Lovecats

We move like cagey tigers. Oh!
We couldn’t get closer than this
The way we walk, the way we talk
The way we stalk, the way we kiss
- The Cure

Food for you my lover, my friend
Not a morsel is left to spare.
You strip me bare, expose my fear
You are the deep water I wade.

There was a time I thought you lost
Chased off by my loud mouth, my pride
Slowly, carefully, like a cat,
I slinked up to you in moonlight.

You arched your back, you hissed, you scratched
Quietly, you licked my hand wet
Breathed in, stretched out, relaxed and purred
I knew then I’d crossed your abyss.

Now we hunt liFe as man and wife
The “fruit of our lions” has grown!
We’ve watched over our kitten love,
Cursed to fail, we have yet survived.

In trusting this wild alley cat,
Your sleek feline charms have blessed me,
Nine times over and many moons,
Transformed my yowling moods to swoons.

_________________________________

Note: When I first shared these words at a poetry evening, MR the convenor guffawed loudly and bellowed out: “You didn’t just use the phrase ‘fruit of our loins’ did you? Oh my God man, I can’t believe you just said that!” I stupidly agonised about it like a ponce but actually damn it all, I like the King James Version of that old testament phrase for offspring. While it may offend some overly-sensitive ears, instead of ripping it out, I’ve humbly bastardised it.

The Tear

I was eighteen once
And so in love.
I was an awkward cliché
Wrapped in passion.

I had Nothing
You were my Everything.
Such soft simple words
So fragile
Almost childish in their lack
They still feel so soft
Like your lips, your skin
Like the gentle curve of your neck
The insides of your wrists
Held open in surrender.

Yet not childish,
perhaps child-like.

One night
In the middle of a raging storm
Out on the water somewhere
I turned in my sleep
Opened blissed-out eyes
To see a single, sad tear
Roll slowly down
The soft, smooth mound
of your cheek
Whispering gently as I recall:
“My Love what troubles you?”
Alas, too distraught,
You said Nothing.

I’d never felt so content
As I did lying naked with you
Yet to be with you
In your arms
In a raging storm
As you wept
I’d never felt as wretched.
To be loved
And to be Beloved
Yet to know your sadness
Was so intimate
So much a part of you
The one I adored.

Your anguish
So much a part of you
It could barely seep out
One tear at a time
In the dead of night
As I lay sleeping
In the arms of a raging storm.

Wherever you are
My beautiful friend,
my once Beloved,
you who taught me
the terrible fear
and longing
of intimacy,
The breathless wonder of
Being loved and in love.

Remember me,
Remember.
I was eighteen once.
And yes,
Oh God yes,
so were you.

Wat Sê Jy?

NOTE: NSFW If you’re easily offended by words

11 Feb 2013
For Anene Booysen and Jyoti Singh Pandey

During recent office intercourse
A young Woman laughed out loud
“I don’t want to say it” she said
Waited a bit
Then did.

If you’re easily offended by words
then best you take a smoke break now
or step out for a coffee.
If you’re easily offended by words
then Fuck You.

The young Woman asked simply with a straight face:
“How would you translate ‘Vagina Monologues’
into Afrikaans?”
I tell you she laughed out loud
Because the answer,
when laid out on its back
with legs open wide is:
“Poes Praat”.

Let the victim speak.
Poes Praat.

In Delhi,
A Woman was raped
And died
In Bredasdorp, a small farm town,
A Woman was raped.
And died.

If I get in my car in that small place
and set off for India,
Google Maps tells me to take the N1
for about 20 000 kilometres
or 275 hours (give or take)
There will be water and ferries involved.
But I know it’s not a road trip I look forward to
What connects them more than miles is blood
You see these women weren’t just raped
They were gang-raped.
Jackrolled,
They each pulled a train.
You see these women weren’t just gang-raped
They were fucked to death.

“But rape’s been with us forever,”
Somebody says:
“An accepted weapon of war
Collateral damage.
Ask the Romans
Ask the Barbarians
Ask the Women of Berlin in 1945
Ask the Women in Auschwitz
Ask the Women in DRC
Ask the Women in Gukurahundi.
In fact ask any man you know
who’s ever been to war.”

But her fingers and legs were broken
Take a look

A dirty iron rod was shoved
Deep inside her Cave of Pleasure
Take a look

She was fucked with a broken beer bottle.
Take a look
Her skull was caved in
Her gash was gashed
Her stomach was sliced,
and like Judas in the tree,
her insides spilled out
and screamed for help
where they lay -
in the dirt, in the sand
where they fucked her to death.

If you’re easily offended by words
then Fuck You.
Her blood cries out,
“I am Woman, hear me scream.
Hear my Poes Praat”.

South African statistics
are screaming silently:
You already know
Somebody
Who has already raped
Somebody
You already know.

So if you’re still listening
Wat Sê Jy?

The music of freedom

Guitar chords strumming the silence
A welcome song of prayer
A place full of expectation
Faces poised in hope
Yet weathered with despair.

A woman’s pure voice rings out
Announcing a bargain sale on freedom
Another singer with long raven hair
Sways in gentle time to the tune
Of prisoners being set free.

Even as my pen caresses the page
The music makes it weep
In a sympathy of trembling
The words reach out, touching
Hearts that open slow, hesitating.

If freedom is a song, listen
Music bearing open-door promises
Rusted keys turning in broken locks
The oil of hope trickles in
Moving the machinery of the soul.

So many questions, so many seekers
Looking forward, hearts’ eyes open
Hands wide to receive the gifts
Made possible with music and song
Running forward to embrace hope, again.

