Portal for Writers and Poets in South Africa
This is a site
of all the departed ones.
They sleep in relaxation,
surrounded by a towering fence,
making them one huge family.
Oh! Oh! Oh!
What a relaxed family!
No working!
No schooling!
No being troubled by
what to eat nor
what to do!
Just reposing there
and enjoying the
moment of silence.
(By: Mihlali Makunga)
I’m back –
I’ve made a full recovery
From being condemned
To inferiority
They’ve said
The qualities
Of ghosts no longer
Frighten me senseless
Like needles and nurses
The taste of both that I feel
In segments
And how it hurts like fresh tulips
The fate of snow
In my gloved hands
Life has become the enemy
Standing in front
Of the mouth of an open grave
With my purse mourning
Morning and how it inflicts
Pain on my existence
Or being thrust
Into an hallucination
Dissolving into
A blank space, stiff, comatose
A carcass – an experiment
I want to be –
Surrounded by mountains again
My home, my home, my feast
Your death-ray is a distraction
There is only silence now
In this velvet garden
Of green leaves on the arms of trees
The sun, black butterflies
Is like the wheel
Simple machinery
Alien face in the mirror
You seem to be embarrassed
To be alive, of having wasted
Your life away in hospitals
Gorgeous swimmer – project yourself.
Rain has given quite a performance today.
Leaves the property of trees drowned – the phoenix
Found the exit out. Winter’s gospel, the school
Teacher who shouted at me became an offering
To a museum. Cracked my pomegranate-skull.
These are the memories of my youth – bleeding,
A life drawing of The Great Depression of the year 2014
I found loyalty in intelligent people, Rilke, Hemingway.
My fingers melt across the wilted pages of books.
They are uninterrupted. I am uninterrupted in this.
This damaged inner silence, this filtered cycle of illness
That has not yet found the exit out. There is planting,
Planning, fingers clenching and unclenching a poem.
Hands tightening, there are no more poems for mummy
Like Noah’s ark, they are autumn, going off to wars
In Africa, I have my own fears to whom it may concern.
But the human voices that I hear bring me tulips.
I have eyes. I march like a tiger. Sunlight like a swan.
All I see is red. A red dawn. A red world. A red sickness.
They are waiting for me in the waiting room. Lucky me.
I feel like a bomb ready to go off, unseen, crazy coming on.
Chains charm me, omens and relics. A knowledge of
Turning, twisting that key in the ignition, sabotaging
Myself in secret and quiet ways, finding sanctuary, hope.
Where do I live? It is dark, rotting driftwood, gravity is rough.
All can be found there concentrated. These surroundings
Have become my country, this hospital too. But people
Will grow in this silence, in this arena to compensate
For the fact that leaves will fall and flowers will die.
They speak to me as if I am from outer space, an alien.
What to do about all of this nonsense, silliness, and gobbledegook?
I have two-heads now, feel vacant. Family-life does
Not and will never suit me. Splinters. Tell me am I the lotus flower?
I grow in mud. Roots knotted in mud. Dendrites
Made of lightning and thunder. Nerves like uncommon butterflies.
Surfing. Triumphal. Serotonin like smoke.
The sword of hunger
snips the squeak of the intestine
which is like a cry of a new born baby.
Cho! Chop!
All shefs!
To cook! To cook!
You must go!
Cutlery jumps,
stoves burn,
veggies fear.
I open the cupboard
with the robustness of an elephant
as I inspected what will be on the menu,
and flipped the recipe book like a pastor
who just lost his verse.
The cornfields
of Illinois are pretty
Where David Foster Wallace
grew up
His childhood
was made up of
bonfire anecdotes
Shark teeth
Infinite jest
He was the pale king
Sitting on an earth-throne
The so-called psychotic
Bewitched by libraries
by the halls of Amherst
The Midwest where of-all-things
Genocide took place
Murder and speeches
His dream songs
They came from space
He gripped his pen
Left behind
An alphabet
of vowels and consonants
Supernova writing
There were monsters
hiding in the closet
Monsters under the bed
The room is smaller
Than he remembers
When he returns home
From Amherst water
and lobsters pouring out
of him as he evaporates
America offers shelter for some
Worms, holes, the dark, maniacs
Hooks already programming him.
This image
Is just an image
Lines from a poem
That I have
Come to know,
To love so well
In sickness
And in health
There is no greater
Love than the flight
From madness,
Of sacrifice
A lament
A hospital bed.
And so I come
To her London experience
Her Ted Hughes
It was Sylvia I reckon
In the end
Who was Lady Lazarus
When you’re hallucinating
Reality is a snake park
There aren’t any ducks
I’m afraid
You can’t make
Lemonade out of lemons
There’s a show
And you’re the star
The spotlight
Is shining on you
You become Hiroshima
A kroeskop duchess
You become
A mountain lion
You become famous
Known for psychosis
You become
the doppelganger
of all ghosts
then overnight
In the snake park
You become a stranger
in your own hometown
Nobody calls anymore.
