spot befok

Me’nie space en kalmte

Daa’ ver.

Van hie’ bo

Is ‘it ma’ o’right.

THE VOW

2011-08-29T19:03:00.000+02:00

Now we are not alone

What has been is no more

Today is the seed

Tomorrow but its fruit.

Now we embrace the all

We’ve each claimed to love

Little nuances previously ignored

Becomes a part of the whole.

In words I’ve failed to convey

Exactly what it is I feel

I’ve accepted you until death

With love steeped in years.

Now I say I love you

And I hope that you understand.

WARTS AND ALL

2011-08-28T10:32:00.000+02:00

I come to you with my life

Energy oozing from my very pores

I am all in thought

A struggling manifestation of the will.

Far have you wandered and wide

Self preserving you searched

For an unreality that blinds

Lost to all that you have found.

We share fragile moments

When I am someplace else

And you with someone not present

We play the same sad games.

I am this that I so vehemently indulge

And you are no longer with me.

MONDAY THE TWENTY-FORTH

2011-08-26T09:41:00.000+02:00

Tense moments conceived within

The miserable confines of ill-content

Desperately do I yearn for release

From this life that binds me.

And even the moving euphoria

Seems reduced in the face of such longing

The means seem pathetic

As I shed these silent tears.

Don’t just hold me

Take me away from all of the denial

Wounded hearts and diluted smiles

That shade such balmy days.

There has to be other paths

There has to be a new day!

1994

2011-08-24T08:13:00.001+02:00

After all this time

All the crap I’ve been through

Means nothing in your eyes

But the further denial of myself.

IMPOSSIBLE

2011-08-23T07:44:00.003+02:00

To have you now

Here with me for a talk

Is as ridiculous as it ever seemed.

I’ve journeyed vast plains

Only to find upon my return

That the experience is negligible.

I must regress a thousand thoughts

To share an empty laugh

With the friends I left behind.

I see them clearly

But they fail to perceive me

Beyond the confines of their unreason.

Within this crowded space

I am most alone

Touched only by the pathetic resignation.

BV's Blues

2011-08-22T09:30:00.000+02:00

In the serrated midnight shadows

A man stares at the moon on the wall

A single star burns the neck of his guitar

Leaving a mark of what should have been.

Fingers that dance in the moonshine

A face drawn with pain

He carries the mark of his experience

Creativity pours through his veins.

An ancient eastern harmony

Plays on the anxious silence

Thoughtful tones conjure images of wonder

As his song splits the night.

All that has been has brought you here

All that will come keeps you around

One day the loss will turn to riches

And the passion will fill the memory.

Still you must finger those strings

In which your being vibrates

A self washed by yearning

For that which lies deep in your soul.

And now your plight is understood

Now we have met in this denial

Uttering sounds that colour our tomorrows

Making music the world will hear.

One day soon it will come to pass

When brooding desires will be fulfilled

As a result of a chance encounter

With Brian’ies blues.

Love & Beauty

2011-08-16T19:52:00.002+02:00

The trouble is, they say, that the systems are at fault; the government is corrupt and disinterested, bloated with officials who are just serving their own self interest, enriching themselves and those closest – loyal – to them; that party politics should not be a part of local government; that the opposition caters to a middle-class elite and is weak.

I call that a victim mentality: and while adults choose to succumb to this way of thinking, our Nation’s children – the world’s children – become victims of greed and stupidity and cowardice!

How cold is the heart that doesn’t feel joy at the sound of a child’s unbridled laughter? How cold is the heart that is not moved to tears at the sound of a child’s anguished cry? How much love can you show to those closest to you when you have no love for a stranger: when your heart is filled with hatred and prejudice? How cold is your heart?

True beauty exists in a child’s smile; true love is when you can open your heart to a child you never met before, a child whom you will never see again: someone else’s child who for the briefest moment is as important as your own – is your own!

Until such time, you have neither loved nor experienced beauty!

RECOLLECTIONS OF LOVE

2011-08-11T12:59:00.003+02:00

I recall the first time we met

It was a windy autumn, mid-week morning

Your eyes shining, your smile true

Your voice, your hair and the most beautiful peasant skirt

Because its fabric caressed your body.

I recall the first time we made love

Urgent and lustful; yet whispering and tender

A perfect kiss immersed in the deep well of our being

Our bodies entwined, our souls’ dance explored

A fateful union consummated, living complete.

I recall the first time we were apart

I was home with another that ended too late

And then it was you in the arms of the other

Yet we danced still, sad and hopeful, flirting

With thoughts and dreams of a different time.

I recall the first kiss again

Steeped in years of unexpressed desire and emotion

Allowed for just a moment to live enough

To be able to reignite the smouldering passion

Giving substance to these recollections of love.

NINE...

2011-08-10T12:00:00.000+02:00

Hello…

I wonder if the cycle is complete

Whether the act has meaning

How much of the routine is real?

An extension of quiet indulgence

Without any obvious scenes

The motions of something bigger

Than just you and me.

Wretched longing what do I feel

More refreshing disillusion

In which to steep intent

Here where the moon shines in a glass.

The left foot is amid the living

And the right waltzes with death

As I straddle the void

While the system rapes me.

I am here now mommy...

2011-08-08T19:50:00.000+02:00

There was a time as a little child a long time ago, when all I yearned for was the undivided and unreserved love of my mother.

For many years as I grew up, that one need served to define who I was becoming back then. It defined my desires and my choices and the inevitable consequences; but I grew up and I became this that I am.

Many, many years later again – after I lost my mother and my morals – I finally came to realize that I was never a consequence, but I am a cause: I have caused so much.

