kagablog

In my dream
A naked woman
drove my car
without her seatbelt on.

Do you remember when Colonel Saunders came to Orange Grove?
It was nineteen seventy-one
We were living on thirteenth street
next to the public library

I stole a rand from my mother’s purse
bought a box of fireworks
was the Emperor of the Roman Candle
for exactly one minute

Louis Botha Avenue was the edge of the world

Ten O Clock Tales on Wednesday nights
the Piccadilly bioscope cost ten cents
It wasn’t Gauteng
It was the Transvaal

I can still remember when Colonel Saunders came to Orange Grove

I
am
fighting
for
the
emancipation
of
the
out of focus

Here are the drugs
Here is the gold
Here is the status you seek

Take them
They’re yours for the keep

Leave your soul in the box at the door

If a poet, drained
of poetry, empty,
lies outside your door,
too weak to knock;
do you open? do
you grant this ex-
poet shelter? nurse
him back to health
with stars and laughter?

You have a choice
you could also stab
him with your silence
leave him out there
bleeding onto that
concrete pavement
leave him to fight
his war alone

His poet’s war of
arcane words and
symbols. Hark!
he moves, he
rises! he reaches
out towards your
sculpted beauty
unwraps your scarf
of purple, folds his
head into your neck

Much later, in
midnight’s mirror,
you see he’s left the
moon on your throat,
glowing

Go to him!
Go beloved!

He’s waiting for you
in the desert. his
poems are an oasis

Drink them, Go!

*

I once fucked a girl in Beaufort Wes
In the morning we rode on to Colesberg
Overtook four trucks
and a Nissan
Bakkie

*

I’m drinking Castle
in the Colesberg Lodge
My baby dumped me
Hard

*

Boetie rode into town
head full of the desert
heart all smashed-up
from a drive-by dumping

today I learned to parallel park
with my eyes closed

*

Out here
beyond linguistics
The only colour
Is blue
The absent other
Is you

*

Colesberg Pop Inn – “Hierdie gedig is fokken skeef!”

*

Today I drove a rented Opel
Corso from Uniondale to Graaf
Reinet. Did 160 km/h. Felt great.
I wanted to kill a pedestrian.
Anyone.

*

Driving along the N9 between Graaf Reinet and oblivion.
Wondering where the poet ends and the poem begins?
Is it the rasp of vowels in my throat
or the dance of grammar on my tongue?
Both demanding to be released into the perfumed ear of my cold,
capricious muse.
Driving past the Goods Motel, sun shirking to the left of the road.
Wondering if you’re wearing anything.
If your nipples are erect.
Wanting to whisper my travel poems into the valley between your aureolae and Graaf Reinet.
It’s dark by the time I reach the N1.
Drinking fresh filter coffee in the Colesberg Wimpy, my mission to truck on through to Bloemfontein, meet Marvin at the Mystic Boer, score twenty grams of Special K, deliver to the Hillbrow Tower before sunrise.
Might go visit my Dad, bitch with him about how nothing’s what it used to be. Nothing except your tiny toes that don’t touch the ground and your neon glowing aureolae.

*
“Hy’s a fokking charmer, maar asseblief niks glo wat hy se!”

*

My first car accident. I take a corner too fast on the dirt road between Baardskeerdersbos and Bredasdorp. The car starts sliding out of control. I put my foot down on the accelerator instead of the brake. Go straight through a wood and wire fence. Hurtle through the field at 160ks. I’m aware of what’s happening but can’t seem to stop the car. My right foot won’t come up from ecstasy. My left foot pushes the clutch down. Eventually the right finds the brake and the car shudders and stops. I unloosen my seatbelt. Put my blue shirt on (I’ve been topless because of the intense heat). Click the seatbelt in. Button my shirt up to the throat. Put her in first. Roar off the field looking for the freshly made gap in the fence. Turn right onto the still-smoking gravel road. Drive straight through to L’Agulhas.
The southernmost tip of Africa. Everything here is advertised with a board proudly prefixing “the southernmost” to whatever it is. So you get “the southernmost B&B” in Africa. The southernmost café. The southernmost post office. I wonder if there’s a southernmost whorehouse? Doubt it. Pity. I could do with a shunt right now. They could advertise “the southernmost doos in Africa”.
Vir al die mense.

