You are my terrible twin.
We were knotted together even as I slipped,
womb-blinded, from the darkness into light,
the cord severed.
We will always be as Janus was,
selves torn between the ancient face that looks forward from the doorway
and the young one that looks back, into the shadows.
different sides of the same shiftless coin.
No closeness has ever felt further.
No mirror glitters so cruelly
with false promise
as the one you hold up for me, alter ego.
It is because you left me,
that I cannot relinquish you,
must needs carry you
like a dog-eared copy of a sad book I do not want to read.
Pushed over by a careless hand,
choices tumble like dominoes, maze-makers,
staking out a future I struggle to claim.
When I was small you laid your head
upon my chest, listening to my heart
as if it were the only sound in the world.
Now, from far, I trace your faint presence
as a cardiac monitor might mimic a waning pulse,
needle ready to mark a small final
endpoint on spooling graph paper.
13.11
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Journeys
'Describing Love' and 'Winter' to appear next year April in Journeys, anthology brought out by Creative Saplings in India - forty poets from all over the world. Yay!
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Alice Walker's letter to Obama
Open Letter to Barack Obama from Alice Walker
Nov. 5, 2008Dear Brother Obama,You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history. But seeing you deliver the torch so many others before you carried, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, only to be struck down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is almost more than the heart can bear. And yet, this observation is not intended to burden you, for you are of a different time, and, indeed, because of all the relay runners before you, North America is a different place. It is really only to say: Well done. We knew, through all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the spirit of Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would actually appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and character, is a balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only sung about.I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.I would further advise you not to take on other people's enemies. Most damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion. We must learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise. It is understood by all that you are commander in chief of the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we understand, completely. However, as my mother used to say, quoting a Bible with which I often fought, "hate the sin, but love the sinner." There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people's spirit. This has already happened to people of color, poor people, women, children. We see where this leads, where it has led.A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally, it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies. And your smile, with which we watch you do gracious battle with unjust characterizations, distortions and lies, is that expression of healthy self-worth, spirit and soul, that, kept happy and free and relaxed, can find an answering smile in all of us, lighting our way, and brightening the world.We are the ones we have been waiting for.In Peace and Joy,Alice Walker
Nov. 5, 2008Dear Brother Obama,You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history. But seeing you deliver the torch so many others before you carried, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, only to be struck down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is almost more than the heart can bear. And yet, this observation is not intended to burden you, for you are of a different time, and, indeed, because of all the relay runners before you, North America is a different place. It is really only to say: Well done. We knew, through all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the spirit of Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would actually appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and character, is a balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only sung about.I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.I would further advise you not to take on other people's enemies. Most damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion. We must learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise. It is understood by all that you are commander in chief of the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we understand, completely. However, as my mother used to say, quoting a Bible with which I often fought, "hate the sin, but love the sinner." There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people's spirit. This has already happened to people of color, poor people, women, children. We see where this leads, where it has led.A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally, it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies. And your smile, with which we watch you do gracious battle with unjust characterizations, distortions and lies, is that expression of healthy self-worth, spirit and soul, that, kept happy and free and relaxed, can find an answering smile in all of us, lighting our way, and brightening the world.We are the ones we have been waiting for.In Peace and Joy,Alice Walker
Cutting back
A storm coming, but
teeth gritted, he slashes back the sweetness
of the yesterday-today-and-tomorrow border
between the neighbours’ house and his,
before it grows too tall, and dwarfs him.
A cool rain falls, forgives,
yet still his scythe arcs against the green.
Soft purple and white petals pile at his feet,
reminding him of all that will never return.
But he cannot destroy the fragrance,
it lingers like the smell of her hair,
the sound of her voice, calling ‘daddy, daddy.’
as he walked away,
refusing her.
5.11
teeth gritted, he slashes back the sweetness
of the yesterday-today-and-tomorrow border
between the neighbours’ house and his,
before it grows too tall, and dwarfs him.
A cool rain falls, forgives,
yet still his scythe arcs against the green.
Soft purple and white petals pile at his feet,
reminding him of all that will never return.
But he cannot destroy the fragrance,
it lingers like the smell of her hair,
the sound of her voice, calling ‘daddy, daddy.’
as he walked away,
refusing her.
5.11
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Mid-Cycle (reworked)
In the clothing chain store my unborn children
crowd my consciousness like ghosts,
tug at my heartstrings with the delicate determined strength
of a baby’s kick in the womb.
I wait to pay, not for a small skirt
stitched with the shy pink heads of flowers,
but for a four-year old best (only) boy’s vest,
a bull and rider patterned dark across its flaming front.
Yearning in a queue full of strangers,
I feel the secret spirals of my ovaries pulse,
then a prick of pain, sharp as the Epidural in my back at the birth,
as the ovum, unseeded, is released.
Another possibility
yields.
4.11
crowd my consciousness like ghosts,
tug at my heartstrings with the delicate determined strength
of a baby’s kick in the womb.
I wait to pay, not for a small skirt
stitched with the shy pink heads of flowers,
but for a four-year old best (only) boy’s vest,
a bull and rider patterned dark across its flaming front.
Yearning in a queue full of strangers,
I feel the secret spirals of my ovaries pulse,
then a prick of pain, sharp as the Epidural in my back at the birth,
as the ovum, unseeded, is released.
Another possibility
yields.
4.11
Monday, November 3, 2008
Mid-cycle
Sunday afternoon in Ackermans, at the Pavilion,
a faux mediaeval castle shopping mall in Durban,
and I veer towards the little girls’ clothes,
though I am long grown and my only child is a son.
Small pink flowers shyly raise their heads
from skinny-hipped denim skirts
ready to blossom
beneath bright ceiling lights.
Instead, I choose Cars Inc. summer pajamas for boys.
Across the T-shirt front, a red Lightning McQueen gleams smugly
under a unbelievably turquoise American sky
(the corporation reaches even into the world of dreams).
Also, I take an orange vest with a bull and rider
bucking their way across its front,
pull it over my four year old’s beloved head,
and watch him run to the till point, his gait, subtle, solid,
the same as his father’s, my ex –
shelves of poetry books keeping him company this Sunday afternoon
in unassailable La Lucia.
My unborn children
crowd my consciousness like ghosts,
tug at my heartstrings with the delicate determined strength
of a baby’s kick in the womb.
The old man, with a belly already distended from the cancer
that would soon kill him, said to his wife,
the mother of his seven children,
‘at least we did not waste your eggs’.
Waiting to pay, in a queue full of strangers
I will never get to know,
I feel the secret spirals of my ovaries pulse,
then a prick of pain, sharp as the Epidural in my back at the birth,
as the ovum, unseeded, is released.
Another possibility
gone.
3.11
a faux mediaeval castle shopping mall in Durban,
and I veer towards the little girls’ clothes,
though I am long grown and my only child is a son.
Small pink flowers shyly raise their heads
from skinny-hipped denim skirts
ready to blossom
beneath bright ceiling lights.
Instead, I choose Cars Inc. summer pajamas for boys.
Across the T-shirt front, a red Lightning McQueen gleams smugly
under a unbelievably turquoise American sky
(the corporation reaches even into the world of dreams).
Also, I take an orange vest with a bull and rider
bucking their way across its front,
pull it over my four year old’s beloved head,
and watch him run to the till point, his gait, subtle, solid,
the same as his father’s, my ex –
shelves of poetry books keeping him company this Sunday afternoon
in unassailable La Lucia.
My unborn children
crowd my consciousness like ghosts,
tug at my heartstrings with the delicate determined strength
of a baby’s kick in the womb.
The old man, with a belly already distended from the cancer
that would soon kill him, said to his wife,
the mother of his seven children,
‘at least we did not waste your eggs’.
Waiting to pay, in a queue full of strangers
I will never get to know,
I feel the secret spirals of my ovaries pulse,
then a prick of pain, sharp as the Epidural in my back at the birth,
as the ovum, unseeded, is released.
Another possibility
gone.
3.11
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Friday, October 31, 2008
Night in Blue - Brian Turner
At seven thousand feet and looking back, running lights
blacked out under the wings and America waiting,
a year of my life disappears at midnight,
the sky a deep viridian, the houselights below
small as match heads burned down to embers.
Has this year made me a better lover?
Will I understand something of hardship,
of loss, will a lover sense this
in my kiss or touch? What do I know
of redemption or sacrifice, what will have
to say of the dead – that it was worth it,
that any of it made sense?
I have no words to speak of war.
I never dug the graves in Talafar.
I never held the mother crying in Ramadi.
I never lifted my friend’s body
when they carried him home.
I have only the shadows under the leaves
to take with me, the quiet of the desert,
the low fog of Balad, orange groves
with ice forming on the rinds of fruit.
I have a woman crying in my ear,
late at night when the stars go dim,
moonlight and sand as a resonance
of the dust of bones, and nothing more.
from ‘Here Bullet’ - a MUST-READ
blacked out under the wings and America waiting,
a year of my life disappears at midnight,
the sky a deep viridian, the houselights below
small as match heads burned down to embers.
Has this year made me a better lover?
Will I understand something of hardship,
of loss, will a lover sense this
in my kiss or touch? What do I know
of redemption or sacrifice, what will have
to say of the dead – that it was worth it,
that any of it made sense?
I have no words to speak of war.
I never dug the graves in Talafar.
I never held the mother crying in Ramadi.
I never lifted my friend’s body
when they carried him home.
I have only the shadows under the leaves
to take with me, the quiet of the desert,
the low fog of Balad, orange groves
with ice forming on the rinds of fruit.
I have a woman crying in my ear,
late at night when the stars go dim,
moonlight and sand as a resonance
of the dust of bones, and nothing more.
from ‘Here Bullet’ - a MUST-READ
Friday, October 24, 2008
Regaining Self
‘Get up, stand up and climb the rope of hope
and open up again’ – Etheridge (from ‘Lucky’)
Last night dreams of a blue-eyed man, insistent, intent –
leading me along a city street, past
wild buskers singing the day into being.
Today, the rain gone, I sit on the verandah,
devouring Metelerkamp, who wrote a book-poem about her affair.
The sun as fierce as the poet growing her hands back,
as eager as my dream man, animus,
to lead me beyond the darkness of the house into the light.
Blue sky mirrors his azure eyes, and the poetry like flame
declaims itself across a dry hillside.
She speaks of becoming simpler : perhaps this is my gift,
my ability to distil, clarify, to sense the power beneath?
‘Hey, hey, hey’ sings Etheridge, later, night having fallen
‘I am a child’ – raucous, rough, different from me,
she who chooses to love women.