Pain and laughter and loss and gain.

Now just about to turn forty-two I return again to my mother’s side. Now she is frail and needing: she is what she finds so hard to admit. She is a lousy mother but she remains a great woman even in her frail humility.

Today she thanked me for a simple gesture – a gesture that I would make a million times over, just for that one moment never before lived: that unadorned ‘thank you my boy’ said so simply, so true. I thank you too mother. I thank you for the woman you are and probably always were – for the human being you’ve become: for the mother you never were - not to me or them or any of us; but the mother you are. And now this cherished moment – this love of the children for you our mother is unique.

Now I can truly dedicate my life and my work to this extended moment I share with you. All of the past is forgotten yet so acutely remembered: so beautifully crystallized into a moment that I will always hold dear; while I was here, while I am near to you now mom: I love you…

RILE ME UP!

2011-08-05T10:36:00.000+02:00

I’m not sure what makes me angrier:

The fact that wars are still being fought

Provoked by men with ulterior motives and security details

Mass murderers who speak of peace with blood on their hands

Inciting their flock with tales of ancient gripes

In this age of supposed enlightenment;

Or the fools with the guns in their hands.

I’m not sure what makes me more despondent:

The fact that supposedly educated people

Still believe in the ancients’ fairytales of a flat-earth prophecy

Who spoke of love from pulpits of greed and hatred

Duping congregations of apathetic victims with eyes tightly shut

Praying earnestly to dead gods and decayed messiahs;

Or the complicit complacency of the conscious.

I’m not sure what makes me feel more murderous:

The fact that these fat-cat politicians can still so easily deceive their constituents

In their flashy suits spewing a mindless, stock-phrased rhetoric

With pudgy and groping, manicured hands profiteering from poverty

Unconcerned in their landscaped suburbs hidden behind impenetrable walls

Condemning the critics and criticizing the condemned;

Or the masses who buy the lies each time.

I’m not sure what makes me more disgusted:

The fact that these corporate giants with their PR teams

Can market their wholesale destruction with sophisticated ads in glossy mags

Making us feel as if our lives are not complete if we don’t aspire

To acquire whatever package deal they have put together

In their sweatshops and factories by low-paid casual labour;

Or the buying public who worship the brands.

I’m not sure what makes me more pessimistic:

The honest racist who will share their last bread

But from an old, stained cracked bowl

Or the lying liberal stuck in a new age Aquarian mould,

The rich who don’t care or the poor who don’t dare

Fairytale religions and theoretical systems or the general inaction;

But the one thing I do know is that this state of affairs riles me up!

NO CHANGE AGAIN...

2011-08-04T23:23:00.003+02:00

Tenderly I am overcome

Inhaling the majestic, wind-swept landscape

Splashed by these harsh, magical hues

The moist afternoon seems calm.

A briefly frustrating suspension

The vague hint of a blur receding

The near immaculate isolation regained

Within this blossoming vision.

Tremulously caught up in this mindful oblivion

The promise of a consummate companion strolling by

Enticingly seductive within its own allure

Of which I will never been a part.

Greenish-yellow birds hop across the red earth

Grayish-white clouds pass ominously above.

DON'T TELL ME ABOUT PEACE

2011-08-04T09:48:00.000+02:00

Please don’t get me wrong because I am not a racist

I have had many friends of all colours over the years

I believe that we are all people

But I don’t go and visit with blacks and coloureds

Because we are just not the same.

Please don’t misunderstand me because I am not prejudiced

I treat everyone equally irrespective of where they are from

I believe that we should all be able to work for a living

But these foreigners should have stayed in their own countries

Because they are taking money from the poor.

Please don’t think I am like every other man because I am not chauvinist

I’ve never raised my hand to anyone in my life

I believe we all have our roles to play

But a woman must know her place in society

Because I work hard to put food on the table everyday.

Please don’t accuse me of fraud just because I am taking my share

I have never stolen a cent from anyone in my life

I believe we should all be able to work and live with dignity

But creating jobs and building houses takes time

Because there’s too many poor people who need help.

Please don’t assume that I don’t care about anyone else

I always give to the needy if, what and when I can

I believe that no one should suffer or go hungry

But these people should begin to realize that they have it easy

Because they at least don’t have debts or overdrafts and loans to repay.

Please don’t tell me that it’s all because of history

I can imagine what it must have been like for you

I believe that apartheid was wrong and I’m sorry

But it’s been over for almost three decades now and we have to move on

Because nowadays we are all equal and we can’t keep blaming the past.

Please don’t suggest that it’s my fault that you have no hope

I didn’t vote the ANC into power or make these new laws

I believe in the rainbow nation and a better future for all

But you can’t blame me when your new government is corrupt

Because I just want my family to be safe and to live in peace.

THE DAUGHTER'S SECRET

2011-08-03T18:40:00.002+02:00

She’s so much closer now

And yet it seems the same as before

I’ve seen her but was unable to speak

About how I can love alone.

The distance is reduced

Yet the wall remains impenetrable

I’ve said it all and have no voice

As I wait frustrated for a sign.

The high is suspended in its upward surge

A daunting perpetuation of yesterday’s woes

I sit balancing on the precipice

Preserved by an ailing hope.

Child of my soul speak to me

Let me know the secret of your heart.

Untitled # 9 - Or Just Shit Poets!

2011-08-02T18:15:00.000+02:00

Gone, up high and away

This vast moment

Left terminally behind

Confined it seems by this day.

The conversation becomes a cacophony

Purged by the alien, ethnic sounds

Released I soar high

Above the physical indulgence.

I reach out and breathe the dawn

I drink the morning dew

Refreshed I return briefly

To this smoke-filled room.