*

George. Upstairs at Harry’s. Just had another prang! Dented the front left rim. Again. The fourth one. And now the steering wheel’s reacting strangely. ie. Not at all. Fuck it! I’m going to have to become more careful if I’m ever going to get a driver’s license. I ask the waitress if there’s anything to do tonight.
She looks at me, amazed, “Not in George!”
Coffee to go. Ask your waiteress (sic) for a take away coffee!

*

Peddie. Pig’s trotters in the Satisfaction. Pool with “William”, the town champ – not his real name but he knows I couldn’t pronounce that anyway. I chat to Laduma about the real “new” South Africa. He’s very smart. “The only solution for the AIDS problem is not to have sex.” Just when I think we’re having a serious chat he asks me to lend him ten rand!

*

I pass the city on the M1 underpass going North. My enthusiasm for urban decay is tempered by the shocking architectural disaster of Gold Reef City. I rush to buy my weekly Lotto ticket before 8pm.

*

Khoigab Dunes, outside Aus.
The desert’s scale forces one to let
go of the illusion of understanding.
The flies always find me.
The sheer weight of the sun.
The gravity of light. Sun bleaching
the fly strewn carcass of something.

*

Across definite spaces
I hear the Tractatus
But I cannot know
What I am hearing
Until its silence
penetrates me

I relinquish Logos
Beginning after the End

*

When words fail
And I go beyond
Those secular havens
Doubt and Panic;

There I find you
In my deepest register

Beneath the secret layers of your life
that you hid yourself
under
Beneath the fading curtains,
the dusty carpets,
the tapestries
Beneath the jumble sale philosophies
you aspired to
for a week
or two
Beneath the cortisone and the chemo
that kept you alive
long after you were
supposed
to die

Beneath all that

Was your Doornfontein Black Hole Heart
And your bottle of All Gold Tomato Sauce

Joan of Arc lied to her Master
In order to spend a night with me
We murdered our inhibitions with plenty of toxins
I ploughed it in
She whimpered “be careful”
I wasn’t

Afterwards in Flux
we kept on smelling her blood
we laughed at that

when the sun said “good morning”
I flew to Cape Town
Joan of Arc went back to her Master

Chirsty understands foolosophy
Her father does astrological charts
on a grain of sand
Hollowed be his name
We’re in Cool Runnings
which is an irie dimension

About the cost of living Chirsty says:
“Those of us with duvet covers
Have nothing to complain about”

She’s not an abracadabra blardie
“Oh it’s a crazy war my brain cells are on!”
Then she adds:
“A shush is Lebanese for a wee
On the bog
Make a movement
Park a coil
Push putty and
Spray the bowl!”

Chirsty’s drunk
I drop her off on Jan Smuts
She says I’m a nice guy
And I am.

I am Jet Jungle with a DMT basepipe in my left hand
and a bottle of poppers in my right
I am Bilbo Baggins on Special K
I am the exile returned
wherever I lay my hat
is my hat

I want to tell you my dream
I dreamt I told you a story
the story began with a dream
the dream turned into a nightmare
I woke up sweating and woke you
I said, I want to tell you my dream

everything has been taken from me
all that is left is numbness and hate
my constant companions
my only friends
hate is the sweetest thing left in my life
at least I can feel it

In the City of the Bru’
On the subterranean streets
Under the harsh bright light of lunar redemption
Crazed,
I confront my demons.

Princess Sanctuary and her
Lover, the Happy Ending,
Were both unavailable when I called
So I got unplayable
Again
Shmangled
I can’t even tell you how.