I – the abandoned one – who sought to restore
what was taken from me – the lost soul who, only once,
traded the same kind of sex for comfort,
before realising too late, her mistake,
I too can confess to indiscretions.
Then, my heart hurt as if I had twisted a knife into it.
I was shoved to the margins before I even realised
I had left the centre.
Now I work hard to reclaim an identity I did not consciously reject.
Foucault’s Panopticon reaches straight into the all-seeing sky.
‘Big Brother is watching,’ and beware those who would
wander into the shadows.
Sexuality’s a continuum, and love’s a sliding rule
But the feelings take me into a world
where bravado and logic do not apply.
Where reaching for his hand feels as all-consuming,
as holding a small baby who looks at me with
the strange unknowing eyes
of the helpless, of the still-to-be-loved.
24.10
and open up again’ – Etheridge (from ‘Lucky’)
Last night dreams of a blue-eyed man, insistent, intent –
leading me along a city street, past
wild buskers singing the day into being.
Today, the rain gone, I sit on the verandah,
devouring Metelerkamp, who wrote a book-poem about her affair.
The sun as fierce as the poet growing her hands back,
as eager as my dream man, animus,
to lead me beyond the darkness of the house into the light.
Blue sky mirrors his azure eyes, and the poetry like flame
declaims itself across a dry hillside.
She speaks of becoming simpler : perhaps this is my gift,
my ability to distil, clarify, to sense the power beneath?
‘Hey, hey, hey’ sings Etheridge, later, night having fallen
‘I am a child’ – raucous, rough, different from me,
she who chooses to love women.
I – the abandoned one – who sought to restore
what was taken from me – the lost soul who, only once,
traded the same kind of sex for comfort,
before realising too late, her mistake,
I too can confess to indiscretions.
Then, my heart hurt as if I had twisted a knife into it.
I was shoved to the margins before I even realised
I had left the centre.
Now I work hard to reclaim an identity I did not consciously reject.
Foucault’s Panopticon reaches straight into the all-seeing sky.
‘Big Brother is watching,’ and beware those who would
wander into the shadows.
Sexuality’s a continuum, and love’s a sliding rule
But the feelings take me into a world
where bravado and logic do not apply.
Where reaching for his hand feels as all-consuming,
as holding a small baby who looks at me with
the strange unknowing eyes
of the helpless, of the still-to-be-loved.
24.10
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
Defining love
Is love
finding solidity in emptiness:
a balustrade beneath the hand?
Or is it
the boy in the car seat behind you,
as you drive up roads known and unknown,
asking ‘where is God?’
Is he love?
Where is love?
The night you married his father
your stomach seven-months big with child,
you wept, as if you knew
the ruby would fall from your golden ring,
like the promises you made each other,
lost now.
When the baby, sluiced into the world
through your waters,
was given to you, red-faced, squalling
to hold close to your milky breast -
was that love you felt?
And, as the world was honed
to the body of another lover – after the divorce;
holding himself still within your deepest part,
was that love, you whispered in his ear?
As, filled with gratitude,
you came and came and came
legs wrapped around him
like jasmine tendrils on a trellis?
The dutiful incantations
at the end of phone calls
are approximations …
you have the airport farewells down pat.
But what do you tell your boy
when he asks
‘who do you love?’
what do you say?
20.10
finding solidity in emptiness:
a balustrade beneath the hand?
Or is it
the boy in the car seat behind you,
as you drive up roads known and unknown,
asking ‘where is God?’
Is he love?
Where is love?
The night you married his father
your stomach seven-months big with child,
you wept, as if you knew
the ruby would fall from your golden ring,
like the promises you made each other,
lost now.
When the baby, sluiced into the world
through your waters,
was given to you, red-faced, squalling
to hold close to your milky breast -
was that love you felt?
And, as the world was honed
to the body of another lover – after the divorce;
holding himself still within your deepest part,
was that love, you whispered in his ear?
As, filled with gratitude,
you came and came and came
legs wrapped around him
like jasmine tendrils on a trellis?
The dutiful incantations
at the end of phone calls
are approximations …
you have the airport farewells down pat.
But what do you tell your boy
when he asks
‘who do you love?’
what do you say?
20.10
I am
This windswept day, I am a grimy truck, Sisyphean,
carrying a burden of quarried rocks,
rough-hewn, heavy,
up the M14.
Just before dawn, I will return,
racheting gears downhill, my engine juddering into
the ears of dreaming children,
curled under duvets, murmuring in their sleep.
Today, I am the small bird
that thudded into the windowpane,
the bird whose red blood leaked out of its beak
as it lay gasping on the verandah tiles,
the bird I strangled, judging it too late for saving.
Now, I am the boy kicking his feet out from under
the swing at the gallery
who sees his shadow beneath him on the hard-bitten ground,
and says: ‘I am there, and here too’.
I buried the dead bird
in a hole I dug in the earth,
too close maybe
to the dark-leaved arrow of a new sapling.
My face crumpled like
a torn page
in the hand of a harsh poet.
My tears rained down.
Grief tugged at my throat,
like a baby at his mother’s nipple,
asking for her love.
20.10
carrying a burden of quarried rocks,
rough-hewn, heavy,
up the M14.
Just before dawn, I will return,
racheting gears downhill, my engine juddering into
the ears of dreaming children,
curled under duvets, murmuring in their sleep.
Today, I am the small bird
that thudded into the windowpane,
the bird whose red blood leaked out of its beak
as it lay gasping on the verandah tiles,
the bird I strangled, judging it too late for saving.
Now, I am the boy kicking his feet out from under
the swing at the gallery
who sees his shadow beneath him on the hard-bitten ground,
and says: ‘I am there, and here too’.
I buried the dead bird
in a hole I dug in the earth,
too close maybe
to the dark-leaved arrow of a new sapling.
My face crumpled like
a torn page
in the hand of a harsh poet.
My tears rained down.
Grief tugged at my throat,
like a baby at his mother’s nipple,
asking for her love.
20.10
Friday, October 17, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Prism
Like a crazed mirror ball
in a seedy dance hall,
her computer facets reality into
off-kiltre traces of flickering light.
Other peoples’ truths tilt and pitch
against the grubby velvet backdrop of the South African everyday.
Too loud
the stories pound in her ears
like overplayed rock and roll songs
from a lacklustre band.
Online news,
spills like faeces
from a blocked toilet.
The ground underfoot is as slippery as wet linoleum.
She processes the words,
but cannot quantify
the hurt.
They found:
broken bottles, two used condoms, bloodied clothes,
next to the body of the thirteen year old girl from Soweto,
whose skull had been crushed in.
‘One-year old found murdered under the bed.’
The headlines leer
and the copy
paws at her like a sick old man.
‘At the river’s edge/
The raped boys watched the man slit their friend’s throat/
after he asked ‘who wants to die first?' ’
Texts compete for degrees of atrocity.
‘The police are checking for signs,of sexual assault/
although blood was found between her thighs’.
Understanding motivation (the sociology of deprivation)
and rationalising cycles of abuse (a legacy of anger),
always the rankness of poverty,
hiding behind the stage lights,
does not assuage the fear.
Raw like the ragged riff of an electric guitar
in a minor key,
it slides into entropy.
The frantic beat
of horror
keeping
syncopated time.
15.10
in a seedy dance hall,
her computer facets reality into
off-kiltre traces of flickering light.
Other peoples’ truths tilt and pitch
against the grubby velvet backdrop of the South African everyday.
Too loud
the stories pound in her ears
like overplayed rock and roll songs
from a lacklustre band.
Online news,
spills like faeces
from a blocked toilet.
The ground underfoot is as slippery as wet linoleum.
She processes the words,
but cannot quantify
the hurt.
They found:
broken bottles, two used condoms, bloodied clothes,
next to the body of the thirteen year old girl from Soweto,
whose skull had been crushed in.
‘One-year old found murdered under the bed.’
The headlines leer
and the copy
paws at her like a sick old man.
‘At the river’s edge/
The raped boys watched the man slit their friend’s throat/
after he asked ‘who wants to die first?' ’
Texts compete for degrees of atrocity.
‘The police are checking for signs,of sexual assault/
although blood was found between her thighs’.
Understanding motivation (the sociology of deprivation)
and rationalising cycles of abuse (a legacy of anger),
always the rankness of poverty,
hiding behind the stage lights,
does not assuage the fear.
Raw like the ragged riff of an electric guitar
in a minor key,
it slides into entropy.
The frantic beat
of horror
keeping
syncopated time.
15.10
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
Child's song
Christmas in England, and her sister, a prim porcelain doll,
is given a shiny satin dress with puffed sleeves.
She gets a red hard-covered book, and a rainbow-coloured pencil.
Their girlish voices pipe
the child’s ditty her sister learnt at their new school.
There once lived a man/
he had a funny name/
his legs were long and his feet were small/
and he could not walk at all.’
She scrawls her first fumbling poem about a minstrel,
singing a song of the times ‘beyond.’
Even at eight, she is dreaming of escape.
Lonely letters slide across the page,
looking for love.
‘He had a wife/
did this funny man/
her legs were long and her feet were small/
and she could not walk at all.’
She draws a sombre Victorian woman in a black dress and cap,
her back turned away from a febrile tree.
In the gloom the family plays Cluedo,
she lets her father win.
Later, running in the park, he leaves her far behind.
‘He had children/
one and two/
their legs were long/
and their feet were small/
and they could not walk at all.’
The demons that you fight now,
a quarter of a century later,
are only paper tigers.
Yet still you rage for the unseen child,
reaching into the centre of loss,
finding nothing.
17.10
is given a shiny satin dress with puffed sleeves.
She gets a red hard-covered book, and a rainbow-coloured pencil.
Their girlish voices pipe
the child’s ditty her sister learnt at their new school.
There once lived a man/
he had a funny name/
his legs were long and his feet were small/
and he could not walk at all.’
She scrawls her first fumbling poem about a minstrel,
singing a song of the times ‘beyond.’
Even at eight, she is dreaming of escape.
Lonely letters slide across the page,
looking for love.
‘He had a wife/
did this funny man/
her legs were long and her feet were small/
and she could not walk at all.’
She draws a sombre Victorian woman in a black dress and cap,
her back turned away from a febrile tree.
In the gloom the family plays Cluedo,
she lets her father win.
Later, running in the park, he leaves her far behind.
‘He had children/
one and two/
their legs were long/
and their feet were small/
and they could not walk at all.’
The demons that you fight now,
a quarter of a century later,
are only paper tigers.
Yet still you rage for the unseen child,
reaching into the centre of loss,
finding nothing.
17.10
Friday, October 3, 2008
Menage-a-trois
Lost in talk, we walk down the hill
towards a river of road.
