PLEBEIAN POETRY

the metaphor was hidden

somewhere outside

beyond the border

a body slumps

into a grave

black sole

authority’s steel-tipped stiletto

proof of wrong

unconscious

not for long

the rhyme cursed the stars

drunk and damaged

too much pain

and always again just

reward for the sane

suicide of thought

dying to fit in

a lifelong subscription

advertised on a billboard

along the highway

the rhythm was having fun

supple and youthful

gambling unconcerned

cause in cacophony

a feast of energy

silent discord

made itself heard

in a drop of blood

the moment’s dew

seeping

the reason strutting

unashamedly trailing acolytes

motivation the leader

ill-conceived

proudly revealed

the emperor it seems

doesn’t need to be

clothed by impermanence

and trivialities

like plebeian poetry

NIGHT PORTRAIT

Oppression is King!

(By Donovan Ward)

Oppression: (Noun) - 1. The act of subjugating by cruelty. 2. The state of being kept down by unjust use of force or authority. 3. Arbitrary and cruel exercise of power. 4. The experience of repeated, widespread, systemic injustice.

Freedom: (Noun) - 1. The power to act, speak, or think without externally imposed restraints. 2. The capacity to exercise choice. 3. The right to enjoy all the privileges of citizenship.

“Oppression is the experience of repeated, widespread, systemic injustice. It need not be extreme and involve the legal system (as in slavery, apartheid, or the lack of right to vote) nor violent (as in tyrannical societies). Harvey has used the term "civilized oppression" to characterize the everyday processes of oppression in normal life.

Civilized oppression "is embedded in unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols, in the assumptions underlying institutions and rules, and the collective consequences of following those rules. It refers to the vast and deep injustices some groups suffer as a consequence of often unconscious assumptions and reactions of well-meaning people in ordinary interactions which are supported by the media and cultural stereotypes as well as by the structural features of bureaucratic hierarchies and market mechanisms."” Morton Deutsch – 2005.

Thoughts on Oppression and Freedom

Ancient hunter-gatherer societies were for the most part egalitarian until about 12000 years ago. Families and clans became overpopulated tribes that could no longer be sustained from the land that had until then supported these cooperative communities. This necessitated the expansion of territory and the development of agriculture and animal husbandry.

With the accumulation of surplus food, new occupations such as traders, merchants, administrators, artisans, soldiers, and rulers emerged. Social hierarchies developed as some became more successful than others which in turn led to the reliance of the less successful communities on the more prosperous ones.

Inevitably this led to conflicts that ultimately resulted in the emergence and development of warfare.

These four little ailments that will be the death of mankind.

The new old four horsemen.

Over-population, land, agriculture and the mother fucker of them all: warfare!

Often the size of the gun doesn't hide the intent.

Base and uncouth: something I once referred to as ghetto logic when working with kids in prison. It’s the same shit on a global scale with full-blown sociopaths at the helm.

“You have what I want. If I take it I will have it and you will be okay with that or you’ll be dead! Either way, fuck you!”

In this world of the petrified, the most ruthless men are kings.

And even supposedly rational thinkers doubt the evidence, choosing to accept the cesspit called reality because
“That’s just how it is.”

And ...
“Things are the way they are.”

And...
"What can you do?”

That’s why I can be a proud human being, while not being proud of being human.

I was born in the nationalist South Africa of 1969 and I live in another nationalist South Africa in 2013. In what kind of South Africa will I die?

I am proudly Azanian but right now I am not proud of being South African. I am a proud African and yet I think Africa’s pride is being willingly bartered by everyone of us for a handful of plastic beads and baubles in the form of a religious-capitalist paradigm that serves to make us oppress ourselves and each other even as we are being oppressed.

And as for freedom, it does not exist while oppression is king.

AFRICA DAY – AGAIN

(By Banksy)

Fifty years ago on the 25^th of May 1963 the Organisation of African Unity was founded. To this day only five African countries have declared May 25 a public holiday. Only five African countries officially celebrate Africa Day!

Is that fucked up or am I just being sensitive again?