Verbal diarrhea also stinks

Spewed forth from the sewers of thought.

VIR'IE BOYS

2011-08-02T14:42:00.000+02:00

Elke wíek ko’ ek hie’

Ampe’ asof ‘ie Allah my stuu’

Om van sy laaities te ko’ míet

Om vi’ julle wys te maak van ‘n different beat.

Elke wíek ko’ lee’ ek self nog ‘n stukkie

Of om vi’ ieman te gíe, ‘n klein gelukkie

En ‘ie gel’ wat ek betaal wor’t

Is at all times ‘n bietjie short.

Elke wíek ko’ míet ek nog ‘n gedagte

Party ko’ soema met ‘n klagte

But die hele ding is o’s praat met ease

En daai is ‘ie ding wat vi’ my die míeste please.

Elke wíek ko’ raak ek wys met julle

En as o’s break ‘an roek o’s lang twak pille

And my heart is empty when I’m ill

Wan’ ja’r op ‘n ja’r, julle raak my siel.

Elke wíek wil ek vi’ julle sê

Al’dou is ‘ie pad nog vi’ baie soe vê’

On’hou ‘rie dinge wat ek praat en bly ste’k

Wan’ aan ‘ie voo’kan’ wag nog baie we’k.

Kyk altyd die trap agte’ ‘rie trap en boekan’ ‘ie lyn

En woega me’ daai gedagte in jou brein.

For all the youth at Hawequa Juvenile Detention Center but especially those with whom I have had the pleasure of working and who have managed to touch my life so deeply – Salute my bra’s!

Untitled # 6

2011-08-01T21:01:00.002+02:00

Token concern

From within your involvement

Lying eyes

That will not cry.

Hustling again

Some more cheap thrills

Amount to nothing

More than a wasted moment.

Idle indulgence

As I lie with you

Unfulfilled disinterest exposed

As we all strive to survive.

Untitled # 3

2011-08-01T11:03:00.003+02:00

All the trash is swept away

Only tiny, floating insects

And twittering birds remain

To speak of beauty.

Naked I sit on the mountain

Caressed by the sun and wind

I see the city passing by

On its way to the weekend.

To have been the first man here

To have gazed across the virgin land

To have been a dream in the forest

That is now covered by this haze.

The ground wails its wordless lament

Beware the beast among us!

Untitled # 2

2011-07-31T11:25:00.000+02:00

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

2011-07-29T17:08:00.000+02:00

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

2011-07-29T02:42:00.000+02:00

“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...

2011-07-28T11:53:00.000+02:00

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

2011-07-27T23:07:00.002+02:00

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

2011-07-27T23:02:00.000+02:00

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

2011-07-26T23:55:00.000+02:00

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...

2011-07-24T15:21:00.002+02:00

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...

2011-07-22T20:21:00.002+02:00

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

2011-07-17T13:20:00.000+02:00

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...

2011-07-16T17:20:00.000+02:00

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

2011-07-16T17:15:00.002+02:00

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...

2011-07-14T21:38:00.002+02:00

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 ...

2011-07-13T20:06:00.000+02:00

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

2011-07-12T21:35:00.000+02:00

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...

2011-07-11T21:37:00.002+02:00

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...

2011-07-09T23:10:00.000+02:00

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...

2011-07-07T07:55:00.000+02:00

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.

A TALE OF EXTRA ORDINARY MADNESS - Chapters 1 - 4 (First Draft)

2011-07-06T15:32:00.000+02:00

A TALE OF

EXTRA ORDINARY

MADNESS

A novel by Mikey DW

Part One

Chapter One

I’ve been teaching myself to breath properly. In here the air is polluted by industrial-strength disinfectant and deadly noxious fumes that infiltrate from the chaotic world of terminal progress out there. To fill my lungs defiles my body. These mucoid follicles have been awakened to their true purpose. After a lifetime of proscription I have become a stranger to my own being; no longer familiar with the function and purpose of something as basic as the hair in my nostrils. I practice all the time, slow, shallow breaths; giving the hair in my nose time to perform its function, to filter the pollutant toxins from the oxygen. The air I eventually take in is cleaner; filtered. In this way I am able to prolong my life just that little bit with every inhalation: one breath at a time.

I try not to move about much. It’s all about economy of movement – low entropy: and breathing. Sometimes it takes a day to write a single word. Painstaking!

Sometimes the air is so foul that I have to exercise extra caution; extra slow, extra shallow breaths. Inhale… Pause. Exhale…

I’ve even learned how to exercise without moving. Isolating muscles and body parts: envisioning the function and purpose, slowly tensing… pause... relaxing, tensing… repeatedly: crown, forehead, ears, eyes, cheeks, jaw, neck, shoulders… slow, methodical, relentlessly. Right down to my toes; each and every one individually; and breathing, I’ve never been in better physical condition; primed, toned. Vital!

I’m a State President’s Patient, a ward of the state; waiting out the days until… Well, until I no longer need to wait in here, until I can wait wherever I choose. I’ve forgotten how long I’ve been here. Many, many months or a few years; I’ve forgotten so many little things, important things; but at least I remember that I have forgotten. At least I don’t think that the things that I have forgotten didn’t exist. That much I can remember. So many things did happen!

Where is ‘here’ you may wonder and the truth is that ‘here’ is a cell between the past and the prospect of a future. The doctors insist that it’s not a cell though. They prefer referring to it as a private room or sometimes they slip up and call it a ward.

I am a State President’s Patient in a madhouse! A psychiatric or mental hospital, a loony bin, a lunatic asylum; call it what you want, but I know that this is a prison and I am in a cell.