The capsicum pot-plant holds its strange red fruit aloft
as you bear it awkwardly in your hands,
speaking of your wife, and how you owe her flowers.
Carting my own star-jasmine, tethered to a wooden stick,
and furtive dhania, to the car – we came separately –
I feel the raspberry cheesecake we just shared at the café above the nursery,
sit heavy in my stomach. like woe.
You wheel your car around
– and with a careful wave, drive off –
leaving me, hot-faced, heavy –
scrabbling to collect the coins that just fell out of my purse
into the gravel in the gutter.
Like a CD track that has gotten stuck
she plays out the old old song –
‘the girl at the window/
waited all day for her father to come home/
thought that if she flirted with him/
he might love her more.’
At the table beneath the spreading fig tree,
I let you see my black bra-strap slip
from behind my green-yoked dress.
Felt your glance stroke my hair,
as you told me about paying your bond (and hers).
Trading my beauty
for the brief feeling of being seen
is like letting myself be
Sampson
and you
and your wife, Delilah.
My strength,
shorn,
to a sorry pile of stones.
3.10
towards a river of road.
The capsicum pot-plant holds its strange red fruit aloft
as you bear it awkwardly in your hands,
speaking of your wife, and how you owe her flowers.
Carting my own star-jasmine, tethered to a wooden stick,
and furtive dhania, to the car – we came separately –
I feel the raspberry cheesecake we just shared at the café above the nursery,
sit heavy in my stomach. like woe.
You wheel your car around
– and with a careful wave, drive off –
leaving me, hot-faced, heavy –
scrabbling to collect the coins that just fell out of my purse
into the gravel in the gutter.
Like a CD track that has gotten stuck
she plays out the old old song –
‘the girl at the window/
waited all day for her father to come home/
thought that if she flirted with him/
he might love her more.’
At the table beneath the spreading fig tree,
I let you see my black bra-strap slip
from behind my green-yoked dress.
Felt your glance stroke my hair,
as you told me about paying your bond (and hers).
Trading my beauty
for the brief feeling of being seen
is like letting myself be
Sampson
and you
and your wife, Delilah.
My strength,
shorn,
to a sorry pile of stones.
3.10
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Spa
The dark settling with the dust
under the bluegums -
in the sky, a sharp cusp of yellow
holds the heavy round of moon in place.
She finds
Aliwal North spa
hidden in suburbia,
an anomaly.
neglected –
the plush lawns of the eighties,
replaced
by sand,
watchful Africans,
instead of well-off Afrikaners,
the guests.
She leaves the shelter of the big car
she has driven all day,
next to the shed,
and holding her boy’s hand,
follows the security guard
into its shadows.
A few pale discs of neon
flicker overhead,
illuminating a rectangle of
blue bubbling water
– bloodwarm.
Glossy tropical plants fringe the pool,
but pigeon-feathers
fleck its troubled surface.
A jagged rent
in the ceiling reveals tacit stars,
receding.
The lopsided Spur poster on the stairwell
in the corner
speaks of better days.
She remembers
tawny children,
her own lithe sixteen year-old body
trawling the waters.
Now, a mother,
heavier,
she wades,
carries her laughing boy
across the ferment,
emerging
from the earth’s womb.
Together,
they hold their breaths,
drop under,
into the heat of the heartbeat,
that pulses through
dirty white wooden floorboards.
The glass of the French doors
permits a night-time view onto thatched umbrellas, secretive palms –
as impressions of plants and moving water
reverberate against
its stillness.
Rafters angle
high above her,
rational, elusive.
She lets
the silver handrail
slip from her hands
the water
caresses the back of her head,
tender as a lover.
4.9.08
under the bluegums -
in the sky, a sharp cusp of yellow
holds the heavy round of moon in place.
She finds
Aliwal North spa
hidden in suburbia,
an anomaly.
neglected –
the plush lawns of the eighties,
replaced
by sand,
watchful Africans,
instead of well-off Afrikaners,
the guests.
She leaves the shelter of the big car
she has driven all day,
next to the shed,
and holding her boy’s hand,
follows the security guard
into its shadows.
A few pale discs of neon
flicker overhead,
illuminating a rectangle of
blue bubbling water
– bloodwarm.
Glossy tropical plants fringe the pool,
but pigeon-feathers
fleck its troubled surface.
A jagged rent
in the ceiling reveals tacit stars,
receding.
The lopsided Spur poster on the stairwell
in the corner
speaks of better days.
She remembers
tawny children,
her own lithe sixteen year-old body
trawling the waters.
Now, a mother,
heavier,
she wades,
carries her laughing boy
across the ferment,
emerging
from the earth’s womb.
Together,
they hold their breaths,
drop under,
into the heat of the heartbeat,
that pulses through
dirty white wooden floorboards.
The glass of the French doors
permits a night-time view onto thatched umbrellas, secretive palms –
as impressions of plants and moving water
reverberate against
its stillness.
Rafters angle
high above her,
rational, elusive.
She lets
the silver handrail
slip from her hands
the water
caresses the back of her head,
tender as a lover.
4.9.08
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Reading Plath
Outside in the forest –
the night crickets of South Africa chime precisely,
like small xylophones,
into the luxurious night –
while fluting tree-frogs
colour the air deep black, and
night pools richly around the house.
Indoors, reclining,
but not at ease
she stills her mind –
its jarring images competing
like mismatched jigsaw puzzle pieces
clamouring to be made part of a whole –
feel the Faber & Faber book,
anchor-steady in her hand.
Bravely, the light from the bedside lamp
reaches between the stiff formality of green silk curtains –
grasps darkness,
making of it,
something new.
A poem, from far away,
written in England, in another century,
flares and
ricochets across the rough page into consciousness,
like a bullet, finding its mark.
1956. ‘Firesong.’
‘brave love, dream
not of staunching such strict flame, but come,
lean to my wound; burn on, burn on’.
Plath’s rooks caw –
unappeased,
as she rages at the ragged American ocean
her grandmother left behind,
‘what is it
survives, grieves
so, over this battered, obstinate spit
of gravel? The waves’
spewed relics clicker masses in the wind,
grey waves the stub-necked eiders ride.
a labour of love, and that labour lost.
steadily the sea
eats at Point Shirley’.
The words are powerful
enough
to reach beyond death.
No ‘blank untenanted air’
here,
from the mute November Graveyard
where Plath lies buried.
Rather – the air
she bequeathed
is as fecund as that of the night-time jungle in Africa –
sixty years on –
pulsing beyond the patient window.
Peopled with a wealth of words,
Coming, going,
Like spirits,
Like angels.
Like dreams
that elude
the woman who read Plath
lying there wide-eyed in the dark
with a mind
on fire.
21.8
References
‘Firesong’, ‘Point Shirley’, ‘November Graveyard’ are all from Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems (Faber & Faber, London, 1990)
the night crickets of South Africa chime precisely,
like small xylophones,
into the luxurious night –
while fluting tree-frogs
colour the air deep black, and
night pools richly around the house.
Indoors, reclining,
but not at ease
she stills her mind –
its jarring images competing
like mismatched jigsaw puzzle pieces
clamouring to be made part of a whole –
feel the Faber & Faber book,
anchor-steady in her hand.
Bravely, the light from the bedside lamp
reaches between the stiff formality of green silk curtains –
grasps darkness,
making of it,
something new.
A poem, from far away,
written in England, in another century,
flares and
ricochets across the rough page into consciousness,
like a bullet, finding its mark.
1956. ‘Firesong.’
‘brave love, dream
not of staunching such strict flame, but come,
lean to my wound; burn on, burn on’.
Plath’s rooks caw –
unappeased,
as she rages at the ragged American ocean
her grandmother left behind,
‘what is it
survives, grieves
so, over this battered, obstinate spit
of gravel? The waves’
spewed relics clicker masses in the wind,
grey waves the stub-necked eiders ride.
a labour of love, and that labour lost.
steadily the sea
eats at Point Shirley’.
The words are powerful
enough
to reach beyond death.
No ‘blank untenanted air’
here,
from the mute November Graveyard
where Plath lies buried.
Rather – the air
she bequeathed
is as fecund as that of the night-time jungle in Africa –
sixty years on –
pulsing beyond the patient window.
Peopled with a wealth of words,
Coming, going,
Like spirits,
Like angels.
Like dreams
that elude
the woman who read Plath
lying there wide-eyed in the dark
with a mind
on fire.
21.8
References
‘Firesong’, ‘Point Shirley’, ‘November Graveyard’ are all from Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems (Faber & Faber, London, 1990)
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Cripple
Everything in his life
hinges now
on that minute, over so
quickly,
the gust took him,
blew him across the air, and
dumped him on the ground
– crumpled beneath his ‘chute
like a fistful of newspaper.
After they disentangled him,
after the hospital, the doctors,
the morphine, the pain –
the nightmares came,
waking him in the dark
gasping –
turned back on himself
like a embryo,
but one unable to grow
a new spine.
For her –
loving him is harder
than loving herself.
His wheelchair
comes between them.
Iron-wheeled, squat –
implacable as a gaoler,
while his jealousy fastens
limpet-like
on the backs of the men
who drift around her,
drones, waiting for their queen to
choose.
She wonders:
if he could take her properly
– show her who’s boss
– would it make him softer,
slower to impugn
her desire?
Yet – as she dances alone
at the jazz concert –
she keeps him in the
corner of her eye.
Seated, nursing a Savannah plugged with lemon.
Watches him
like sailors, finding their way at night,
might look up
as the stars above them
wheel and turn
– gleaming, celestial,
purer than the water that reflects them −
form a compass
to map
a way
home.
160808
hinges now
on that minute, over so
quickly,
the gust took him,
blew him across the air, and
dumped him on the ground
– crumpled beneath his ‘chute
like a fistful of newspaper.
After they disentangled him,
after the hospital, the doctors,
the morphine, the pain –
the nightmares came,
waking him in the dark
gasping –
turned back on himself
like a embryo,
but one unable to grow
a new spine.
For her –
loving him is harder
than loving herself.
His wheelchair
comes between them.
Iron-wheeled, squat –
implacable as a gaoler,
while his jealousy fastens
limpet-like
on the backs of the men
who drift around her,
drones, waiting for their queen to
choose.
She wonders:
if he could take her properly
– show her who’s boss
– would it make him softer,
slower to impugn
her desire?
Yet – as she dances alone
at the jazz concert –
she keeps him in the
corner of her eye.
Seated, nursing a Savannah plugged with lemon.
Watches him
like sailors, finding their way at night,
might look up
as the stars above them
wheel and turn
– gleaming, celestial,
purer than the water that reflects them −
form a compass
to map
a way
home.
160808
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Alone
I lie on my bed
And try to remember pleasure
Given by another
The feeling of being wanted
Slips like a fish
Into a dark crevice.