In South Africa, most of the population are unaware – loathe am I to say ignorant – that such a day even exists and if asked whether it should be declared a public holiday I am fairly certain of an ambivalent response.

Yet I do wonder…

Is it even necessary if we are unable to acknowledge the need?

And how would we decide if we haven’t thought about what the OAU set out to do?

“To promote unity and solidarity amongst the African states and to act as a collective voice for the African continent.”

Viewed in the context of what the OAU and currently the AU* has achieved – or not achieved – to fulfil this aim it would seem all too apparent why Africa Day is not a continental celebration. However, it can be argued that this very reason is why it is so important that all of Africa for once just realizes and celebrates what binds us even if it is just a geographical happenstance.

Because everything besides, what else does it mean to be African?

Is it our blackness?

Is it our continued suffering?

Is it our desperate desire to be acknowledged and accepted by our oppressors?

Is it our ability to speak their language or to adhere to and promote their designs?

Is it our capacity for love or hate?

My soul bleeds for Africa; for the African dream deferred; the African dawn delayed and forsaken.

As my brothers and sisters bow down to an Abrahamic god imposed through might of arms and force of will, I listen to the muted cries of the children mourning the death of their future.

Dying of hunger. Dying in squalor. Dying alone with a bloody bullet clenched in a weakened fist.

I search the face of the puppet leaders and liberators and I weep for what could have been; what should have been but is now no more. As they turn away from the people to smile and embrace what they have been told to be: obedient capitalist niggers.

Slaves in chains no longer because the will has been subdued. The desire to be free perverted. Enchained and enslaved by aspirations of heavenly absolution and the advertisers’ nightmare. Brightly packaged and presented with bells and whistles as the only success.

The mindless middle-class miasma.

So I hang my head in shame again at another prospect lost. An opportunity mislaid amid the trappings and distractions with which we are beset. I bow my head and shed a tear for every child, every mother and father who will die in Africa today.

* (The OAU was replaced with the establishment of the African Union on the 26^th May 2001.)

The Grain

This land was once my home.

All of this, fertile and rich, we were sustained. We knew the seasons and understood the elements, we read the stars. Our children knew their kin and shared in our stories. Without shame or judgement they grew; but now no more.

This is where I used to live. The walls, the boundary, the garden, the path; the door upon which visitors knock; the hall, the rooms and windows; the ceiling and rafters and roof; the jaded, faded memories of birth and death and life: was once mine but is no more.

These walls were once our sanctuary; a humble and homely habour from the tempests; keeping safe my family whom I loved most dear; a perfectly plain haven against the ravages of the relentless, blustering winds sweeping so much debris to these shores: our refuge no more.

This grain of sand is now my home. Just this single, tiny grain that contains all of me: my history, my reality, my dreams all contained within this single grain.

A single grain that is the mountains and the valleys, the oceans and rivers and the soil: a grain so mighty and yet so small in which the seed of my existence was planted and nourished and where I grew; but seemingly no more.

My afterbirth lies buried here in this grain with the murdered bones and the miserable torture and indignity and the tragic joy of my ancestors.

Now this single, tiny grain once again contains all of my living, all of what is me.

I am this land, the air; the mountains and the skies; the sunshine and the moon and the stars and the clouds.

The bricks, the mortar, the glass and the wood; each a moment carefully constructed. There a smile, or a tear or some laughter; a celebration, mourning, the sound of a baby crying, the final sigh of an elder dying.

This grain of sand is all that is left of my birthright.

Once a mighty mountain of resistance: now a lone wailing in the distance.

Shivering outside, exposed to the estranged elements, dying inside on the sandy wastes of cinderblock tenements.

This land is no longer my home. I have been evicted and abandoned, sacrificed as a corporate gift that includes my vote and my hopes and the dreams of my children who now live here with me in this grain of sand upon which you stand without acknowledging your oppressive weight.

My life and my living reduced to an obstruction: to your views and your plans; to your safety and security and your justice.

These walls which were once my home were bulldozed again, burying my plight along with my rights: just another District 6, Sophiatown, Cato Manor; in the name of a gentrified Woodstock, a Slum Act for Kennedy Road and State corruption in Lenasia.

