BLOWING

The voices on the wind speak to me

Sharing their mirthless whispers

Screaming their timeless secrets

The South-Easter filling our lungs

Daring us all to listen.

A tale of enslavement

Minds and bodies bound

An ancient story of tomorrow

Spilling from fetid lips

Sputtering and blistering

Swallowing the truth decayed.

I am a child of slavery

Still remembering, feeling, reeling

From seeing the rusted chains intact

Amid the squalor and scorn

Of criminalized poverty

That is my brothers’ legacy

And the sons and daughters’ lot.

I CAN

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?

GROWTH

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.

SUGA!

The smile persists

Gently engraved

Juicy fruit

Succulent flesh.

The desire resists

Attempted distractions

Succulent fruit

Juicy flesh.

The memory consists

Of future images

Succulent, juicy

Fleshy fruit.

Yesterday's News...

Nothing for mahala
Bid to buy State support
MTN laments extortion
Sasol’s profit jumps
Cloudy skies over Velvet’s Aurora ties
Board will ponder failure
Gentlemen unionists
Win a house of cards.

Bigotry for dummies
Under the skin of whiteness
Pale males unfairly slated
Decisions of the past still hold us hostage
Carnage ahead
Road rage assault
Demands fall on deaf ears
Bus driver shot.

Cyclone Zuma’s
Lawyer and the mega tender
Vavi takes his toll on the ANC
Fractures on the march
Nzimande bunks again
I’m innocent
I’m ready for scrutiny
Has democracy failed?

Trapped in a soured relationship
Laundering wildlife
Puzzle of Putin’s tears
Theatre of frustration draws the crowds
Miners’ bodies abandoned
Bodies rained from the sky
Israeli Air Force pounds Gaza
Forty-seven bodies found in Homs.

Excuse us for not celebrating
Boerestaat to Blikkiesdorp
Africa is a gift I was given
Schoolboy wins big road tender
Radiation machine fails
Back to the dark ages
Some light relief
Vanity their meal ticket.

Fear and hope
Citizen distrust
Under fire for lack of scrutiny
The ANC’s evil twin
Deportee torture claims
Buthelezi must back off
Business as usual for hate camps
A dose of reality.

Crackdown
When you reach the top
Keep head at home
US soldier opens fire
Strikes kill twenty-five
Afghans skeptical
Police arrest four
Usual suspects.

SUCH SUCCESS

Jagged spiked walls
Electric fences
Barred windows and doors
With panic buttons,
Standard features.

Big expensive car
High-octane lifestyle
Always rushing
Hard on the move
Exhaust fumes trailing.

Credit card consumerism
Everything’s for sale
Nothings discounted
Three score years and ten to pay
The bonded interest.

The cycle repeats
Inevitable surprise
Parent to child transmission
New grown-ups the same
Stunted growth, unquestioning.

Fiscal policy and indignity
The price we pay for progress
Wholesale compromise, we regress
The emperor’s tailor knows
The cost of such success.

NIGHTFALL IN MORNINGSIDE - Part III

Artful, sultry silhouettes
Perfectly profiled in the muted glow
Snippets and snatches
Reveal the structured uniformity
Largely devoid, or perhaps just removed
Secure in the bunker
Of a constructed success
Emotionally charged
Unable to feel.

How well can you listen
How often do you hear
The wail of hunger from your eyes
The lethal beauty of your smile
The ranting thoughts unsaid
Living the part instead
Always wondering
Is it me, or is it them
Always wandering away.

And inevitably
The nightfall must end
Making time to embrace
Our humanity
So often discarded
In the dark souls’ closet
All so intimately interrelated
Brothers and sisters yet strangers
So very far removed in the morning.

NIGHTFALL IN MORNINGSIDE - Part II

There is no bandstand
But the stage is set
Around a drum-kit assembled
The bassist begins to walk
An exploratory line
And the pianist listens
With a smile
An anticipatory enthusiasm apparent
As his fingers dance laughing
Playfully caressing the keys.

The social banter subsides
Attention shifts
Steel brushes vellum with a kick
The recently exploratory bass-line explodes
A complex aural feast
Filling the night with rhythm
Animating fingers and feet
Causing heads to sway
To the strident improvised melody
As the sound-check begins.

NIGHTFALL IN MORNINGSIDE - Part I

Bright
Sunset orange
High-beam spotlight
Illuminates the night
Along this dead-end side street
Lined with shallow shadows
And a barely discernable
Avocado darkness artificially dappled.

Stunted conversations
And muted mutterings
Individual voices
Inaudible and un-unique
Raised in self congratulation
A cacophonous celebration
With glasses raised
“To me, to me!”

Expensively manicured
Attractively veneered
Self-conscious somebodies
Parading and posturing
On display in the round
In the social-circus ring
Uniformly costumed
All made-up, hiding.

Now and Again...

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...

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

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.