22.7
And try to remember pleasure
Given by another
The feeling of being wanted
Slips like a fish
Into a dark crevice.
22.7
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Going to the shops
Saturday morning at the shops, and all the others
help her get over herself.
She sees a girl with tapered legs and crutches
who smiles to her friend keeping pace with her
in the wheelchair
Their reflections in the Milady’s window
Do not disturb them.
Not even a black and white polka-dotted shirt
That hangs suspended in the air
From a faceless mannequin.
The air in the butchers is cool.
As she places her slabs of meat
On the counter
She hears the middle-aged man
Next to her speak to a mate
About ‘breakfasting at Musgrave,
doing a shop here, and stopping off at Woolworths
on our way home,’
his desperation to be part of a norm
as well-ironed
as his neat blue shorts.
The drab cashier
is training her daughter
with the high cheekbones
and small shy eyes
to use the debit card machine.
Her gold rings glitter
As she hands over the till slip
As delicately as a deer stepping into a trap.
Checkers heaves like a turbulent sea -
as chaotic as the inside
Of her own head.
The order here
Is random,
And terrifying.
There is so much need.
Can it placate
The loneliness
That burns in her
Like a mad man’s eyes?
A fat woman in a pink and green gingham tent
From which her arms emerge
Like pale pork sausages
Remembers something at the door
Dispatches a girl
to the toiletries shelf
To fetch Flex shampoo
For oily hair.
Two young men
Bare-footed
Even in winter,
Stroke their goatees
As they confer near the Chips shelf.
An elderly couple
Talk to each other
In a language she does not know.
Its harshness
Explains the wrinkles
In the old woman’s face.
Her shoulders under her pink cardigan
Hunched,
Her tired sore body sloping
Towards the floor.
She cannot see the man’s expression,
He is turned away.
‘Masturbation is not a sin’
announces a yellow T-shirt
wrapped around the burly
chest of a vacant-eyed man.
A small black baby is tied
To her mother’s back
With a soft blue blanket.
She remembers being
A child
At OK bazaars,
In Grahamstown, long ago.
The fluorescent lights,
And the Cheezers you bit a tiny hole into
So that you could squirt processed cheese
Into your mouth.
19.7
help her get over herself.
She sees a girl with tapered legs and crutches
who smiles to her friend keeping pace with her
in the wheelchair
Their reflections in the Milady’s window
Do not disturb them.
Not even a black and white polka-dotted shirt
That hangs suspended in the air
From a faceless mannequin.
The air in the butchers is cool.
As she places her slabs of meat
On the counter
She hears the middle-aged man
Next to her speak to a mate
About ‘breakfasting at Musgrave,
doing a shop here, and stopping off at Woolworths
on our way home,’
his desperation to be part of a norm
as well-ironed
as his neat blue shorts.
The drab cashier
is training her daughter
with the high cheekbones
and small shy eyes
to use the debit card machine.
Her gold rings glitter
As she hands over the till slip
As delicately as a deer stepping into a trap.
Checkers heaves like a turbulent sea -
as chaotic as the inside
Of her own head.
The order here
Is random,
And terrifying.
There is so much need.
Can it placate
The loneliness
That burns in her
Like a mad man’s eyes?
A fat woman in a pink and green gingham tent
From which her arms emerge
Like pale pork sausages
Remembers something at the door
Dispatches a girl
to the toiletries shelf
To fetch Flex shampoo
For oily hair.
Two young men
Bare-footed
Even in winter,
Stroke their goatees
As they confer near the Chips shelf.
An elderly couple
Talk to each other
In a language she does not know.
Its harshness
Explains the wrinkles
In the old woman’s face.
Her shoulders under her pink cardigan
Hunched,
Her tired sore body sloping
Towards the floor.
She cannot see the man’s expression,
He is turned away.
‘Masturbation is not a sin’
announces a yellow T-shirt
wrapped around the burly
chest of a vacant-eyed man.
A small black baby is tied
To her mother’s back
With a soft blue blanket.
She remembers being
A child
At OK bazaars,
In Grahamstown, long ago.
The fluorescent lights,
And the Cheezers you bit a tiny hole into
So that you could squirt processed cheese
Into your mouth.
19.7
Friday, July 11, 2008
Passing through
His eyes are holograms
his body
is barely there
in the darkness
beneath the lintel
passing through,
into the courtyard
where children play
there are
trees fringeing
the lattice work
a pale blue summer sky yearns
the lemon juice
is bitter
before he adds sugared water
it cools her mouth
like a breath
close to the nape.
feelings swim up in her
like silvery fish.
she speaks the word
- desire
he hands her a key.
11.7
his body
is barely there
in the darkness
beneath the lintel
passing through,
into the courtyard
where children play
there are
trees fringeing
the lattice work
a pale blue summer sky yearns
the lemon juice
is bitter
before he adds sugared water
it cools her mouth
like a breath
close to the nape.
feelings swim up in her
like silvery fish.
she speaks the word
- desire
he hands her a key.
11.7
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Chaise longue - a vignette
she reclines,
sips lap sang souchong
from a cracked Delft mug
– brown, like river water
it tastes of smoke
The window behind her empties
Into a riot of roses.
Peonies spill onto soft grass.
The summer is insistent
Only the thin pane of glass keeps it at bay
She half-wishes there were curtains to draw
Against the white light that striates her papery-thin skin
The quiet of the house
Descends like a Cy Twombly wave
Thick, green and languid.
A crumpled lily leans from its vase,
submitting to its reflection
on the polished mahogany table.
Fragrant,
It dusts her hand golden with pollen
As she plucks off,
A drooping leaf.
09.07.08
sips lap sang souchong
from a cracked Delft mug
– brown, like river water
it tastes of smoke
The window behind her empties
Into a riot of roses.
Peonies spill onto soft grass.
The summer is insistent
Only the thin pane of glass keeps it at bay
She half-wishes there were curtains to draw
Against the white light that striates her papery-thin skin
The quiet of the house
Descends like a Cy Twombly wave
Thick, green and languid.
A crumpled lily leans from its vase,
submitting to its reflection
on the polished mahogany table.
Fragrant,
It dusts her hand golden with pollen
As she plucks off,
A drooping leaf.
09.07.08
Friday, July 4, 2008
Pool noodles
Delighted,
the child
Sweeps the surface of the water
With his pool noodle
And speaks of eel-fish
And the little boy who wrote his name
on the sea-shore -
who lost the words forever
When the tide came up -
The story that anchored him
warmly in his bed
the night before.
But the mother who stands in the shallows
Watching over him
Is in agony
Cannot stop herself
From scratching at her wounds
Does not know
How to calm the fury
And the fear
That rose up in
Her like a storm
When she stepped into the water.
The world
Ricochets
Around her
Like a headache
Exploding
Behind the eyes.
Long-lasting,
Inimical.
Fragments burnt into her memory
Like a virus on a hard drive
Impossible to delete
The love she did not find
The love she would give anything to keep.
The love
She thought she needed
The love she discovered was worth nothing at all.
To keep her hands from tearing at her own skin -
She reaches for the shaft of foam
Lets it float her
Through the memory of betrayal
And yet, still, always -
The longing to connect.
She wants the water to pool around her
as cool,
And clear as forgiveness.
She watches her son wield
His wand,
Like a wizard,
Summoning hope.
4.7.08
the child
Sweeps the surface of the water
With his pool noodle
And speaks of eel-fish
And the little boy who wrote his name
on the sea-shore -
who lost the words forever
When the tide came up -
The story that anchored him
warmly in his bed
the night before.
But the mother who stands in the shallows
Watching over him
Is in agony
Cannot stop herself
From scratching at her wounds
Does not know
How to calm the fury
And the fear
That rose up in
Her like a storm
When she stepped into the water.
The world
Ricochets
Around her
Like a headache
Exploding
Behind the eyes.
Long-lasting,
Inimical.
Fragments burnt into her memory
Like a virus on a hard drive
Impossible to delete
The love she did not find
The love she would give anything to keep.
The love
She thought she needed
The love she discovered was worth nothing at all.
To keep her hands from tearing at her own skin -
She reaches for the shaft of foam
Lets it float her
Through the memory of betrayal
And yet, still, always -
The longing to connect.
She wants the water to pool around her
as cool,
And clear as forgiveness.
She watches her son wield
His wand,
Like a wizard,
Summoning hope.
4.7.08
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Poem on leaving SA
- ‘it wasn’t roaring, it was weeping’ (Bright Blue)
Country of contradictions
One that sheltered
the unknown foreigner -
then saw him
blaze his way into oblivion
Set aflame
By a lack
That aches into the bones of the angry
Irresolute -
I leave you –
Country that survived apartheid,
Country with the second highest murder rate in the world
knowing I must come back to you soon enough, and
somehow make a rough peace
with the constant fear you instil in me.
Yesterday,
I stood in the Post Office,
One of three whites
In a queue of black people
A red-eyed Zulu man was talking to his mate,
then he broke into song,
But half-heartedly –
His tone matched the face
Of the weary woman behind him,
Who wore a Mr Price denim skirt trailing raggedly onto
Her scuffed fake-leather slip-ons.
The poster behind the spruce Indian man who took my slip,
Spelled in loud red capitals,
MEN – UNITE AGAINST HIV,
The tattered edges curling inwards,
Later a headline catches my eye
‘6-year old Sheldean kicked her attacker between the legs/
Before he indecently assaulted her.”
I read he wept when he showed law officers
The field where he killed her,
The dry yellow Highveld grass
As coarse as his stubble on her face
As she lay there, futilely fighting back -
The cold earth her only witness.
Here,
In this country,
My son’s father
Put my hand
On the head of our baby
As he passed through my darkness
Into the world of light.
To take his first breath of Durban air.
Slippery, strange,
- The most delicate anchoring.
A winter sky burned bright blue
behind the hospital’s darkened windows.
Although
I feel alien
Here,
A rose-bush
In a grove of cycads.
Sometimes,
I think,
I want
My ashes
Scattered across the Chibini Valley
Where I have meditated so often
At the Buddhist Retreat Centre
and a Wild Plum tree planted
to remember me
in the forest that grows along its edge.
3.6
Country of contradictions
One that sheltered
the unknown foreigner -
then saw him
blaze his way into oblivion
Set aflame
By a lack
That aches into the bones of the angry
Irresolute -
I leave you –
Country that survived apartheid,
Country with the second highest murder rate in the world
knowing I must come back to you soon enough, and
somehow make a rough peace
with the constant fear you instil in me.
