Nieu-Bethesda

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

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!

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?

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

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...

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!

UNTIL SUCH TIME...

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...

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....

“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...

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

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.