I am kept in isolation because the last time they had me amongst the other ‘patients’ – I call us inmates because it more honestly reflects our state of not being, in ‘here’ – I had an adverse effect on some of them. I used to drive them nuts. And I bit someone’s finger off. He pointed at me and called me mad. No-one likes to be called mad, especially not by someone who really is mad! He was a raving lunatic of a Christian who wanted to preach to me about the error of my ways. Maybe nothing would have happened if he was an inmate like me, but he was an outsider, a priest who used to visit every Wednesday morning. No more pointing from the pulpit for him.

I was judged a long time ago to be clinically insane, unable to stand trial for a crime I had committed knowingly and with absolute premeditation, and so when I amputated the priest’s finger – a man who had entered this godforsaken place at his own risk –he could do absolutely nothing about the loss of his digit, and I remain beyond reproach.

Now I am kept in isolation: isolated from every semblance of living. The days are marked by tasteless steamed meals and a 40 minute reprieve from this cramped cell to shower and exercise in a courtyard with eight foot high concrete walls topped with barbed wire. In the beginning I used to walk for half an hour and shower for ten minutes, but now I just shower for forty minutes because I exercise in my cell: unmoving and unmoved.

The official routine is soul numbing: woken by a siren at quarter to six, but I am always already awake because I cannot sleep; in the distance, the sound of an oversized key being slammed with a practiced clank into an oversized metal door, jackboot footsteps echoing down the corridors.

More doors are unlocked, the sound gradually getting louder, closer until the door beyond the gate is flung open by an orderly accompanying a doctor and a nurse – two male warders and one female – all with a similar primordial gait; or maybe it’s a swagger.

The orderly looks in, says “one” which the nurse writes down and the doctor nods his assent as if the other less-learned accomplice could have been wrong. They leave the door open. The barred gate remains locked. The sound of the headcount gradually recedes with its jackboot precision and just before it disappears, another oversized key clanks in another oversized lock and the food trolley squeaks into the maximum security section.

Its progress is slower, more menacing, delivering its ration of lumpy porridge laced with copper sulfate and a spoon measure of sugar which you could either have with your coffee, making it too sweet or with the porridge which would remain bitter without any salt anyway. Squeak, squeak, squeak pause: breath.

Eventually the trolley arrives with its un-orderly-warder and two less deranged inmates who were in fact once out-patients who had been around for so long that they had been employed. A shiny metal bowl with rounded edges and a spoon without any handle is unceremoniously shoved through the barred gate with an expert twist that happens so fast that the porridge doesn’t even realize that it should fall before it is through and leveled once again. No eye contact, no greeting, no thanks. I just eat the sugar with some water to wash it down.

Squeak, squeak, squeak, pause: breath. They gradually recede and when they turn the corner I in turn flip my bowl through the bars and pour the coffee over the porridge before sliding it across the corridor to my neighbour Reus – a giant of a man, more than a hundred and twenty kilograms of pure muscle and menace – an ex-recce, a member of one of the most feared battalions in the old South African Defense Force.

Minutes pass before another door opens with less threat and the medication trolley rattles along with an almost gay jangle of bottles and pills. Jingle-jangle, stop, silence; jingle-jangle stop, silence and as they get closer the whispered consultation becomes barely-audible: monosyllabic, clipped enquiries dispensing another dose of numbed calm. A plastic thimble containing a cocktail of drugs referenced and noted on a clipboard, and another filled with water. I’ve stopped trying to avoid taking their daily dose of pretty pink and blue capsules of madness because their response is to tie you down and inject the psychotic concoction into your treacherously welcoming veins. Instead I have learned to vomit without making a sound.

By eight o’clock everything is silent, or as near to silent as an asylum can ever get. Sometimes Reus will tell me about his past. Hoary tales about the state sanctioned murder that was his bread and butter. The strange part is that Reus is not and never was a racist. He never condoned the Nationalist ideology. He was simply living out his dream of being an Apache, straight off the pages of his favourite childhood Louis L’Amore novels and fifties Western movies.

I’d stand or lie down and go through my exercise routine without offering any response: breathing; tensing, relaxing, waiting – constantly preparing for the day when I would be released from this hellish vacuum filled with the murmurs and groans and screams and crying of grown men and women desperate to be understood.

It’s strange that this state-subsidized psychology doesn’t have room for any understanding beyond their voluminous text books though. There is just a blind-eyed observation and a predictable preconception that is presented as analysis – psycho-analysis no less – and no other views and opinions are entertained. Nice and neat; regular, ordered and straight. Just like the corridors and the window sills and beds; the walls, floors, tiles and the needles: even the rounded bars are straight. The only visible curve is at the top of the oversized keyhole that stares back at me unblinking. Sometimes I stare back without blinking; thinking about how easy it was for the psychiatrists and the magistrate to determine my fate.

I have been locked away so that everyone could feel safer and yet they don’t; they can’t because inevitably I will be released along with almost everyone here to make place for another man or woman who thinks sufficiently different to be deemed mad.

The day passes slowly, lunch at eleven, my scheduled shower at two and dinner at three before being counted and locked away for the night at four thirty. Only Thursday’s are different. On Thursday I spend an hour with my doctor.

Chapter Two

My name is Marmaduke Malgas and contrary to what may seem obvious to some, I was not named after some stuck-up, brutish British colonizer. I was named because of one.

My mother was born and raised on a farm in the Overberg called Verdwaaldraai.

At the age of fifteen, she left home to work on a neighbouring farm which had been bought by the Duke of Bedford.