Yesterday,
I stood in the Post Office,
One of three whites
In a queue of black people
A red-eyed Zulu man was talking to his mate,
then he broke into song,
But half-heartedly –
His tone matched the face
Of the weary woman behind him,
Who wore a Mr Price denim skirt trailing raggedly onto
Her scuffed fake-leather slip-ons.
The poster behind the spruce Indian man who took my slip,
Spelled in loud red capitals,
MEN – UNITE AGAINST HIV,
The tattered edges curling inwards,
Later a headline catches my eye
‘6-year old Sheldean kicked her attacker between the legs/
Before he indecently assaulted her.”
I read he wept when he showed law officers
The field where he killed her,
The dry yellow Highveld grass
As coarse as his stubble on her face
As she lay there, futilely fighting back -
The cold earth her only witness.
Here,
In this country,
My son’s father
Put my hand
On the head of our baby
As he passed through my darkness
Into the world of light.
To take his first breath of Durban air.
Slippery, strange,
- The most delicate anchoring.
A winter sky burned bright blue
behind the hospital’s darkened windows.
Although
I feel alien
Here,
A rose-bush
In a grove of cycads.
Sometimes,
I think,
I want
My ashes
Scattered across the Chibini Valley
Where I have meditated so often
At the Buddhist Retreat Centre
and a Wild Plum tree planted
to remember me
in the forest that grows along its edge.
3.6
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Phantasm
─ ‘this one goes out to the one I love/
this one goes out to the one I’ve left behind’ – REM
the oppressiveness of Saturday afternoons
air in empty layers
traps houses, walls, gardens in a lethargy of propriety.
Even the dog is listless.
He sprawls ragged in the hollow left below the strelitzia palm.
the washing machine churns
purposefully
but around it the silence seeps
like a slow toxin
there is no breeze to stir the leaves of the wild ginger plant
its creamy flower droops, edged by a roughness of brown.
The room has abandoned itself -
there is nobody here.
the woman at the computer writing
is a cipher –
she does not really exist –
touch her
and your hand will pass straight through her,
as if she were smoke,
mist,
something vanishing fast.
Becoming nothing.
31.5
this one goes out to the one I’ve left behind’ – REM
the oppressiveness of Saturday afternoons
air in empty layers
traps houses, walls, gardens in a lethargy of propriety.
Even the dog is listless.
He sprawls ragged in the hollow left below the strelitzia palm.
the washing machine churns
purposefully
but around it the silence seeps
like a slow toxin
there is no breeze to stir the leaves of the wild ginger plant
its creamy flower droops, edged by a roughness of brown.
The room has abandoned itself -
there is nobody here.
the woman at the computer writing
is a cipher –
she does not really exist –
touch her
and your hand will pass straight through her,
as if she were smoke,
mist,
something vanishing fast.
Becoming nothing.
31.5
Friday, May 30, 2008
Threadwords
She threads words
through the scraps of her life
like a hunter
piecing together skins
from rabbits he has killed -
fashioning a quilt for his rough bed.
She is ready at last
For the task
Of remembering and dismembering
Crude, bloody, comfortless
With no guarantees.
The light of the sun
That falls on her
Is sharp
Merciless
It needles her
Like the quest for truth
Dark glasses cannot allay it.
It will be felt.
It must pierce.
A sleepier self
Wants to close her eyes,
bask spread-eagled
oblivious
But the watcher
Strung-out on adrenalin
Is pointing to the clock,
Skewed from too much delay, like the one in Dali’s painting.
Its incessant tick sounds in her ears
as deafening as tinnitus.
There is so little time,
She mutters
Her skin parches across her face
With a new dryness.
‘You, you, you,’
said the poet in her dream,
like an archer drawing a bow.
A sister
Asks her
To be who she is
who is she
to deny her?
30.5
through the scraps of her life
like a hunter
piecing together skins
from rabbits he has killed -
fashioning a quilt for his rough bed.
She is ready at last
For the task
Of remembering and dismembering
Crude, bloody, comfortless
With no guarantees.
The light of the sun
That falls on her
Is sharp
Merciless
It needles her
Like the quest for truth
Dark glasses cannot allay it.
It will be felt.
It must pierce.
A sleepier self
Wants to close her eyes,
bask spread-eagled
oblivious
But the watcher
Strung-out on adrenalin
Is pointing to the clock,
Skewed from too much delay, like the one in Dali’s painting.
Its incessant tick sounds in her ears
as deafening as tinnitus.
There is so little time,
She mutters
Her skin parches across her face
With a new dryness.
‘You, you, you,’
said the poet in her dream,
like an archer drawing a bow.
A sister
Asks her
To be who she is
who is she
to deny her?
30.5
From the verandah
Together they watch the honey-bee
Nose its way into a pinkness of flower
The wild ginger leaves around it droop.
Songololos sit starkly, privately, still
- red against grey bark
One inches its way across a precipice of broken branch.
Another edges between the folded lips of a tree trunk.
She stands, stunned
By the weight of her knowing,
Leans against the balustrade as if it were the only one in the world
She has no time to lose.
If she let go
she would fall into the forest,
she would drown in its tangle.
The breath of the morning
is cool,
it sings through the foliage like a lament.
In the foreground,
a paw paw tree
sways in the wind irresolutely.
Bare of fruit,
its pale yellow tubes need seeding.
She is afraid of her herself
Of her want
- like sugar-cane fields on fire
Fierce, loud, hot.
- sticks cracking in the blaze.
She is an ocean of feeling
Bounded by the real.
Now, her child clutches at her thigh,
asking to be lifted up.
The horizon watches with a steely-grey keenness
as she holds him to her body,
like an anchor.
Nose its way into a pinkness of flower
The wild ginger leaves around it droop.
Songololos sit starkly, privately, still
- red against grey bark
One inches its way across a precipice of broken branch.
Another edges between the folded lips of a tree trunk.
She stands, stunned
By the weight of her knowing,
Leans against the balustrade as if it were the only one in the world
She has no time to lose.
If she let go
she would fall into the forest,
she would drown in its tangle.
The breath of the morning
is cool,
it sings through the foliage like a lament.
In the foreground,
a paw paw tree
sways in the wind irresolutely.
Bare of fruit,
its pale yellow tubes need seeding.
She is afraid of her herself
Of her want
- like sugar-cane fields on fire
Fierce, loud, hot.
- sticks cracking in the blaze.
She is an ocean of feeling
Bounded by the real.
Now, her child clutches at her thigh,
asking to be lifted up.
The horizon watches with a steely-grey keenness
as she holds him to her body,
like an anchor.
Dammed up
She is a dam
In a remote river valley,
Made fuller by floodwaters from an earthquake
Further up, where the mountains are
- heavy, she waits -
pregnant with the fear
of what opening the sluice gates
will birth.
30.5
In a remote river valley,
Made fuller by floodwaters from an earthquake
Further up, where the mountains are
- heavy, she waits -
pregnant with the fear
of what opening the sluice gates
will birth.
30.5
Friday, May 9, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
Monday, April 7, 2008
The tenant's room
Begin to write
For the way through into the sane is here
Like stepping over a lintel
Into the tenant’s room,
‘quiet, spacious, near university, only R1600 a month, L&W included’
It is the same as the ones you have left behind you,
Waiting, like witnesses.
– No false redemption here
This is not a confessional
Not even the luxury of a category
Just a movement into, away from the familiar –
the furniture in it yours, but not
- skewed somehow, because
someone else lives here now,
The dust under the bed piled like snow,
Two cold shards from a broken wine glass
balanced into each other like hands, like daggers.
Strangeness surrounds
You
Like the stink of the lone garlic clove on the counter
Abandoned in a largeness of ceramic bowl,
Tacit tea candles diminished by the pink plastic cups
They sit in
The aluminium coffee maker with no lid.
This is the other
The mirror you do not want
- her photographs like small jagged shadows against a whiteness of wall,
an orange scarf severe across the window.
Rubbish rots in a Checkers packet beneath the sink,
And in the dimness
You seek words
To place
Like one of your son’s Shrek plasters
On the cut inflicted by neglect.
070408
For the way through into the sane is here
Like stepping over a lintel
Into the tenant’s room,
‘quiet, spacious, near university, only R1600 a month, L&W included’
It is the same as the ones you have left behind you,
Waiting, like witnesses.
– No false redemption here
This is not a confessional
Not even the luxury of a category
Just a movement into, away from the familiar –
the furniture in it yours, but not
- skewed somehow, because
someone else lives here now,
The dust under the bed piled like snow,
Two cold shards from a broken wine glass
balanced into each other like hands, like daggers.
Strangeness surrounds
You
Like the stink of the lone garlic clove on the counter
Abandoned in a largeness of ceramic bowl,
Tacit tea candles diminished by the pink plastic cups
They sit in
The aluminium coffee maker with no lid.
This is the other
The mirror you do not want
- her photographs like small jagged shadows against a whiteness of wall,
an orange scarf severe across the window.
Rubbish rots in a Checkers packet beneath the sink,
And in the dimness
You seek words
To place
Like one of your son’s Shrek plasters
On the cut inflicted by neglect.
070408
Traffic mistaken for sea
The thrum of the traffic
Threading itself along
the highway
sounds in her ears
Like the sea she longs to hear
Coolly blanketing
Natures Valley shores.
070408
Threading itself along
the highway
sounds in her ears
Like the sea she longs to hear
Coolly blanketing
Natures Valley shores.
070408
Friday, April 4, 2008
Whale, freeing herself
The beleaguered whale
struggles
In Atlantic seawater off Kommetijie.
Caught up inadvertently in ropes.
She drags them behind her,
buoys scraping across her barnacled back,
the crayfish trap tangled around her tail.
The rescuers wait, watch –
Poised on rubber ducks
Smugly gauging their moment
To step in,
Take action,
Assert their human superiority.
But she beats them to it
Valiantly
thrashes herself free
Swims off
In search of deeper,
less cluttered
Terrain.
040408
struggles
In Atlantic seawater off Kommetijie.
Caught up inadvertently in ropes.
She drags them behind her,
buoys scraping across her barnacled back,
the crayfish trap tangled around her tail.
The rescuers wait, watch –
Poised on rubber ducks
Smugly gauging their moment
To step in,
Take action,
Assert their human superiority.
But she beats them to it
Valiantly
thrashes herself free
Swims off
In search of deeper,
less cluttered
Terrain.
040408
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Writer, early morning
Disengaged from herself
Like a ship loosed from a mooring.
She floats through the house,
As if it were a foreign sea.
Pulled back,
The curtain reveals a rueful moon
Sinking against the hesitancy of sunrise.
Objects have lost their certainty.
Remnants of dreams,
Follow her like wraiths.
Catching them
Is like trying to hold smoke in her hands.