Bankers and corporations buttering bread for an exclusive banquet to which we were never invited, but are expected to serve: where they discuss the economy and foreign investment between trips to the piss-house-parliament to make way for yet more gluttonous gorging where you and I are never mentioned except in passing.

I know that no one speaks about my cupboard that is bare and broken beneath the rubble that was once the walls that held up my roof over the head.

Crumbling constitutions and education is failing because already the children have learned how to mistrust and hate fate; learned that only money can change circumstance and financial success can be attained by criminal gain.

And the police force is skilled in bullying and harassment: righteous men in uniforms and suits who continue to rape and torture; prolonging the suffering of the parents who must live! so that they can repay all of their debt with interest.

State sanctioned suppression and condoned murder; the brutal companions of this insecure tenure.

And in the end I know that you will also want this tiny little grain that houses me and the misery that is all that remains of those once lofty ideals.

This single, tiny grain: the last vestige of resistance.

Woodstock, Schubert Park, Itireleng, Skurweplaas, Mooiplaas, Debonair Park, Thembelihle, Lawley, Ennerdale, Khayelitsha...

My home no more.

AbahlalibaseMjondolo!

The Roving I...

The biggest challenge for me is to avoid becoming murderous!

So many problems and yet as I see it the biggest problem is our complacency, our apathy, and the fact that we are so damn good at being blinkered and mislead. There are times when I actually think that maybe all the shit should escalate to the point where the systems and the bigots and the arseholes all self-destruct; but the moment always passes... thus far.

So I take comfort in the power of words and I try to write things that I hope will make people think. I can no longer do the pop-easy money-bums-on-seats kind of shit that mainstream theatre, television, film and even publishers so desperately want us all to churn out.

And at the end of it all, I remain a pragmatic idealist to the core!

********************

There are too many humans and hardly enough humanity.

I was listening to the late Mr. Devious earlier who – as few of you would know – was a brilliant hip-hop poet (one of the best the world has not seen) and whenever I listen to his work it blows my mind and angers me simultaneously because he is dead and we didn't get the chance to do more together.

I often have the conversation with local artists and spectators: I think that for all the creative dexterity on display in much of our art – and that across genres and disciplines – I find no social consciousness and that lack of acknowledgement of self and by extension of other, transforming what could have been art into entertainment with neither soulful nor truthful expression albeit with great technical skill. Another distraction revealed as just more mindless drivel: just more prime-time polish.

“Do you also not want to see what is happening around you?”

In my humble opinion...

******************

I also had and still have a wanderlust that took me to Johannesburg from the Cape Flats as a teenager. Hanging out at Kippies and the Market Theatre, trawling Hillbrow and Rocky Street, growing up with an open mind and empty pockets...

But more than too many, I can now say that I am living my dream which is constantly being recreated and which grows and dies daily.

I am now single but have always been solitary because I prefer silence to chatter.
I don't have kids because I was raised by a single mother in a society in which it is still deemed to be a sign of manhood to sow your seed and have kids all over the show; and as I grew older the idea just completely lost its appeal.

As I always say, I love other people's kids and pets....

*************

As for silence, I sometimes fill it with music - like now, an unreleased copy of one of Hilton Schilder’s concept studio albums in the Rockart vein - but mostly my head is so busy that I have to make a conscious effort to not live the fiction exclusively.

Right now the story of the novel is so vivid in its detail that it becomes (invigoratingly) consuming. So as much as I think of sharing myself with that mystical, beautiful other self, I have to contend with the present and my predisposition and my intolerance and my idealism and my ... Let me not go further.

My problem is that I am full of shit!

Quite frankly. I expect the most of myself and as a consequence I don't want to have to indulge a relationship that is in any way defined by a construct. I do enough of that crap just being nice to most people.

And so without having expectations- as such - I do want to be with someone who blows my mind in every way. I used to do a series of workshops with kids in prison about I LOVE YOU.

The premise was that to understand those three words individually, you could begin to understand life in all of its complexity. Issues of identity, socialization, assumption...

The whole bang lot, in three words.

I & You, both tangible, animate, personalized and yet for the most part a universe exists between us always. And then Love, an abstract... It worked and still does.