Cascade Manor was situated between Paarl and Franshoek in a Kloof at the foot of the Limitberg with a picturesque waterfall cascading over a cliff just behind the farmhouse. The Duke had over the space of a few years turned the farm with its rotting vineyards into a flourishing concern, growing apricots, olives and Buchu.

The original farmhouse was demolished and a magnificent country manor was built fit for the Duke and his family. My mother arrived at the manor in 1952 where one of her aunts had been working as a servant since the family moved to South Africa in 1948.

My mother was an attractive, full figured young girl with a dimpled smile and bright, gray-green eyes that twinkled invitingly when she was excited. She had kinky red-brown hair and high, soft rounded cheekbones with a golden-caramel complexion that most men found irresistible: and as it turned out, the Duke was no different from most men. Within days of her arrival the Duke set his sights on the attractive new girl and felt the first stirrings of an irrepressible desire in his loins. The Duke was an adventurous man with adventurous appetites and he soon devised a plan to entice the delectable young woman to share her ample charms with him in the privacy of the stables. What the unsuspecting Duke could never have imagined was that my mother – for all of her unsophisticated naivety – was more than a match for his carnal cravings.

The young Mary-Anne was experienced beyond her years with a lack of inhibitions and an equally irrepressible sexual appetite that left the Duke dazed and desperate, craving for more. Their illicit liaison became increasingly adventurous and while the Duchess and their children went to Cape Town for their regular dose of culture and sophistication, the Duke would invite May-Anne into his matrimonial bed for steamy nights of adulterous passion that didn’t even begin to satisfy his unbridled lust.

Within weeks the rest of the staff started talking about the new nymphomaniac servant who was constantly at the beck-and-call of the Duke who quickly developed the habit of sending for her at all hours of the day and night; but miraculously, word of their affair never reached the Duchess’s ears.

After two months however, my mother realized that she was pregnant and in order to avoid the inevitable scandal, the Duke asked my mother to return home with a handsome ‘little something’ to take care of the regretful inconvenience and my mother agreed amicably knowing that the scandal would hurt her family as much as it would tarnish his immaculate imperial reputation.

Early in 1953, my mother gave birth to a beautiful baby girl whom she named Penelope – after the Duchess – and she settled into her role as a single mother with only an occasional longing for the steamy passion she had so unrestrainedly shared with the Duke.

Eventually in 1955 she married Bartholomew Malgas who had recently started teaching in the nearby town of Jakoebsdal and less than a year later they had a second daughter whom they named Elizabeth.

Bartholomew proved to be a diligent, hardworking teacher; a faithful, God fearing husband and a solicitous, if somewhat distracted father to his two young daughters. Over the years he was steadily promoted until in 1969 when my mother was expecting me, he had become the school principal.

At the end of September 1969 a series of earthquakes rocked South Africa. My mother went into labour during the worst of these on the 29^th. It was a difficult birth and when she eventually held me in her arms after almost sixteen hours, she exhaustedly exclaimed with a big smile on her face: “Ah, Mama se Duke!” – Mommy’s Duke.

The Duke of Bedford’s name was not Marmaduke.

And so I was christened Marmaduke Malgas and that’s who I’ve become.

I have always hated my name and often used to get into fights because I prefer to be called Duke and most people did except my parents and a few of the kids at school who soon stopped calling me anything to my face.

For some reason my parents were unable to understand that part of the reason why I was such an angry little kid was because of the name they had given me and which they were convinced was the cutest thing ever.

In fact it was my father who had suggested the name after my mother’s initial exclamation.

Him whose surname I had always felt an unwitting affinity to because Malgas translated, literally means mad guest: a designated destiny.

I have always felt a little like a mad guest in this life.

Chapter Three

On most Thursday mornings at a quarter past nine two orderlies arrive outside my cell with a bag of chains. A flap in the barred gate is unlocked and I stick my hands through the gap. My hands are shackled and I pull my hands back through before the gate is unlocked. The chain is thread through the loops of my pants in front and tied around my waist and then my ankles are shackled. The slack on the chain is placed in my hands as I shuffle out on my way to my weekly interview with Doctor Cronje.

The chains restrict my steps and our progress is slow: I’ve never gotten over the habit of watching my feet as I shuffle along wondering why I am considered a flight risk, why I have to be shackled in order to get counseling?

The orderlies chat casually, sauntering along behind me while I recount the 30 by 30 square linoleum floor tiles: a polished, insipid institutional green that reminds me of bird shit. Three and a third tiles to the meter, ten tiles every three meters; four corridors totaling one hundred and thirty six meters, five tiles wide; endless straight lines until we enter the therapy block which is older, with wooden floors; three to a square, this way and that, highly polished with lavender floor wax.

The smell of the lavender threatens to take me back to my childhood, but I refuse: I respire, in the present. As we turn the corner my pulse quickens. There is an orderly sitting outside Doctor Cronje’s door. She’s here.

The orderlies who accompany me greet their colleague who is glad for the company. I stare expectantly at the door to the office. In a minute it will open and for a brief moment I will see her: a young woman whom I have never met or spoken to, but who has taken up residence in my waking dreams. Every week she is here for her interview just before mine; every week I notice a different bandage, the same haunted look as she immediately drops her gaze the instant our eyes meet. And as I enter the office she is led away walking without shackles but tied up in chains I am unable to see or imagine.

I watch the door handle without blinking, eager to take in every little micro second and as the handle begins to turn I am prepared.