Anchored by will now,
A cripple sitting in a wheelchair of fear
her anger, like a wall without windows
stops the words from coming –
The gleam of computer screen,
Clatter of keyboard
her only doorways through.
100807
Like a ship loosed from a mooring.
She floats through the house,
As if it were a foreign sea.
Pulled back,
The curtain reveals a rueful moon
Sinking against the hesitancy of sunrise.
Objects have lost their certainty.
Remnants of dreams,
Follow her like wraiths.
Catching them
Is like trying to hold smoke in her hands.
Anchored by will now,
A cripple sitting in a wheelchair of fear
her anger, like a wall without windows
stops the words from coming –
The gleam of computer screen,
Clatter of keyboard
her only doorways through.
100807
Pain
Pain
She is an atlas of pain
Territories of loss
Pattern her.
Every country in her mind
Tainted by memory
Complicated by desire.
From this inchoate knot
She shapes self,
Finds a thread from within the tangled skein
Bites it off, breaks it.
She has to walk away
From what bound her to him.
The promise of what never came
The pushing-away.
She placates the child screaming her father’s name,
trawls through her dreams,
for markers and signs
for clues of where to go next.
Birds swoop around her house
That waits in the dark like a stranger
Calling with wild hoarse voices
Their shadows find their fleeting way onto her page.
230807
She is an atlas of pain
Territories of loss
Pattern her.
Every country in her mind
Tainted by memory
Complicated by desire.
From this inchoate knot
She shapes self,
Finds a thread from within the tangled skein
Bites it off, breaks it.
She has to walk away
From what bound her to him.
The promise of what never came
The pushing-away.
She placates the child screaming her father’s name,
trawls through her dreams,
for markers and signs
for clues of where to go next.
Birds swoop around her house
That waits in the dark like a stranger
Calling with wild hoarse voices
Their shadows find their fleeting way onto her page.
230807
Bellwether
- anything that indicates future trends; an omen
A presaging
This indication of future calamity
Here already
Knocking at the door,
Tapping at the lock.
A fury of fires
A fright of floods
Are all the children in their beds
Its past eight o’clock?
Waves relentlessly
Breaking down coastlines
The sea inexorably taking back the land.
Cold as a mother.
Oh, this is an omen
Of what is to come
The canary in the coalmine.
Embattled ecologies,
Sing their sweet soft ditties
Disappearing faster than the stars at dawn.
Climate change,
A trendsetter
Steps inside in her sexy leather boots
A fickle dame,
Her garnet ring gleams
Her eyes sparkle.
Bellwether,
She heralds
Danger.
140807
A presaging
This indication of future calamity
Here already
Knocking at the door,
Tapping at the lock.
A fury of fires
A fright of floods
Are all the children in their beds
Its past eight o’clock?
Waves relentlessly
Breaking down coastlines
The sea inexorably taking back the land.
Cold as a mother.
Oh, this is an omen
Of what is to come
The canary in the coalmine.
Embattled ecologies,
Sing their sweet soft ditties
Disappearing faster than the stars at dawn.
Climate change,
A trendsetter
Steps inside in her sexy leather boots
A fickle dame,
Her garnet ring gleams
Her eyes sparkle.
Bellwether,
She heralds
Danger.
140807
The Tipping Point - written last year
'Tipping point - the moment at which damage to the environment is so severe and widespread that it pushes the ecosystem into an irreversible cycle of self-destruction.'
Hurtling towards the tipping point
Fields of ancient trees
Disappearing like smoke in a gale
A forest a week -
A river of tears will not bring back what has been lost.
Will not wash the toxins from this poisoned lake.
When will it be too much …
When will it end?
The immaculacy of the world torn asunder
Like innocence taken from a young child
Who cannot stop the man from pushing himself
Into her
Spilling seed where it should not be spilled.
Who are we to mourn what our kind have done –
Love like a blinding sun
Might save me here, now
Warm the coolness of my grieving heart.
But I fear
It is too late
For my world
She dances
Corrupted
An industrialist’s whore
Spiralling towards destruction
Like plumes moving across the Pacific
Hot and black with carbon
Like his breath in her ear
Panting, as rolls off her and asks ‘did you enjoy it?’
Her mouth sealed shut with sellotape
Her hands bound behind her back.
There’s no turning back
The earth is pregnant with malaise
She is birthing a monster –
Fathered by greed.
The baby dropped in the latrine
Lived an hour
Suffocated in shit
Before the rescuers could reach her.
010807
Hurtling towards the tipping point
Fields of ancient trees
Disappearing like smoke in a gale
A forest a week -
A river of tears will not bring back what has been lost.
Will not wash the toxins from this poisoned lake.
When will it be too much …
When will it end?
The immaculacy of the world torn asunder
Like innocence taken from a young child
Who cannot stop the man from pushing himself
Into her
Spilling seed where it should not be spilled.
Who are we to mourn what our kind have done –
Love like a blinding sun
Might save me here, now
Warm the coolness of my grieving heart.
But I fear
It is too late
For my world
She dances
Corrupted
An industrialist’s whore
Spiralling towards destruction
Like plumes moving across the Pacific
Hot and black with carbon
Like his breath in her ear
Panting, as rolls off her and asks ‘did you enjoy it?’
Her mouth sealed shut with sellotape
Her hands bound behind her back.
There’s no turning back
The earth is pregnant with malaise
She is birthing a monster –
Fathered by greed.
The baby dropped in the latrine
Lived an hour
Suffocated in shit
Before the rescuers could reach her.
010807
Grahamstown library
Grahamstown Library
A memory pale
As new skin emerging from
beneath the scar tissue.
Edges into consciousness
In the way that dreams do,
She recalls
the way the wintry trees stood still and
bare, beside the sandstone building
That housed the books.
Immersed in clear light
As she was – in that time,
A matrix of yearning
That has never left her.
The streets of that town, remembered
Haunt her
Like a fragrance she cannot name.
The stairs up to the children’s library
Darker than
Grief.
310308
A memory pale
As new skin emerging from
beneath the scar tissue.
Edges into consciousness
In the way that dreams do,
She recalls
the way the wintry trees stood still and
bare, beside the sandstone building
That housed the books.
Immersed in clear light
As she was – in that time,
A matrix of yearning
That has never left her.
The streets of that town, remembered
Haunt her
Like a fragrance she cannot name.
The stairs up to the children’s library
Darker than
Grief.
310308
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
LuckyBeanNecklace
To write
I wear the scarlet necklace
wrought from seeds
And bold black thread.
I cast aside
His aspersions …
Like an frightened parent
Might scorn a child
Whose truth
Cuts close to the bone
A knife in a hand
Angry enough to spill blood.
I want to be
As brave as the full moon
Just before dawn
Finding the hidden secret things of the garden,
That long to gleam in her light.
lost,
Forgiven,
not forgotten.
250308
I wear the scarlet necklace
wrought from seeds
And bold black thread.
I cast aside
His aspersions …
Like an frightened parent
Might scorn a child
Whose truth
Cuts close to the bone
A knife in a hand
Angry enough to spill blood.
I want to be
As brave as the full moon
Just before dawn
Finding the hidden secret things of the garden,
That long to gleam in her light.
lost,
Forgiven,
not forgotten.
250308
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Pain - Dickinson
Pain – has an Element of Blank –
It cannot recollect
When it begun – or if there were
A time when it was not –
It has no Future – but itself –
Its Infinite contain
Its Past – enlightened to perceive
New Periods – of Pain.
Emily Dickinson
It cannot recollect
When it begun – or if there were
A time when it was not –
It has no Future – but itself –
Its Infinite contain
Its Past – enlightened to perceive
New Periods – of Pain.
Emily Dickinson
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Tree-fan
She is the bareness
Of a winter tree
seen blazing palely
from the road home.
its branches fanning out across the aching blue sky
like small bones.
structuring the intricacy
of a truth.
She is the waves that collide in the Labrador Sea
Sand floor resonating with the water
In a hum that sounds for miles.
Turbulent, unresolved.
The cold Arctic Ocean seethes with life
Deep below the ice.
The strange creatures living there, in the dark -
Do not welcome the new cartography
The submarine-borne scientists would impose like a template
on their primal home.
Like a poem
Pulled from the depths of her
Fights
Being given a name.
200308
Of a winter tree
seen blazing palely
from the road home.
its branches fanning out across the aching blue sky
like small bones.
structuring the intricacy
of a truth.
She is the waves that collide in the Labrador Sea
Sand floor resonating with the water
In a hum that sounds for miles.
Turbulent, unresolved.
The cold Arctic Ocean seethes with life
Deep below the ice.
The strange creatures living there, in the dark -
Do not welcome the new cartography
The submarine-borne scientists would impose like a template
on their primal home.
Like a poem
Pulled from the depths of her
Fights
Being given a name.
200308
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Neighbourhood watch
The small girl
Standing at the door
Watching through the bars of the closed gate
Sees her image, give or take thirty years
Pass along the street.
The woman
Looking up
Catches the tail end of the glance
Feels it rather than sees it –
The clarity of a recognition
She can barely fathom.
The green of the trees
Between them
would swallow her whole.
She clings on to the small nearness
Of a stamen dangling
From its red-belled flower
As if it were a lifeline.
The hard creaminess of the lily curve
Holds the vast space of her awareness
Like a lip, like a cup.
180308
Standing at the door
Watching through the bars of the closed gate
Sees her image, give or take thirty years
Pass along the street.
The woman
Looking up
Catches the tail end of the glance
Feels it rather than sees it –
The clarity of a recognition
She can barely fathom.
The green of the trees
Between them
would swallow her whole.
She clings on to the small nearness
Of a stamen dangling
From its red-belled flower
As if it were a lifeline.
The hard creaminess of the lily curve
Holds the vast space of her awareness
Like a lip, like a cup.
180308
Monday, March 17, 2008
Moths
Moths
The moths
Have migrated into the house
They crowd the walls
Small ciphers dark against the whiteness.
As if witnessing a wake,
Or perhaps waiting for a dream to float in
From the garden they have left behind.
They flutter up
When disturbed
Settle back
Notes on page of music,
Tuning a waiting song.
Yet to be sung.
Her voice
Quavers
As she reads her poem to herself.
She thinks of death -
The low cemetery wall
That does not hide
The plain white crosses marking the graves within.
She wants to see with the eyes of a child
Reach past the fear of failure
And find her truth
Say it,
Clearly.
The words
A balsam
For a wound
That cannot be undone.
170308
The moths
Have migrated into the house
They crowd the walls
Small ciphers dark against the whiteness.
As if witnessing a wake,
Or perhaps waiting for a dream to float in
From the garden they have left behind.
They flutter up
When disturbed
Settle back
Notes on page of music,
Tuning a waiting song.