But I do know that the moon is calling me
And I never ignore her pleas
So here’s my tongue
Accept it, it’s an offering
You see I’ve come here to adore
And I do want you to understand
That when I saw you dancing
I suddenly felt damn good
For the first time in ten years.

Peter Dassies walked by
with a scowl on his face
Acting like he don’t know me
Cop car came
suspect got klapped
Then they took him away

O dear God, Dassies don’t know me
Peter Dassies don’t know me no more

We walked for a while on life’s hard road
We walked for a stretch together
But tonight Peter Dassies don’t know me

Tell me God
How did it come to this?
How come Dassies
don’t know me?

Once we lived as the Gods lived
That night we buried the burning moon
Betty and I embraced for an instant
Our tongues were locked
We couldn’t find the exit sign

Then Farrel called in on the cell

It was only one night
And a poem
But, Oh, how we lived then,
As Gods live!

I emerged from The Fez
at 6am
staggered home
crawled into bed
when I awoke
all the pieces of my broken poems
had put themselves together again!

When I feel the sun
It’s already past tense
Eight minutes ago’s central heating
But the wind is always now

When I howl at the moon
She only hears me
A little later
But the wind is always now

I sprinkled the ash
Of a twenty rand note
Onto your pillow
Then you rolled over
Begged me for more
Poison

Well
I’d really prefer
For you not to need
That stuff
But if you’ll slip into
Something
Less comfortable
I might locate
A line
Or two

Then I broke all my vows
Did everything to you I’d sworn I wouldn’t
You smiled at that
Said you’d expected that
When it was all over
We exchanged blackmail notes
And agreed not to stay friends

My Dad laughed when he read my poems
Said I was the next Rod McKuen
Strophe and anti-strophe
Ah, what the hell
I like me; that’s something

Pastels in the Mall
Pastels in Pick ‘n Pay
Pastels in Edgars
Pastels in Truworths
Pastels in Foschinis
Pastels in the Rape Crisis Centre
We are pastel
We all get married
We fit in
We are Pastel
All asleep

At least we’re polite

The Poet faxed his list
Of mitigating circumstances
To the jury
Just in time

The jury returned with their verdict
“Not funky on all counts your honour”
The sentence was death by syncopation

Then he was marched out of the courtroom
And fellated at gunpoint
By the statue of mercy

And when the tears come
I’ll dry them with my tongue
And in your time of hurting
I’ll penetrate the pain away
And when you need to be on your own
I’ll gently disappear
And when you’ve got questions
You don’t feel like asking
I’ll give you the answers
Before you need to ask them
And when it’s time to tell those lies
I’ll pretend I don’t notice and just accept them
And when your hurting stops
I’ll be the mayor of celebrations
And when you’re ready for a man
Who’s man enough to take you as you am

Call me

I am possessed
by the Muse of Psalms
she kisses me on the mouth

I am the whirling dervish semazen
borne upward in the arms
of the Angel of Anti-Anxiety

Rising
Rising in her love

“Come back to my place
I’ve got bread, vodka and a fish.”

Was my favourite line back in the eighties
When I had the time
To chase those very tasty ladies
I was their shining twilight poet
I was glowing in the dark
Making love with every verb
Every vowel that emerged
But then the nineties came
The new improved millennium
I got ten years older
The ladies keep getting younger
There’s a law against that
But what the hell baby,
You’re special,
For you I will make an exception,
so,
Why don’t you come back to my place?
I’ve got bread vodka and a fish

The word sparkle sparkled at me
It danced out of your eyes
the word giggle was naughty and tickled me
when I heard your voice on the phone
and all of the words yakkin’ in my soul
were yakkin’ about your toes
and the shape of your butt
as you leaned over the pool table
and sank that eightball into my heart

there’s nothing like you anywhere
or will be
before or since

until I saw you I wasn’t sure about miracles
now I’m convinced