Her hair has been washed. No bandages I can see; she holds my gaze for an instant, much longer than ever before. I notice the hint of a smile; but no it can’t be. Her eyes are bloodshot and puffy. She’s been crying, it can’t be a smile; a grimace. She looks down and her hair falls forward covering her face; she walks unbowed, straight and I wonder desperate to know more, anything as I shuffle through the doctor’s door. Impatient to sit on the hard wooden chair where I know she has just been seated, feeling the heat of her presence even as it fades and is replaced by my own.

Doctor Cronje’s head is bowed as she finishes with her notes and try as I might I am unable to see a name on the pages of the folder in front of her. I look at the crown of her head; thinning gray roots dyed an unnaturally bright orange-red that makes me think of a fake, synthetic mohair jersey that an ex-lover once wore. Maybe it was a one-night stand, I can’t remember.

She stops writing and closes the file as she looks up with a plastered smile coated by caked orange lipstick that almost matches her hair. The most striking feature in her doughy sagging face are her eyes, a penetrating blue with intensely black pupils that make her sclera seem even whiter than they are. Like a bird in her own cage, unblinking.

Her skin, covered by a heavy layer of cheap foundation which still does not disguise the unusually oversized pores that makes her face look even more voluminous and distended; thick mascara’d lashes – like a scary cartoon dragon – with blobs of black soot threatening to get stuck against her puffy lids, over-painted blue as she greets with dry thin lips stretched over nicotine stained teeth: and her chins wobble in unison, right down the front of her blouse, delayed by just a fraction.

“How are you feeling today?”

What am I supposed to say?

I have a constant dilemma about what to tell this woman in whose hands my fate has rested for the longest time. The truth – my truth, my reality – is something which she believes is a product of my overactive imagination which she reports as being delusional.

I know because I managed to sneak a peak at my file once. When I’m silent she reports it as being uncommunicative and troubled, taciturn, withdrawn. I am loath to lie my way out of this place although I am beginning to be convinced that it’s the only way.

“I’m okay” I say.

She stares at me with her hands folded beneath her chins, leaning forward expecting more: the cold blue eyes staring. I look back wondering what her late husband saw in her; what her children think of her, what they feel when they have to kiss those lifeless lips.

“My friend sent me new slippers” I add in conclusion looking down at my feet beneath the chains.

“I’ve been told that you’re still not eating breakfast” she says still staring: “You have to eat in the morning so that the medication can work properly.”

I’m tempted to tell her not to worry, that I regurgitate the medication anyway.

“The porridge is not cooked with any salt” I tell her instead.

“Too much salt is not good for you” she answers before picking up her pen and beginning to write.

I sit in silence watching her stubby fingers bulging around the rings, more gaudy-coloured nail polish inexpertly coating the cuticles in places or chipped close to the skin. Around her wrist an African bracelet with an elephant design enfolded by blotchy, pale skin that in turn makes my skin crawl.

“Your sister Penelope wants to visit” she says without looking up: “She’s requested a contact visit for your birthday.”

Suddenly I am alert, knowing that it is her decision that would ultimately influence the granting or denial of the request.

“Please Doctor, please say yes?” I blurt out pleading, before I can stop myself and I am disgusted by how simply this woman is able to manipulate me; how easily I am manipulated.

“It’s not that simple, you know that.”

She stops writing and looks me in the eye, obviously enjoying the sight of me squirming, stripped of my usual poise and calm. She knows that at that moment I would do anything to have my sister’s request granted.

“Maybe if you decide to rejoin the group therapy sessions…” she leaves it hanging.

“Yes anything. I promise” and I pinch my thighs brutally as a punishment for my meek effortless submission. At least my otherwise impotent, shackled hands can inflict some pain hidden away beneath the desk in my lap.

“I have to make my decision in two weeks so we’ll see” and she makes another note.

All I can think of is how I will have to toe the line over the next two weeks. I cannot afford even a whisper of dissent.

The visit, seeing my sister is too important! And I’ll be able to eat her food again, real food made with love and consideration and care.

“I promise” I plead, pinching harder: “I won’t be any trouble.”

Eventually the hour is up and so is my self inflicted torture. I agree that I will be ready for group therapy on Monday morning and that I will contribute this time. Reus is waiting outside the door with an extra orderly as I exit but my thighs feel as if they are bleeding and I shuffle ahead of my orderlies, hurrying to get back to my cell where I can at least spend the rest of the day contemplating the possibility of seeing my sister; my beloved Penny who never turned her back on me.

The tiles underfoot pass by unnoticed as my mind is filled with thoughts of how it will be; what will she say, how will she be looking, what will she wear, will anyone accompany her?

At times like these I sometimes wish that there was a god I could believe in who could grant wishes and make dreams come true.

Shuffle, shuffle – clink, clank.

Back in my cell, free of the shackles and chains I have to slow my breathing. I am disgusted at myself for rushing, forcing myself to breathe hard: I am disgusted by how easily Doctor Cronje played me, like an out-of-tune tourist djembe: bang, bang, bang! Three strikes and I am out of my mind.

I breathe: slowly, shallow breaths. Inhale… Pause… Exhale…

Finally my heart rate slows, my breathing is back to normal; my normal. I clean the blood from my thighs and try not to think. Not about me or Penny or the Doctor. Relax. Breathe. I need to cut my nails.

Chapter Four

Once long ago, Doctor Cronje asked me whether I knew where I came from; whether I know my roots. Her preconceived stereotype of who and what I am led her to assume that my problem and the motivating cause of my actions stemmed from the fact that I experienced overriding feelings of dispossession which in turn stemmed from the fact that in her experience ‘most coloured people don’t know where they come from.’

My problem was that I knew where I came from and what my roots were. I knew all too well and that is why I am so angry. I learned about my roots even before I learned to write my name, before I started school and still the good Doctor with all of her schooling and education cannot imagine that what she knows is just one version of a far more tentacled tale.