Yet to be sung.
Her voice
Quavers
As she reads her poem to herself.
She thinks of death -
The low cemetery wall
That does not hide
The plain white crosses marking the graves within.
She wants to see with the eyes of a child
Reach past the fear of failure
And find her truth
Say it,
Clearly.
The words
A balsam
For a wound
That cannot be undone.
170308
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Swimming lessons - 150308
Swimming lessons
Forceful in their quietness
As sudden as a gust of wind in the quick of night
The moths flutter up from the hedge-leaves
Hundreds of them
Not gaudy like dragonflies
but brown,
uniform.
She thinks that maybe
There wings are coated with poison
Like beautiful oleander flowers,
Like lies,
That do harm with seeming sweetness.
The women placed around the pool
watching their children learn to swim
Talk about the storm the night before
The red-head speaks of the lightning conductor
That caught fire
She saw it from her bedroom window
‘Flames shot from it!’
She says,
As if she thinks they shouldn’t have.
The grandmother compares rain measurements
In Berea, in Amanzimtoti
‘No rain fell in Durban North’
She says with some surprise,
As if she thinks it should have.
The one who would be a poet
Describes her dog
How it hid from the thunder under her son’s bed,
Where she too took shelter
It muzzle resting in her hand
- but they are not listening.
And her voice is softer than darkness.
She remembers the Palauen cave she read of in the newspaper
Filled with the skeletons
Of small humans, ‘hobbits’
- the sand made of ground human bone.
The silence of the dead
jangles across the centuries,
flashes light onto things left undone.
Her heart pulses in her throat
Like a separate animal,
Like her son’s small splash-kicks
Across the water
Bringing himself
Towards her,
Sitting there,
Still living.
150308
Forceful in their quietness
As sudden as a gust of wind in the quick of night
The moths flutter up from the hedge-leaves
Hundreds of them
Not gaudy like dragonflies
but brown,
uniform.
She thinks that maybe
There wings are coated with poison
Like beautiful oleander flowers,
Like lies,
That do harm with seeming sweetness.
The women placed around the pool
watching their children learn to swim
Talk about the storm the night before
The red-head speaks of the lightning conductor
That caught fire
She saw it from her bedroom window
‘Flames shot from it!’
She says,
As if she thinks they shouldn’t have.
The grandmother compares rain measurements
In Berea, in Amanzimtoti
‘No rain fell in Durban North’
She says with some surprise,
As if she thinks it should have.
The one who would be a poet
Describes her dog
How it hid from the thunder under her son’s bed,
Where she too took shelter
It muzzle resting in her hand
- but they are not listening.
And her voice is softer than darkness.
She remembers the Palauen cave she read of in the newspaper
Filled with the skeletons
Of small humans, ‘hobbits’
- the sand made of ground human bone.
The silence of the dead
jangles across the centuries,
flashes light onto things left undone.
Her heart pulses in her throat
Like a separate animal,
Like her son’s small splash-kicks
Across the water
Bringing himself
Towards her,
Sitting there,
Still living.
150308
Friday, March 14, 2008
Interesting article - about possible future direction for poetry
Eco-pop: Songs in the key of life
What does a plant sound like? A new breed of eco-pop artists is making musical 'soundscapes' that get closer to nature than ever before. Alasdair Lees reports
Of all the myriad absurdities of last year's Live Earth concerts – the absence of world musicians, the sponsorship by DaimlerChrysler, Chris Moyles as a host – the one highlighted by the environmentalist George Marshall was among the most glaring.
Marshall, director of the Climate Outreach Information Network, noted that "the music will contain virtually no mention of climate change, and will lack the anger, fear and aggression needed to galvanise change". With the exceptions of David Gray and Damien Rice's misanthropic cover of "Que Sera", and Terra Naomi's YouTube sensation "Say It's Possible", there was a dearth of songs about the issue at hand, and none with the muscle of say, Pixies' "Monkey Gone to Heaven".
"That's where we're different from Live Earth," says David Buckland, the director of the Cape Farewell Project. "Most bands at Live Earth didn't know squit about climate change. We're taking a whole lot of people from the music world to this extraordinary place, a tipping point of a planet that is changing incredibly fast, with a fantastic science team on board, and we're going to see if they can really engage with climate change."
Since 2004, Buckland has been taking artists such as Rachel Whiteread and writers such as Ian McEwan to the North Pole alongside scientists from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. The only musicians to have made the trip so far are Manchester singer-songwriter Liam Frost and the singer and percussionist Aminatou Goumar of the Touareg band Toumast. This year's expedition, to Disko Bay in west Greenland, though, will be dominated by high-profile pop, rock and classical musicians, including Jarvis Cocker, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Led Zeppelin's bassist, John Paul Jones.
The Cape Farewell Project is not alone in its vision of a fruitful exchange of ideas between the worlds of popular music and science. In September, as part of Liverpool's European Capital of Culture celebrations, the Hive Collective, comprising some of the city's experimental electronica musicians, has organised four audiovisual events under the title Hive Twilight City. For the third event, it has commissioned Chris Watson, the wildlife sound recordist, to "document" Antony Gormley's Another Place, the sculptor's installation of 100 life-sized iron casts of his own body on Crosby Beach.
Intriguingly, researchers from the University of Liverpool have discovered that the statues host a colony of barnacles, Elminius modestus, a cross-fertilising hermaphrodite native to Australia. "The statues are providing an island for this species amid an inhospitable environment," says Dr Leonie Robinson.
Once Watson has finished recording around the statues, he will hand over his tapes to the house-music producer Matthew Herbert, who will then perform a live "sonic experience" of Another Place based on Watson's findings. Herbert is best known for his production work with Bjork and Roisin Murphy, and for his innovative use of samples and found sounds on albums such as Plat Du Jour, a polemic about the science of food production, which features a chicken being killed.
How Watson and Herbert will make music from statues is anyone's guess. But collaborations between the worlds of art and empiricism are vital in the context of global warming, believes the composer David Dunn. His The Sound of Light in Trees, a soundscape that tracks the devastation of pines in New Mexico by bark beetles that has been used by forestry managers and the chaos scientist James Crutchfield to look at how insect-driven defoliation is adding to climate change and how sound might be used to control it.
More accessible instances of such collaborations can be seen in the work of musicians such as the electronica artists Mileece and Mira Calix. In 2006, Mileece was commissioned by the London School of Economics to develop a "generative plant biofeedback system". She discovered a way to make sounds out of the electromagnetic impulses of plants and is now creating a website to host data-streams from specimens all over the world.
Making music from plants is also being explored by the Edinburgh band Found in a project in May at the Scottish capital's Royal Botanic Garden. Dialogues of Wind and Bamboo will involve the five-piece improvising around a midi-controller "operated" by plants, turning the electrical resistance generated by flora into beats and bleeps.
Scientists are increasingly reaching out to musicians to engage the public in their work. In 2002, Mira Calix, who is signed to Warp Records, was commissioned by Geneva's Museum of Natural History to compose a piece of music from the sounds of 150 different species of insects. The result, Nunu, was performed live with the London Sinfonietta at the Royal Festival Hall. She is now working with David Rothenberg, Professor of Philosophy and Music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, on a "remix" of the songs of beluga whales.
David Dunn sees such strategies as the way forward. "We require a merger of art and science – as a dance between metaphor and mechanism – that encourages both to contribute to a collective environmental activism."
Putting its faith in metaphor is The Blacksmoke Organisation, which is planning a multi-disciplinary campaign in the form of its Danger Global Warming Project, which has recruited the likes of actor Viggo Mortensen and designer Philippe Starck to "transform the world into an activist art gallery" . Its "Danger Global Warning Theme", written by Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers, is being remixed by acts including Goldfrapp and Coldcut to highlight "the art of the remix as an allegory for recycling", with film directors such as Tony Kaye creating the promos. Blacksmoke uses a Jack Kerouac mantra as its slogan: "Don't use the telephone. People are never ready to answer it. Use Poetry."
But, believes David Dunn, it may be time for poets to start working the phones. "The art world needs to ground imagination in a deeper understanding of the natural world."
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/ecopop-songs-in-the-key-of-life-794840.html
What does a plant sound like? A new breed of eco-pop artists is making musical 'soundscapes' that get closer to nature than ever before. Alasdair Lees reports
Of all the myriad absurdities of last year's Live Earth concerts – the absence of world musicians, the sponsorship by DaimlerChrysler, Chris Moyles as a host – the one highlighted by the environmentalist George Marshall was among the most glaring.
Marshall, director of the Climate Outreach Information Network, noted that "the music will contain virtually no mention of climate change, and will lack the anger, fear and aggression needed to galvanise change". With the exceptions of David Gray and Damien Rice's misanthropic cover of "Que Sera", and Terra Naomi's YouTube sensation "Say It's Possible", there was a dearth of songs about the issue at hand, and none with the muscle of say, Pixies' "Monkey Gone to Heaven".
"That's where we're different from Live Earth," says David Buckland, the director of the Cape Farewell Project. "Most bands at Live Earth didn't know squit about climate change. We're taking a whole lot of people from the music world to this extraordinary place, a tipping point of a planet that is changing incredibly fast, with a fantastic science team on board, and we're going to see if they can really engage with climate change."
Since 2004, Buckland has been taking artists such as Rachel Whiteread and writers such as Ian McEwan to the North Pole alongside scientists from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. The only musicians to have made the trip so far are Manchester singer-songwriter Liam Frost and the singer and percussionist Aminatou Goumar of the Touareg band Toumast. This year's expedition, to Disko Bay in west Greenland, though, will be dominated by high-profile pop, rock and classical musicians, including Jarvis Cocker, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Led Zeppelin's bassist, John Paul Jones.
The Cape Farewell Project is not alone in its vision of a fruitful exchange of ideas between the worlds of popular music and science. In September, as part of Liverpool's European Capital of Culture celebrations, the Hive Collective, comprising some of the city's experimental electronica musicians, has organised four audiovisual events under the title Hive Twilight City. For the third event, it has commissioned Chris Watson, the wildlife sound recordist, to "document" Antony Gormley's Another Place, the sculptor's installation of 100 life-sized iron casts of his own body on Crosby Beach.
Intriguingly, researchers from the University of Liverpool have discovered that the statues host a colony of barnacles, Elminius modestus, a cross-fertilising hermaphrodite native to Australia. "The statues are providing an island for this species amid an inhospitable environment," says Dr Leonie Robinson.
Once Watson has finished recording around the statues, he will hand over his tapes to the house-music producer Matthew Herbert, who will then perform a live "sonic experience" of Another Place based on Watson's findings. Herbert is best known for his production work with Bjork and Roisin Murphy, and for his innovative use of samples and found sounds on albums such as Plat Du Jour, a polemic about the science of food production, which features a chicken being killed.
