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