Live rAge - 80th birthday tribute to James Matthews.

Dance sequence Part I

Dance sequence Part II

There is a 'u' & 'i' in community

I’m not disconnected, I’m interconnected. I’m connected to so much through so much that I am connected to nothing. I am just like you but I fail to see the similarities: but we are similar yet I’m not like you. We can talk about similar things – even the same things – and we can express similar views, views that may even sound the same. We could even like similar things or dislike other things or support a similar cause, but my cause will never be the same as yours. No more.

No longer am I able to stand aside while everything hurtles headlong into a solid wall – into the nothing beyond oblivion where my neighbours plight is of no concern to me; where my own comfort and safety and prospects are secured. 

Have we learned nothing over the course of the infinite millennia? 

Just the greed and the avarice and the criminally inhumane unconcern: this criminal complicity yet again. 

Unable to reach out the hand that will make you and I, us. 

There is only a ‘u’ in human, but there is an ‘i’ and a ‘u’ in community. 

Until we listen to the music we cannot dance to the song, we’ll never connect the dots unless…

It’s like not caring for a mother, or a lover, or a child. Its not an absence of feeling, its just one crippled emotion: fear and I am not convinced that your fear deserves understanding!

There’s no me in community but there is a ‘u’ and ‘i’. 

Too much talk, too much rhetoric and posturing and self interest. 

Too many processes and seeking approval and ideas that can be implemented once you manage to free some time and write out the plan; to death. The idea seems to die but lays dormant, growing weak: no getting weak, being made weak by inaction, atrophying! Fading, but still there, sometimes waiting to be drawn forth and resuscitated; reconnected to the self to live again. 

‘U’ and ‘I’ are a part of community, remember? Community member…

The Angel In My Bed

Drawing by Francesca Romana Brogani

In the small hours of the night

I awake as you shift

And snuggle tightly against my back

With the sweetest little moan.

I turn to embrace you

As you lie contentedly in my arms

With a hint of a smile

Playing at the corners of your mouth.

I stay unmoving

Just gazing upon your face

Wondering what it is that I do not see

When the windows to your soul have closed.

I breathe deep and hold you tighter

Safe within this embrace

As I close my eyes and drift off

To another bed with you lying safely in my arms.

Just Two Things

I’ve heard it

At least once more

Before:

The yadda-yadda,

The warra-warra

The this is what I do

And you?

This is what I can do

For you.

Always the same

Two things

Either but always

Just the one

Or the other;

This or that

And the conversation

Inevitably

Falls flat.

THE DAUGHTER'S SECRET

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.

So here’s the thing…

The more I think about it, the more I realise that there are but just two inherent human flaws that have and will continue to rule the world and our lives.

We live on a planet with a population of 7billion people. No matter how hard you try you cannot imagine how much that is. In South Africa alone there are 51.7 million and even that fraction is unimaginable to every single one of us.

But I digress…

In 2500 BCE (Before Common Era) the oldest archeologically verified king on the Sumerian List of the Kings is En-me-barage-si who was the ruler of Kish and to whom reference is made in one of the oldest literary works, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

I am however fairly certain that throughout the ages there was a certain type of psychopath who was self-obsessed enough to kill to assert their will. Ruthless, single-minded despots who made ‘lesser men’ bow to their lust for power.

The second type of human being is the rest of us who would rather bow down than be hurt for what we think is right. Most of us would rather change the way we think before standing up to the giant with the blood soaked axe in his hand that subordinates us all.

And in our cowardice and fear and the unthinking constructed state that we call reality we kill each other and treat each other like we are not of the same species because the norm to which we subscribe has been designed by certifiable, criminally insane sociopaths who by might of arms has turned our species into an abomination.

And the worst part is that for all the supposedly growing consciousness, the horror will not change. This reality is as good as it’s ever going to get again. We’ve allowed it to go too far and the only hope left is the total destruction of the hell that is this system.

Only when there is absolutely nothing left, when the destruction is absolute and final, will a new hope be born. And that tomorrow will have to be so completely new that you and I shouldn’t have a part in it.