I was born in Jakoebsdal. A small one-horse town which had no tarred roads, with a single general dealer whose shelves are filled with the basics and which doubles as the post office; an off-sales that had pretensions of being a motel with two ill kept rooms for rent to anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck there overnight; and a total population of four hundred permanent residents made up of mostly grandparents looking after their grandchildren while every able bodied man and woman of working age has left to look for better prospects in the bigger towns or – for the more adventurous – the cities.

There was only a primary school where my father was the principal and the only available work was on one of the few productive farms in the area where wages were low and working conditions were deplorable.

My maternal family is descendant from the original owner of the farm Verdwaaldraai of which Jakoebsdal is just a part.

Jakoeb de Jong had been a lieutenant – a relatively exalted position – in the Cape Corps, which was more accurately known in Dutch as Corps Bastaard Hottentoten – the Corps of Bastard Hottentots. In 1782 the unit was disbanded and Jakoeb was given the farm as payment for his services to the then Dutch administration. Jakoeb however was not a very good farmer but part of his job in the corps was to track and deal with the rampant problem of cattle rustling. He applied what he had learned and soon his herd was the largest in the area, and to prevent his neighbours’ suspicions he would every so often parade the corpse of an alleged stock thief – normally a young Khoi herder who was unfortunate enough to cross Jakoeb’s path while out alone with his herd – who was then trussed up and dragged behind his horse from farm to farm.

My grandfather told me about this bloody family history and what he often referred to as the legend of my inheritance. Back then of course I didn’t quite understand everything he said but somehow I knew that it was important and I remembered.

Now I do understand what it was that Pappa was telling me: I understand the value and importance of oral histories because as far as I know, Pappa wouldn’t or didn’t write and yet he knew so much about everything, including where we came from as a family and more importantly, as a people.

I knew that he could read because he would read to me from the newspapers he collected when he went into town once a month for supplies.

Pappa was part of a generation that still believed in the inviolable bond of a man’s word and most negotiations were concluded with a firm handshake and a steady, gaze.

Pappa told me how in 1783 the Dutch ship the Nicobar was wrecked off Quoin Point and Jakoeb along with some of his most trusted men went to supervise the salvage operations in an area that is today called Jessie’s Point on the map – or Die Walle, The Walls because of the huge dunes – close to the little Moravian mission town of Elim along the east coast of the Western Cape.

More than a month later Jakoeb returned to Verdwaaldraai with several wagon loads of valuables and he never looked back.

He eventually became known in the region as de Kapitalistische, buying up every available piece of land and annexing underproductive neighbouring farms with ingenious negotiations and devious contracts that in effect amounted to large scale larceny and in the process he become the wealthiest land barron in the region.

Jakoeb never married but he fathered a score of children who were each left a sizable piece of land and large sums of money when he was killed i 1810 by one of his sons whom he was about to disinherit when it was discivered that he had fathered a child with his sister.

According to Pappa our family history was plagued by incest and patricide.

Over the years most of the children sold off parts and pieces of their ineritance in order to survive or the land was informally exchanged and transfered between families as sons and daughters were married and had children of their own. Added to this mix was the race laws introduced by the Nationalist government in the 20th century which saw some of these descendants opting to be classified white while the rest chose to remian of mixed race or to use a term that I detest, coloured.

Eventually when his father – my great-grandfather – died, my maternal grandfather’s inheritance had dwindled to just twenty-two hectares, but at least my Pappa still farmed the land and had a flock of nearly two hundred sheep which meant everything to him and which in effect had helped to provide for his own family. He was by no means a rich man by today’s standards but he was also not poor.

When i was young I spent as much time as I was allowed on the farm with Pappa. My maternal grandmother had died before I was born and Pappa had never been interested in other women.

He lived for his sheep and we would often spend summer nights sleeping in the fields with the flock and the dogs while the regular shepherd – who couldn’t read or write but knew everything there was to know about rearing and caring for a lamb – was given time off to get drunk with his own family.

The pace of life and the values were different on the farm and even Jakoebsdal seemed too built-up and modern after spending time surrounded by absolute silence which would only occassionally be shattered by the report of a gun as Pappa tracked and killed a jackal or caracal.

He taught me to shoot and we would often hunt guinea fowl or Duiker and Springbok which he taught me how to slaughter and prepare for drying.

I never wore shoes and long pants were unheard of for anyone but an adult. During summer I always wore a sweat-hardened sunhat and always barried a home made catapult and a penknife in my pocket. Life was perfectly uncomplicated and when my parents tried to take me back to Jakoebsdal with them I always put up a fuss. I would spend my days away from the farm in a foul mood, being destructive and intentionally disobedient.

My parents had no clue of how to deal with me and after a miserable week they would always give up by Thursday night and make plans to take me back to Pappa on the farm every Friday afternoon where I would be a totally different child until the next time they decided that they missed me and wanted me to spend time with them at home.

What they failed to realise was that at home I was Marmaduke while at the farm with Pappa, I was Dukey!

The only time that I would look forward to at home was close to the holidays when my eldest sister Penny was expected to return from cape Town where she was studying to become a teacher. She finished school in the year that I was born and the following year she left to study in the city.

My other sister Lizzie was a boarder at the High School in Caledon and only came home once a month for the weekend and even though I saw her more regularly, I was closer to Penny who would always be eager to spend time on the farm while Lizzy spent her time in Jakoebsdal complaining about being bored and looking at fashion magazines and dreaming of high heels and cocktail dresses and seeing the world. Besides, Lizzy insisted on calling me Marmaduke while Penny, like Pappa called me Dukey.

