“you outchea flying high… go head fly that thing high… high”

When I’m high, I feel
When I’m high, I smile
not because I’m happy.
When I’m high, I laugh
When I’m high, I talk
not because I’m happy.

Being high redefines life,
it kinda loosens the knife.
I can let go without excuses,
I try so hard not to misuse.
But it has me in it’s jaws.
One more puff-puff-pass and I’m swallowed.
Sounds crap but I don’t care.
I don’t even mind the stare.

When I’m high, I fly.
Follow me and my broken lead and we can take the sky.
Need smoke?

Aloes from Bethelsdorp –
The green world’s-majority is not my home.
Only Goethe’s throne.

Mum’s June wedding lace.
Dad’s glove was lost at the church.
His Mrs. Dalloway.

There were her roses.
Granadilla hands in earth.
Ice lungs frozen. Night.

Dolls in childhood – dead
Things. Once attached to slippers.
Church. Girlhood friendships.

Origins of wives –
Daughters, girls. A dramatic gulf.
Ruined geraniums. Roasts.

The rural countryside
Has its own welcoming committee.
It has its own encyclopedia.
It has its own dictionary.
Every year I throw a parade
In my honor. Why not?
Why is family always hurting family?
Describing matters in the system.

Do they not have anything better to do?
Like make love, instead of war.
Stories about family life
Will mature you in old fashioned ways.
Sickness depends on culture.
Maturity depends on your mother.
Great poems are meant for the dark.
For night swimmers. For viewpoints.

The rape of the lock is found there.
At the end of the world.
The halo of the laughing carcass.
Ghost stories and erosion.
Birthday girls and photographs.
The dodo bird and the rhino’s horn.
Excuse my blood, my church hat.
While I visit the museum.

Fragments of summer
Ravenous village of stone –
Sadness is wasted in youth
A wilderness history of it
We are on a path walking
To meet each other on a road –
A road filled with studies
I have a wounded body

So we meet in a rural forest
Or on that sunny road –
You have a wounded body
I was scared of that vision
In all of its sacred glory
We are lovers of the Arctic Circle
If it still exists. We were family
Once. Daughters and sons.
Before we were poetry.

Pale feminist you.
Bliss in a vintage dress.
Under a potbellied sky.
With your rouge pots.
Your lipsticks that taste like cream.
Your comaed flowers.
They plant their halos.
You dig them up.
You plant them somewhere else.
Somewhere where there is sun.

She knows the world.
She knows it in the Biblical way.
English is not her first language.
She has two daughters.
Her son is the baby of the family.
The avocado tree is flowering.
It is being brought to life.
Resurrected somehow.
The pomegranate does not.
Something is in the way.

Nature’s bride.
With climate change comes an elegant mess.
Mum is nature’s bride.
Her hair is a halo. Tungsten.
I worship this angel.
All her trilogies. Her choir.
With her sibling rivalry.
She carried me in her womb for months.
She was there when I realised my dream.
My dream of becoming a writer.

She raised me lopsidedly.
I have forgiven her for that.
With a little bitter, a little sweet.
I admire people who live in the wilderness.
There is squalor out there. Cacti.
I worship the hills in her eyes.
The valley that covers her physically.
She experienced loss early in her life.
We never talk about it.
Our family is like that.

Chasing wild sheep and ambulances
An insomniac’s trick
I have discovered an empire
The empire of the introspective
I am a superwoman and actor
Dramatic and always being
Brought to life by it
Provocative and enchanting
Exotic and intimidating
How to stay calm under pressure
A wolfish din far away in my head.