There has been a flood
but everything that the child eats
seems to taste like snow
dripping like aloe sap.
Secrets can be earth-shattering.
Humanity is not meant
to keep secrets. Secrets can kill.
So their bodies flowed with the water and its carcass
Became two, and there is an obsession
That they carry with them to the grave
Hearing voices, even in spirit Assia steals.
There is potential in its metallic caress
But also nausea, paranoia, insanity.
My skin is a wall, a hellish ruin.
A home where I do not want to be
The child Shura cannot wail anymore.
She cannot be held in Assia Wevill’s arms anymore.
This happy ending is washed out.
They both met the wolves at the door.
Her last words must have been, ‘Beg.’
But then again she held
No more power over him.
Ted Hughes’s addictions will never die.
And in his poetry there are shades of sirens
But Shura and Assia are also there, ghosts.
Time was just pretend. People, women
Growing older around him
While Assia and Shura stayed forever young.
Tucked in a filthy grave made of earth
Both with their beautiful
Dark exotic hair and foreign air
But they are still in a homeless space.
Assia surfacing a grown up in a maze,
An experiment and in the end
She has won but where is her speech,
Her perspective, her poetry?
Everything cannot have been destroyed.
What would she say?
If she was still alive today.
Ted said, ‘Heal Assia.’ When he put
His hands on her body and wrote
Love poems, loose translations
Naming the abandonment of body parts.
Assia was both an adored survivor
But she loved to wear disguises.
And after all the were damages done
Hughes said, May all their souls rest in peace’.
Forgive me Saint Maybe.
What is there left to salvage
She wears a scarf around her neck
One of my own and now Shura is an
Eskimo pure through and through
I am less forgiving of you cheater
Our foreignness appears less so now
You can be more bold now indiscreet.
Now I live like a cloistered nun
Oh I much prefer it that way – that life
I was dying before but I never
Had the words for it or the strength
To say it when pain conquered everything.
No more cold and no more talking
No more waking and aloof indifference
No more stupid winter London sky
Unstable water, pathetic people sitting
On park benches feeding the ducks.
You’re as frozen as the earth
We’re covered in. Your atoms are
Merely biology, plenty scientific.
But here is where we say our goodbyes.
At the opening of the graves.
A kiss for a kingdom – just a taste.
But it is far too late for that. It’s salt.
Don’t ridicule me. Your behaviour
Has been far from exemplary. You see
In the end I was not so tough.
That list, my recipes keep them.
Hold onto them, save them for the keeper.
I’m not a complete hard-hearted fool.
Just wounded. I know you’ve been
About town and made no secret about it.
A little smirk a sharp edge of a cynic
A wanderer an observer a bona fide critic
A sigh- exhausted chuckles
Cleaning old blood from blistered knuckles…
What do you fight for what do you believe
When the truth is a bubble made of personal satisfactory
So hush my child don’t speak so loudly
They’re watching they’re judging
Hiding behind what keeps them safe
Blindly seeking truth within misplaced faith…
Where do broken hearts go?
Well they take that slight dark long road,
Filled with thorns and a naked foot cant walk,
They climb those high mountains with no safety ropes,
As the river covers the road,
Those mountains are the only hope,
For the rivers of tears flows South,
and the hearts cant swimm nor cross in peaces,
Now broken hearts are lost in the dark,
But they keep searching for that one soul to mend them,
Broken hearts seeks love to mend them!
Some wanted more zeroes
At the end of a dull white page
With their “please turn over†mentality
Already sniffing out new ways
To dig old wounds
Wounds tender from numerous
Pin pricks of cold technology
Seeking salvation of sleek appliances
For the slow demise of creativity
Cardboard boxes only good enough for storage
No climbing of trees or sugar cane raids
To make us feel the rare earth singing
In our marrow, a simple ecstasy
Sand grains exfoliating heady adventures
Of spinning wood and string
Team play, with shiny glass orbs
Rolling in the dust, outside barracks
Later, oil drums welcomed tired behinds
To fire side tales of the wild boar
Thrashing about in the long grass
Rapt, pale faced, we listened, hushed
Eyes darting, from brother to sister, to
The next brother and the other sister
Cold spines stealing comfort from evening fire
Morning bird concerto played right on cue
While sleep held little bodies stubbornly
Water boiled outside; with fallen pine cones
begging for the comfort of calloused hands
In simple pleasures, we forgot Tomorrow,
A place in the future; Full of zeroes
on dull white paper, and tender wounds
