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
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