Eventually when I was five years old, Penny returned to the farm after working in Cape Town for a few years and saving to build her dream of starting a creche on the farm for the children of the farmworkers. Over the years Pappa had encouraged her and when the time came he supervised the renovation of the old disused barn and helped to build benches and tables. By then he was well into his seventies but his enthusiasm and energy affected everyone and within weeks the building had been prepared and Penny stood with tears in her eyes in the converted classroom as Pappa watched with a huge, toothless smile on his lined face as we filled the benches on the first day of school.

For the rest of that year I was deliriously happy because whenever I did go into Jakoebsdal it was with Penny and I knew that while I was at her school my parents wouldn’t insist that I spend time with them.

During the day I would learn my a, b, c’s and songs and games and at night Penny would tell us about her time in Cape Town or Pappa would tell us stories from his past when he was young and used to sit with his Oupa listening to stories in the warm glow of the oil lamp.

It was 1974 and South Africa had finally been expelled from the UN and the whites only general election had taken place a year earlier in order to have a strong government in place in the face of the expected unrest that was threatening the fabric of white life in the country.

The newspapers were filled with talk of detensions and uprisings and the national state of emergency that was being ruthlessly enforced.

Amidst all of this Penny told us of about an incident that was reported in the newspapers while she was still in Cape Town when a young farm worker killed a farmer and during the trial it was revealed that he was actually the illigitimate son of the farmer.

Pappa then told us about one of our ancestors – Kornelius de Jong – who also killed his father. Kornelius was the first child of mixed race born at the Cape in January of 1653, just nine months after the first Dutch ships arrived.

Kornelius’s mother, a woman whose name had long since been forgotten was raped by a Dutch sailor shortly after they set foot on these shores.

The ships with its cargo of soldiers and provisions were manned by a band of rough, uncouth sailors who spent several months at sea, risking life and limb with short tempers and sickness.

Wherever they came ashore, their sexual urges were the only thing on their minds. The soldiers were not much better but at least they were under the command of men who were somewhat obliged to at least pretend the enforcement of rules and laws set out by the Company.

After the rape, Kornelius’s mother was cast out of the clan by the tribal elders and in her desperation she approached the encampment where she knew her rapist could still be prowling, but fortunately he had already left. She survived by exchanging her body for bits of food and when the pregnancy no longer allowed for that, she used to scavenge for scraps in order to stay alive.

She eventually gave birth just outside the glow of a fire where she was jeered and laughed at by a mob of drunken soldiers and sailors and only when she tried to cut the umbilical cord with a broken shell, did one of the men unsheath his salt encrusted, rusty dagger to sever the connection between mother and child.

The baby boy was held up as a macabre, conquerors prize with the mother being put to work as a servant to earn her keep while feeding the blue-eyed, fair skinned boy with peppercorn hair. Before long she became a prostitute who accepted foof for her sexual favour but when she feel pregnant again, even this demeaning option of survival was denied her. At the age of three, sister was born.

In the beginning the settlers dismissively referred to him simply as de jonge – the boy – and to his sister as het meisje – the girl – but their mother called them Gwi for her ancestral clan and Dixlau.

At the age of seven in 1660 that Jan van Riebeeck himself christened the child Kornelius after he was called on to act as an interpretor during the first of many peace talks that took place between the marauding settlers and the Khoikhoi with whom they had been engaged in a bloody and savage war over land from the very beginning. Dixlau was rechristened Katarina.

The history books tell us of a meek and lazy native population who stood in awe of these fine, civilized newcomers but the fact is that the Dutch were not the first Europeans to set foot in the Cape and the Khoikhoi were everything but meek and lazy.

They were prepared to fight for what was theirs and they fought valiantly for many years until the settler population outnumbered the Khoi warriors by more than six to one. They were then either enslaved or driven from the Cape, further and further into the interior.

Before Kornelius turned ten his mother died and he became an orphan in the fort: a place where he had been teazed and abused all his life and yet it was the only place he knew.

By the time he turned sixteen though he had already become a hardened man who knew the land and the ways of men. He had spent most of his life beseaching his ancestral gods to grant him an opportunity to meet the man who had raped his mother and finally they heard him.

It was just another day and one of the frequent Dutch supply ship had docked in the Bay. As usual he sauntered down to the beach in the hope of earning something by helping with the offloading but before he reached the water’s edge a rumour began to spread that his father was onboard. He did not venture any closer but watched and before long he knew who the rapist was.

That night as the drunken sailor finally left the Slave Quarter which was also the brothel, Kornelius was waiting and without a moment’s hesitation he confronted the man and in the ensuing scuffle, he stabbed his father to death and fled to an uninhabited area of the Cape Flats that is today known as Schaapkraal where he set up a home with his sister Katarina with whom he fathered three children two boys – twins – and a girl.

That night as I slept I dreamt that Kornelius entered my room. I felt no fear, only a deep sorrow and the need to apologise for what he had been through. I dreamt that he smiled at me and brushed the hair from my brow; I felt a warm calm flood through my body and just before the dream faded he leaned over me and whispered: “Sometimes you must do terrible things so that the horror can end.”

The next morning I told Pappa about my dream and he smiled: “Its a good thing to be visited by your ancestors my boy, you were right not to be afraid.”

Roots Rot!

2011-07-06T08:06:00.000+02:00

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...

2011-07-05T21:24:00.000+02:00

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...

2011-07-04T19:54:00.002+02:00

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.

2011-07-04T10:06:00.000+02:00

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...

2011-07-03T20:53:00.000+02:00

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...

2011-07-03T20:38:00.001+02:00

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.