Sunday Song

Sunday Song
July 2011

It’s said you’re the way, the truth and the liFe,
They dance to thank you for your gifts of grace,
Sinners, saints, sheep, goats and sowers of strife,
All scrambling in the everlasting race.

David danced, wept his tears in temples old,
We bring our sacrifice, clothed in fresh shame,
Squandering pearls for the lies we’ve been sold,
Seeking real treasures, the love with your name.

True worship stands naked before your throne,
No TV preacher, no calls for cold cash,
Making crushed hearts bleed where once was dry stone,
Reducing our idols to piles of ash.

Let your living fountains spring forth and flow,
From this quiet place, let living seeds grow.

33°57′ S 18°24′ E

33°57′ S 18°24′ E
1 July 2008

I’ve been told that disciples
on a journey of 12 steps
struggle to locate a Higher Power.
In this city, they look up
to a solid lump of sandstone rock
and carefully place their prayers
on the altar of its table top.

More than half a lifetime ago
a small girl visited
her bight eyes, awake, looked up
and fell in love with
its overarching stillness.
When she returned as a woman
a mother, a friend, another’s lover
the mountain looms ever the same
yet now it seems aloof and strange.

There’s something about this space
that sets the stones in us ajar.
City of light and dark entwined
a playground for the rich and foolish
as well as bread and butter for the poor.
If I’m supposed to build a home upon a rock
how the hell can I ever hope to scale its wall?

That colonial tin-pot bastard Rhodes
planted his first imperial seeds here
Now we (poor sods) reap what he has sown
and carefully water our own small dreams.
In landing here, I hope to find myself
instead, find questions
more immense than any stone.

A Yellow Rose

A Yellow Rose
Wednesday, 9 April 2008

According to those in the know
a yellow rose bud means
friendship and
a still small voice saying
“I care”.

I wish I knew the cure for a broken heart
but even if I managed to distil five small drops
of magic spell
I would have swigged the lot
so many heartbreaks ago.

To grow a seed of love
watch it burst into bloom
as you water it with joy and tears
only to see it wither with neglect or betrayal
these are harsh cruel lessons
in this life we call meaningful.

I could be maudlin and say:
every perfect rose
carries an armoured underbelly of thorns
but you know that already.
Better to guard your heart
and allow your own
bruised petals to heal.

Love is not lost
Nor is every lover untrue.
But hope
now there’s something
worth keeping alive.

eyes to see

eyes to see
sun 12 Oct 2003

You haven’t taken my eyes
but you know why my
sight has forsaken me.
I’m back in the pews
with your people again
praising or bleating
in worship to you
(depending on your perspective)
We like sheep (and goats)
have gone astray even as
we try so hard to follow
a straight path of our own choosing.

You are good and we love you
more than anything
more than eyesight
but I don’t understand you
I never really have.
When I no longer see this path clearly,
please be my eyes and guide my feet.

I love you more than
the eyes I used to know
Some people say:
(call them mixed metaphors
if it pleases your grammar sense)
they’d give their right arm
for a pearl of great price.
Can I truly say:
I’d give my right eye
to know you more
to taste a little bit more
of the depths of your grace?

I’m not sure
(really I’m not)
but given a choice
I want you
and
I also want to keep my eyes.
What good is knowing you
without being able to see
your love in action?
Without being able
to measure (by eye)
the creative leaps and bounds
of your grace?

I love you more
more than I did before
and although this love
I measure out in days and hours
and doctors’ appointments
will wax and wane
I want to believe
that you will
always love me
so much more
than I ever can when
I say I love you.

Give me eyes to see
help this blind seeker
to accept what I struggle
so blindly to understand.

Love me more
so much more
than the meagre portions
of my love for you.

Speak –
your servant
is
listening.

And I want to hear
what you’re whispering
to the ears of my heart
and
please
please
please
teach me how to use
the eyes of my heart.

Of Borges and other myths

Of Borges and other myths
30 Oct 2002

So what’s this whole love thing
about anyhow?
Memories of fragments of
Borges-styled ziggurats
Monuments to might-have-beens
Towers of Babel in the mists
of Babylonian sacrifice

When all it comes down to

(even in the middle of a
riot scene set in the
period costume drama of
some 16th-Century French
adultery-liaison-orgy)

Is a matter of two minds
reaching
for
the other’s heart

Flesh, sexual prime, desire…
all these seem arbitrary
in the face of spiritual longing
whether it’s on my knees
seeking the face of God
or gently pressing the centre
of you as you struggle to
suppress your moans

When actually it’s simply about
pushing deeper into you
In search of white heat
No Freudian salute there
But a longing to slide with you
down the slippery slope of
my feelings,
my heart
my soul cry
for you.

coffee@six

coffee@six
sun 9 sep 2001

Sitting @ six am
in a 24/7 coffee shop
actually it’s disguised as a
Woolworths & Portugese chicken takeout
in petrol-station clothing

Waiting for the sun to rise
and my woman to pick me up
Stayed up all night
worked some
wasted most on technical stuff
I kinda tangled myself in a Web of confusion
but I’m here now writing
on a wobbly tin table
as Bob Marleyesque muzak washes the air
on a perpetual rinse cycle

‘I wanna wake up witha yoooou’
the speakers croon
and I consider a woman at home waking up
s-l-o-w-l-y
and a little girl who’s not yet three

I think I’m happy but I ain’t sure
what feeling broods beneath
this shoulder load of tired

All I know is
I want things to change
I wanna stay married to
a woman who’s happy with choices
she’s made
and years, her best years
invested in me

good seed good fruit
none of that worry ’bout
money chucked @ gen-u-wine trash

So I’m here
the writer waiting for the counsellor
and the future of who my child becomes
lies asleep
like the station forecourt
just outside.