My gun is warm
and flesh, it bleeds
this rain of bullets
ripping one by one
from narrow chambers
ink-black cartridges
perhaps a magazine
into your mind.
And some will feel
my pencil’s lead
swift through their heart
the searing heat
the ricochet
the exit wound
the echo of
my gun, my gun
is warm, is warm
and flesh, it bleeds
my bulletin
returning fire.
I have sliced and chewed but I cannot detach
Myself from the cord that binds
Me to our ruptured womb
The bleeding placenta
That fed us all
Torn mother
Broken
Tired
Soft
And
So
I
Am
The
Lost
Voice
Howling
Sharp words
Like rusty needles
To stitch deep wounds
With frayed sutures that split
And never seem to mend or heal
Leaving only scars to show how I have tried.
This bloody intro, Mom, is the only reason I’ve taken so long to post your poems here. Of course I could tell you again how much I love and admire you, how proud I am that my writing has inspired you to tell your own stories in prose and verse. When I read your work, I still find it hard to believe that you’re 86 (don’t worry, no one else is reading this). (more…)
Reviewing Rivers, Runners and Relationships with Liesl Jobson
Dear Liesl,
As I sat waiting for you in the lobby, Queen Gabeba sailed down the stairs to bless our meeting with kind words and a smile. Such chance encounters with royalty are grist for the mill of poets and namedroppers alike. Evidently, I am a bit of both. What I did not know was that I was about to spend two hours with the somewhat reluctant High Commissioner of South African Poetry (more…)
No time passes when I am with you
No youth is lost, no death waiting
We remain what we once were:
Men of great ambition, lost souls,
Saviours, liars, freaks, gentleboys
We do not know each other
Better now than we did then
That is our secret: to love
But not know because
To know is to presume
And we prefer to meet
Time and time anew
Like the bread we eat
Ever the same slices
But always fresh.
The short drop is never easy, Erik.
You need to give a lot of thought
to vectors, weights and coefficients
which never were my strongest suit.
But you, my friend, took full measure
of the terminal rationale
before you hit the lab and put
your grim equation to the test.
You scored full marks
All went as you predicted
Beam + rope + knot + body = X
But where does gravity fit in? And how?
And so you left us dangling
shrugging, cursing that
we cannot comprehend
such simple mathematics.
1. Undergrowth
I love the scent
of poetry
in the afternoon.
The heartfelt
words that skip
like sparrows
across the page,
the light shed
in darker corners,
the undergrowth
where death
and grief
reside.
—————–
2. Grey matter
You, fat wood pigeon
Startled by our cat
Almost too lazy
To take to the air.
Me, flightless bastard
bobbing in envy
ruffle my papers
peck at my keyboard.
—————–
3. Flitterlings
Blue tits did not
choose their own name
And so they spell out
airborne alternatives:
Flutterettes
Twisteroos
Blue darters
Death-Defying
Flying Romanovs!
Doing their damnedest to be
as un-breast-like as possible
round the scrotum of seed balls
that hang from our tree.
—————–
4. Opa
Recognition is
the better part of
reincarnation.
Without cognition
no incarnation.
And so our blackbird
becomes our granddad
whistling in our tree
as he had promised
on his deathbed.
“Look, there’s Opa,” says
my daughter, pointing
at her feathered forebear
battling with his worm.
“Does Oma know he’s got
a brownbird girlfriend?”
(A layman’s review of Fourth Child by Megan Hall.)
Dear Megan,
“Orange geraniums / the oven element glowing / the long scar under your wrist” – that’s what love is to you. It epitomises the poignantly mundane kitchen cupboard full of imagery and ingredients with which you concoct your delightful poems. (more…)