How Watson and Herbert will make music from statues is anyone's guess. But collaborations between the worlds of art and empiricism are vital in the context of global warming, believes the composer David Dunn. His The Sound of Light in Trees, a soundscape that tracks the devastation of pines in New Mexico by bark beetles that has been used by forestry managers and the chaos scientist James Crutchfield to look at how insect-driven defoliation is adding to climate change and how sound might be used to control it.
More accessible instances of such collaborations can be seen in the work of musicians such as the electronica artists Mileece and Mira Calix. In 2006, Mileece was commissioned by the London School of Economics to develop a "generative plant biofeedback system". She discovered a way to make sounds out of the electromagnetic impulses of plants and is now creating a website to host data-streams from specimens all over the world.
Making music from plants is also being explored by the Edinburgh band Found in a project in May at the Scottish capital's Royal Botanic Garden. Dialogues of Wind and Bamboo will involve the five-piece improvising around a midi-controller "operated" by plants, turning the electrical resistance generated by flora into beats and bleeps.
Scientists are increasingly reaching out to musicians to engage the public in their work. In 2002, Mira Calix, who is signed to Warp Records, was commissioned by Geneva's Museum of Natural History to compose a piece of music from the sounds of 150 different species of insects. The result, Nunu, was performed live with the London Sinfonietta at the Royal Festival Hall. She is now working with David Rothenberg, Professor of Philosophy and Music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, on a "remix" of the songs of beluga whales.
David Dunn sees such strategies as the way forward. "We require a merger of art and science – as a dance between metaphor and mechanism – that encourages both to contribute to a collective environmental activism."
Putting its faith in metaphor is The Blacksmoke Organisation, which is planning a multi-disciplinary campaign in the form of its Danger Global Warming Project, which has recruited the likes of actor Viggo Mortensen and designer Philippe Starck to "transform the world into an activist art gallery" . Its "Danger Global Warning Theme", written by Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers, is being remixed by acts including Goldfrapp and Coldcut to highlight "the art of the remix as an allegory for recycling", with film directors such as Tony Kaye creating the promos. Blacksmoke uses a Jack Kerouac mantra as its slogan: "Don't use the telephone. People are never ready to answer it. Use Poetry."
But, believes David Dunn, it may be time for poets to start working the phones. "The art world needs to ground imagination in a deeper understanding of the natural world."
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/ecopop-songs-in-the-key-of-life-794840.html
Four poems written in March so far
Mirage
The dream so real
She felt she was there
Walking in the scorched desert
A softness of sky rimming the dunes
Making a bowl
To carry a wealth of scarcity.
How thirsty she was
Weak from it
She ached for water
Like lovers long for each others’ bodies.
The mirage shimmering
Just beyond her reach
Oil-glossy, thick,
Promising coolth,
Satisfaction.
A sticky anticipation of delight,
Ebbs into an emptiness of disappointment,
As the water eludes her,
No matter how fast she moves towards its glittering promises.
040308
Conduit
For long now
It has been blocked
The tunnel full with ragged plastic bags, dead branches
Washed down from the townships.
The water tainted with faeces.
Stagnant as oil sludge
It pools,
Dirty,
Like unresolved pain.
The concrete hollow sticks out over the beach
Into the shallows of the sea
A barrel of a gun
Facing down the waves
that lap at its mouth
Years ago,
The girl walked there with her mother
Speaking of who she might become.
Now she walks there alone
Wondering, in the shadows
How she will ever know, let alone say,
What it is she needs to say.
Poisoned water bleeds out of the conduit
Fanning the sand beneath it
Into delicate patterns,
The woman holds a glass shard,
smoothed by the sea.
Stands indeterminate
At the edge of the stream
Waiting,
For the clear water to come.
080308
Paul’s art
In the cool bank vault
Of the exhibition space
the wave splices the TV monitor
and the surfer in endless summer loop
abseils down its two faces
over and over,
carefully, gently, tracing the water’s warp,
its weft.
The meditative metaphor
Is too contained.
She wants to see
The sluice-gate in the dam wall open
And the water ejaculate beyond it.
In a sheer plume.
She wants to abandon herself
To the work,
Drown in its turbulence,
Find
Fury.
110308
The Dead Zone
‘For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind...’ ~ Hosea 8:7
In the online media
she reads of a Southern Baptist preacher in the US
who said: harming the environment is like ripping pages from The Bible.
She reads too of the Dead Zone
In the Gulf of Mexico
Where algae blooms on nitrates
Pushed downriver from factories
Beautiful flowers
Starve the fish swimming in the water below of oxygen.
Now biofuel crop pesticides will make sure it gets worse, not better.
It’s a litany of loss
What she learns every day
Examining pictures of the fragile Earth
Taken from space
Trying to decode before-and-after pics,
Chinese deltas eaten into by industry
like X-rays of a wound -
Topographies transformed
By greed.
Red rivers bleed into sick oceans.
She remembers
Walking next to the lagoon with her father at night,
Chris Rea’s song from the eighties
The Road to Hell,
Blaring from a parked car.
How prophetic it seems now.
Which page
Shall we tear out next? She wonders …
The one where it says:
Love your neighbour as you love yourself?
- Climate change will create millions of environmental migrants –
The wars over resources are here already,
Darfur scorched,
The Sahel burning.
Or perhaps, the one with these words imprinted on it:
‘you shall go out with joy,
And be led forth with peace,
The mountains and the hills shall burst forth before you?’
A memory of
Of a vision she saw as a child from the kitchen door of her father’s friend, the woman priest -
The green trees of her garden
Incandescent, merging with the sunlight,
Like grace,
As beautiful as a melody,
Just there, immaterial.
Heartbreaking.
Going, going, gone
Irretrievable
An acre of rainforest a day razed,
For burgers.
Will it be the gold-edged page
(she is holding her grandmother’s King James Bible)
Which says
“For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then
Face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as I am known?”
It is the knowledge of what is to come, almost certainly now
That she fears, more than the binding darkness
The fearful anticipation
Of the fires, the floods, the plagues,
Waiting in the wings,
Weary villains.
‘There is nothing love cannot face;there is no limit to its faith?’
She is ashamed
To be seen by that shimmering world she knew once, as a child,
Her kind has betrayed it.
She does not want to be fingered as one of the species
Who thought it was Icarus
Flew so close to the sun,
Arrogant,
Unthinking,
Plummeted as the heat
Melted his wings of wax.
Sheer artifice, destroyed.
‘For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.’
The pages are falling
To the ground
Like handfuls of earth
At a funeral.
120308
The dream so real
She felt she was there
Walking in the scorched desert
A softness of sky rimming the dunes
Making a bowl
To carry a wealth of scarcity.
How thirsty she was
Weak from it
She ached for water
Like lovers long for each others’ bodies.
The mirage shimmering
Just beyond her reach
Oil-glossy, thick,
Promising coolth,
Satisfaction.
A sticky anticipation of delight,
Ebbs into an emptiness of disappointment,
As the water eludes her,
No matter how fast she moves towards its glittering promises.
040308
Conduit
For long now
It has been blocked
The tunnel full with ragged plastic bags, dead branches
Washed down from the townships.
The water tainted with faeces.
Stagnant as oil sludge
It pools,
Dirty,
Like unresolved pain.
The concrete hollow sticks out over the beach
Into the shallows of the sea
A barrel of a gun
Facing down the waves
that lap at its mouth
Years ago,
The girl walked there with her mother
Speaking of who she might become.
Now she walks there alone
Wondering, in the shadows
How she will ever know, let alone say,
What it is she needs to say.
Poisoned water bleeds out of the conduit
Fanning the sand beneath it
Into delicate patterns,
The woman holds a glass shard,
smoothed by the sea.
Stands indeterminate
At the edge of the stream
Waiting,
For the clear water to come.
080308
Paul’s art
In the cool bank vault
Of the exhibition space
the wave splices the TV monitor
and the surfer in endless summer loop
abseils down its two faces
over and over,
carefully, gently, tracing the water’s warp,
its weft.
The meditative metaphor
Is too contained.
She wants to see
The sluice-gate in the dam wall open
And the water ejaculate beyond it.
In a sheer plume.
She wants to abandon herself
To the work,
Drown in its turbulence,
Find
Fury.
110308
The Dead Zone
‘For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind...’ ~ Hosea 8:7
In the online media
she reads of a Southern Baptist preacher in the US
who said: harming the environment is like ripping pages from The Bible.
She reads too of the Dead Zone
In the Gulf of Mexico
Where algae blooms on nitrates
Pushed downriver from factories
Beautiful flowers
Starve the fish swimming in the water below of oxygen.
Now biofuel crop pesticides will make sure it gets worse, not better.
It’s a litany of loss
What she learns every day
Examining pictures of the fragile Earth
Taken from space
Trying to decode before-and-after pics,
Chinese deltas eaten into by industry
like X-rays of a wound -
Topographies transformed
By greed.
Red rivers bleed into sick oceans.
She remembers
Walking next to the lagoon with her father at night,
Chris Rea’s song from the eighties
The Road to Hell,
Blaring from a parked car.
How prophetic it seems now.
Which page
Shall we tear out next? She wonders …
The one where it says:
Love your neighbour as you love yourself?
- Climate change will create millions of environmental migrants –
The wars over resources are here already,
Darfur scorched,
The Sahel burning.
Or perhaps, the one with these words imprinted on it:
‘you shall go out with joy,
And be led forth with peace,
The mountains and the hills shall burst forth before you?’
A memory of
Of a vision she saw as a child from the kitchen door of her father’s friend, the woman priest -
The green trees of her garden
Incandescent, merging with the sunlight,
Like grace,
As beautiful as a melody,
Just there, immaterial.
Heartbreaking.
Going, going, gone
Irretrievable
An acre of rainforest a day razed,
For burgers.
Will it be the gold-edged page
(she is holding her grandmother’s King James Bible)
Which says
“For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then
Face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as I am known?”
It is the knowledge of what is to come, almost certainly now
That she fears, more than the binding darkness
The fearful anticipation
Of the fires, the floods, the plagues,
Waiting in the wings,
Weary villains.
‘There is nothing love cannot face;there is no limit to its faith?’
She is ashamed
To be seen by that shimmering world she knew once, as a child,
Her kind has betrayed it.
She does not want to be fingered as one of the species
Who thought it was Icarus
Flew so close to the sun,
Arrogant,
Unthinking,
Plummeted as the heat
Melted his wings of wax.
Sheer artifice, destroyed.
‘For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.’
The pages are falling
To the ground
Like handfuls of earth
At a funeral.
120308
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