Three Strange Angels

Borders (I)

I am on the outside

Of the border of your being

On that path away

From secret conversations

In a boundaryless country

Where absolute freedom

Kept me tied

To you.

 

As I look back, see the fray

Of an unravelled friendship

I want to go back

On a road that takes me forward.

 

Huis toe Jo (Ek miss you hundreds)

You’re the marmite to my zaamie, howzit to my chana and the Jack to my Parow. The flip to my flop, you were with me when Chuck Norris was still a tjop. At the Milky Lane in Hillbrow when they served waffles way past 12 after nights up Northcliff Hill. You saw me red eyed, down and out, out and out, inside out. I crashed your pozzy, I crashed your Volksie, I crashed your ankle and you still liked me lank. You shared my dreams, my befokte schemes. Dried my snot and trane after each fong kong oke broke my heart. When I’m with you I feel kiff, zef, lekker… like I’m betters, the biscuit, the blits in witblits. Sonder jou is alles maar blerry bleak. Like I’m Ninja without his Yo-landi, chips that aren’t slap, bunny chow without bread, a warm Black Label. My heart feels colder and more empty than die Voortrekker Monument. You’re the Blk to my Jks, the zol in my rizzler, the Klippies to my coke, the haw that precedes my wena. Without you I’m just a shongo with no lolo, a solitary toyi, that buntu with no u. Gooi my a luck Jo. Here’s the 411. I’m finish and klaar with pulling an Mbeki. I love you my chommie. Come home.

Apple:

This morning was no different
- salted wind met sprained metal,
moistened breath sliced by hard edges.

But saline dew softened the unrelenting
iron with reddish-brown blisters.

The man walked through the junkyard
- again reminded of his life,
the corrosion of time, and carelessness.

Around his worn hands curled soft fingers.
His daughter looked up at him,
and he saw hope in her eyes,
remembered why he called her “Apple”.

She, the seed of beauty in his life.

(For my teacher Ramon, who reminds me to write.)

You do not have to be good

The poetry of Mary Oliver enables me to see the world anew.

Reflecting on the 'apologies' of John Mayer and Tiger Woods I wonder how much of those events of self denial, self admonishment and self loathing were inspired by neediness, the desire for acceptance and the want to be liked?

In my mind truth was sacrificed on the altar of commerce and media acceptance/popularity by both Mayer and Woods.

By stark contrast Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver's words are a war cry for truth and liberation. They are a song celebrating the beautiful complexity of what it is to be fully human:

"You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."
From "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

>here<

I want to live in the spaces between your heart beat. Where your mind sleeps and thoughts fall like heavy pennies in still crimson oceans made soft by an absent moon. I will lie in the fronds of your mind’s eye, a reflection of a reflection. A memory not yet made. As you sleep, I will sleep. Curled up inside of you. In that softness the world will never find. When you need to touch my skin, gently call to me. So I can escape like a sigh. Or a tear that once rolled down your cheek and into your mouth.

- Photography by Pinkmango77 @ DeviantArt

My father’s laughing heart

I grew up believing that I would be Oriana Fallaci but perhaps that's because her name is so delicious, particularly when you say it again and again and again. Out loud or just quietly in your mind.

I'm more Bukowski than Neruda, but has to do with my father - the man with a beautiful mind who when sober would read Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. Thanks to him I grew up on a diet of robotics, artificial intelligence, black holes, reason, poetry, science and thinking. The kind of thinking that saved me the days my mother was emotionally fraught.

“What the hell does that have to do with Bukowski?” you could ask.

Well.

If you want to understand. You must read Bukowski’s “Laughing Heart”:

The Laughing Heart by Charles Bukowski

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

My father’s name was Charles. A name I have come to think of as gorgeous. Charles Dickens. Charles Darwin. Charles Thomas Bolton. And of course Charles Bukowski. But I love this name because it belonged to my father first. The man who never made it out. None of us do. But he was beaten by life. Died broken in a bed in my house early one morning. Just before the sun arrived. Beaten, but like Bukowski, not without beauty.

For a long time I found my life disturbing, so I avoided it or viewed it with abstract scepticism like one would sitting in the back row of a Fellini movie, not knowing what the hell was going on. Thinking it fascinating and incredibly interesting.

I'm more in the movie now, but I think that has to do with the fact that the more I read Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett or Bertrand Russell the more I realise that 'oh fuck!'  This actually might be it. The darkness is coming. How can I create more light?

Let me get it before I'm gone forever. Now I try. I really try. And I'm happier for it. If happiness as an abstract concept can be plausible or real. It's such a mercurial beast. A bit like a cat that never comes when called. Rubs herself up against your legs every now and again.

I might be trying to get it because of my own Bukowski. The broken man with the beautiful mind. In my imagination he sitting in the back row. Watching the film. But he gets it now. Because he wants to. Because that’s me in the movie and he loves me. More than is bearable. He loves me. And heart achingly he wants it to be better for me than it was for him. So he’s cheering me on and he’s saying:

“you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.”

 

Timberland

(For my father - Charles Wheatley Mathews)

I looked to where he lay sleeping

His mouth became a beak,
His body a bird.

Small. Soft and fragile.
How could he be
A man?

Slumped. Gawping.
Cheeks sucked into a hollow.
There was a time
They were filled with words,
And worlds of wonder
Would fall from his lips.

But tonight.
A rasp. A slim sigh.
A soft whistle.
Shrunken and brittle,
Mouth framed with spittle,
No less a man,
No more a giant.

When his last breath left,
I opened the door
Walked into night
Picked up an axe
Chopped the greatest
Tree I could find,
Till it fell.
No more a tree.

Again and
Again the axe struck,
The saw cut through wood.
Hours passed as tears
Turned to resolve.

He died as the sun set
When the new moon
Stalked the sky.

As the night fled
Just before dawn,
I dragged that square box
Onto the lawn.

I stepped right in
Sat down.
Here my father
Would rest his crown.

Then as the stars
Died to sun,
I told him again
That I was his son.

I carried his form
Into the new day
To that casket
I built where
He now would lay.

metempsychosis

 

a tendril leans into tomorrow

budded with tender promise

nested in the seam of two worlds -

where failure and fortune make love

before silhouettes take form,

the possible waits to be born.

PHOTO: fern bud IV by ~photonzoo

Another country (for Sean)

I love you much
Miss you more.

This longing grows wings
Flies to the edge of my
World, where by water
Fins unfold
(flip flop)

Falls away from the edge
Swims free
Across too far
And finds a new home
In your heart.

You have sharp edges...

..where I have bruising.

How is it that you used the word love when you told me you were leaving?

That I should remember you, each time I turn into your road?

I who drive that path every afternoon. Which means I'll think of you every day.

Which I do now anyway.

Marking time.

Just marking time.

Each tick. Tock.

Another second in the time and space continuum. That separates us.

We who work the same suburb.

Share the same street.

Time respects no memory or pain.

Relentless in its savage beat.

There will come a day.

When I won't think of you.

I will leave your imagination.

Though we'll ride the same road.