More Poems from the 70's and 80's

SOWETO FUNERAL:(A COMPARISON)

with wise and expectantly sad

smiles

they huddled together, four-deep,

a black sausage

bundled and corralled

into one cattle-proof

open Bedford;

some clutching

black hymn books

others flashing free

Japanese wreaths,

made in Hong Kong

a procession of one Bedford

its mourners singing

raw and soft

following one black hearse

coffin gleaming dully

and its lights

bright and white-

death is no equalizer.

SISTER SMILE

were your intestines pulsating

rhythmically (revolting thick sausage)

to the barbiturate strains of death

when they found you

abandoned (sigh, relief)

your habit, a dull grey as well,

discarded ?

did you not smell his danger at recording sessions, feel his promises echo around your ribcage, tingle
your oh sweet jesus nipples ?

could Antonio, son of merchant Salieri,

not convince you,

with his rather slashed throat

that Senore,

would directly bestow

upon you his Music

and then, languidly,

with a  l imp  wrist

proclaim you

il Compione of mediety ?

News Report 1985-04-02
The Belgian so-called Singing Nun who achieved fame in 1964 with her monster hit "DOMINIQUE" committed suicide today by an over dose of barbiturates. She was  expelled from her order following a dispute with the Mother Superior, who today was not prepared to comment. The Singing Nun who died penniless, apparently had such a sweet disposition that she was often referred to as 'Sister Smile'.

Portrait of the the young Woman as an Artist

accursed;
uncured (a pale pale ) canvas:
serenely gavotting, yet
collapsing spatially,
pirouetting a fine net
across the void
created by a series of lines
hacked into her eyes;
ner consciousness a subdued halo,
a furtive halo flitting
christ-knows, unseen into
the virginity of the canvas,
a glissando of iced passion
splitting her deeply

chorus:

see her sway before the
two-legged easel,
her altar spattered with ink
and the soggy remains of her anima,
see the silenced voice
of her unconscious
drip from a gilt frame

see her now
on the floor, dissolve like hot paté,
a wraithed amoeba retrogressing,
going home
her now-infant face a botticelli oil
(Black Black Black)
red, amadeus-red caressing
her fragmenting lips,
white and prussian-blue
streaks on her forehead.

see her shivering back
into the womb, drippingthe red stuff,
red covering her 2 kg frame,
red running, blackening other colours,
staining the floor,
sucked up into the easel legs,
then into the frame,
spreading gloriously onto
the pale, pale canvas.

Palm (wristless) above owlish waters

When the mist Rolls away
from the Owl-infested waters,
when the hoots (profound) resound,
rebound
across the hurt-hurt-lovely seven silver
lakes;
when the Palm, a Stop-palm, wristless,
floats above
the opacity of the seven;
oh, how I long for
a stray assassin’s bullet.

ONE DAY:THE DAY

the question of when,
not the quantum of,
the End

has stirred me numbly and pre-natally.

It came,

not with Dresden saturations,

Bavarian holiday camps or the express-delivered package floating free from the 'Enola Gay'.

Every xmas shattered by claymores

peace pipes convulsing into R.P,D's

each mozartian jewel crushed

under a jack-boot,

made me wince, ponder, wince, angry, wise

until I had covered myself

with a camouflaged slime

of reason and statistics.

Thus, with some relief

I eventually saw the Marauder

stand in his wellingtons midst

a thousand cornered dolphins, and,

with flaps of their tails,

their every scream of fear faithfully

recorded by high-tech Akai's,

yes, with each wet-slapping thud of

a japanese lance into their bottle-noses

I knew

our time had come,

to pass.

(Written after viewing the annual dolphin slaughter in Japan)

ODE TO A GREEN-AND-BLUE-STONE PAINTING

with the crackling dawn's birth,
her golden Son's smile

touching, fleetingly, the velvet-wetness
of sacrificial stones,
we see (to find to touch)
our re-born child 
of fair face and magical smile;
of arctic-turned-to-Blood
Blood, awesome, beautiful life-force;

Then I drink again from
your scented mouth
your honeyed strokes splashing
bold colours across
my barren canvas.

NIGHT TRIPS

when:

air bursts curdle her

milky blood into a riot,

she dissolves into the long nights,

a milky way in her hair,

passion a smile on her fingers

darting stukas seeking-and-destroying,

she glides down playgirl galleries
heading, inevitably, for the Void;

only to return to him for redemption,

                     sanctification .

Kalk Bay 20 April 1985

NIGHT CLUB

A rum-and-coco-cola room:

doubling up, at times,

as a uterine choc-cock treat,
slip-sliding fat bottles lolling, rolling

across savaged panelyte surfaces,

flat, brusque-forgiving surfaces

flip-flopping between their legs

their stove-piped, berkshired legs,

legs lap-lapping, lick-licking

the mu-mu-music

mmmusic of mime

Glenn Miller and Elvis jump-a-jumping

from Elk echo chambers

pointed shoes and pointless medulla obligatae

all that distinguishes the men

from cheerful rubber plants and

'Mary, I love you sure.  Cheng.  '-walls.

the little languid ladies:

loosely-painted lips licking

at their sagging entrails

(slapped together by stomach muscles

sobbing in foetal abandon)

parted and breathless hips

grinding shallow graves into the wall-wall

the dauphinesses of trashy Alley.

And then Mr. Goddo, the smell

stravinsky-doubled gloom

smothered under dollops of

licorice-1ayered loneliness.

‘n Ander(ste) gedig vir Dinsdagaande

Die A-B bepaalde, beperkende tydshokkie
tussen die
rollende lirieke van vandag
se vandagheid
bevat,
kaalgat, en in ‘n kaalvuis
‘n naguil se wrangwysheid
en dan: emmersvol
vuil,vuil verdriet.

Life (as is)

As the interminable stream
flings and crushes
the marathon smoothness
of my roll,
and rips the outer platinum,
there sits:
treed,
dried,
stained
alive
a bushbuck man,
with mirrored eyes
that scythe
the others free.

LESLEY,SON OF MAY

He is two months old,

the soft side of death

from his echoing eyes

two shy ice-cream scoops,

caves in which his thumbs sleep

forming the cross-bar of an almost-cross,

he knew he saw

his mother

sucking his numb cheeks

teaching him to swallow

with little-bird sounds

Twenty years for him to:

eat

walk

sleep

(inconclusively)

no purrs, croaks, squawks, words, shrieks

floated through his tactile lips,

her faith a stupid cross,

a frightening lizard she carried

in her mouth,

slipping away at night

it's tail a forked tongue

until,

in the light of that night

when he was almost upright,

a factory-reject gone platinum,

that idiot savant, the Unnamed,

sanctified her

and, care of N.B.C., me

with two grotesque gifts :

he cried once

fleshly, fatty tears blurping

down in xeroxed precision,

black-red ones

until the pool shimmering

under his piano seemed to run

backwards, into his sockets

two vermillion snakes slithering

over his pyjamas and chins

and then on some insula of his tangled mind

he met Saint-Saëns and

stroked and ululated

the gnarled Wurlitzer into sonnets

of cadenzas and fugues and,

whilst crying, he sang,

and redeemed me.

A CROSS AND CHAIN

now that tomorrow

has screwed itself into

a nervous little knot

twitching like jellied lava,

since destiny re-routed itself

to this side of yesterday

your cross and chain
has garotted me.