kagablog

when a cocaine dawn starts crumbling
and the heat of Africa snows

only fucking you
can make it all melt

away.

I am trying to rerail my life with a lonely flight to a 100mile view of Giyani
Nearly half a days drive to get past Tzaneen!
I have Tom Waits-ed myself past the dead dog on the high way through Sandton
And I’m now Pat Metheney-ing past the tripping goat jay-walkers of Limpopo
It’s pink cosmos borders on the road
Maybe left by the gazes of countless backseat children.
The flaring cat-hisses through my window; jousters with no interest in my destination.
They’re helping.
The million zionist pilgrims of Moria.
More pilgrims passing pilgrims in opposite directions.
And all this under a Panama hat with a fold of money in my jeans.
j.f. 2005

Nova Catengue

A poem for Ashley Kriel*

In dreams I’m always playing my guitar:

its strings coax crosslegged tunes

from my fingers onto the bed.

In dreams you sit with your knees to mine,

your head reaching sideways

to entice the tunes into your ears.

In sleep I hum with the innocence

of the childhood songs I left behind

when I crossed the border at Luiana without you.

In waking my humid fingers are unlearning chords

and redirecting their music to sound like bullets

raining into human flesh.

I’m learning to lead with my trigger-finger.

My voice is forgetting how to sing

and remembers instead the deep silence of stealth

that will boil the blood of our enemy.

Some days I miss the warm air of my mother’s kitchen

so much that the flavour transforms in my mouth

to carry me home on its wings.

In waking, I stand in the strength

of the woman who raised me

to believe in what is right.

In waking, I deconstruct the tones of my own mortality

and manipulate myself to fit as a footnote

on the pages of our struggle.

But in dreams I’m always playing my guitar;

its strings coax crosslegged tunes

from my fingers onto the bed.

In dreams our knees are always touching,

your head always reaching to remind me of the songs

I still want to play before I’m dead.

*Ashley Kriel was killed by South African Security Police in Athlone on 15 July 1987, days before his 21st birthday. He was a United Democratic Front /African National Congress activist in the turbulent 1980’s.

Performance poet and Simon’s Town resident, Lucille Greeff, launches her debut poetry anthology on 5 February 2010. The launch will be hosted at The Novalis Ubuntu Institute, 39 Rosmead Avenue, Wynberg from 18h30 for 19h00 to 20h30.

This unique anthology, entitled Glaskastele / Skylight of the Heart is a collection of Afrikaans and English poems published by Lotsha Publications.

Also performing on the night will be poets Tania van Schalkwyk, Khadija Heeger and Winslow Schalkwyk. Live music by Maxim Starcke, live art by Elaine Millin. For more information please contact Lucille on 021 786 2627 or 083 377 5027.

The evening aims to raise money for Symphonia for South Africa, a not-for profit that aims to strengthen the fabric of South African society.

Entrance R30 / T30 (CES) at the door. Kids u/12 and pensioners free of charge. Books for sale on the evening. Drinks and snacks will be served.

Praise for Glaskastele / Skylight of the Heart:

At the root of Lucille Greeff’s best offerings lies an otherness of perception, an enchanting, quirky linguistic and imaginative bent, which vindicates the search by our publishers to develop new talent, and which is a delight to encounter. It is a search that does not shy away from what is endemic to the South African experience but rather tries to retrieve it with love and care. Lucille skryf om die beurt in Engels en in haar harts-Afrikaans. Ek hoop om hierdie grinterige jong vrouestem in die toekoms weer teë te kom.

Charl-Pierre Naude, poet and critic

Lucille Greeff offers a fresh, resounding voice with extraordinary perception and humour. Her poetry is uniquely bilingual; she seems equally and lyrically at ease in Afrikaans and English, making both languages sing.

Deborah Steinmair, journalist and poet

Biography

Lucille Greeff is an Organisation Development Consultant with a Masters degree in Development Studies and an Honours degree in Psychology. She has extensive experience working in leadership development, strategy and culture change within the retail-, manufacturing-, public-, IT-, food services-, resource-, NGO-, health-, education- and mining sectors. She partners individuals, teams and organisations in their journeys toward greater community and the realisation of their dreams. Her facilitation practice draws on her experience and diverse skills, including laughter therapy, wilderness therapy and vision questing, narrative psychology, system dynamics, assessment centres, strategy, culture change and community building. She is equally comfortable working in boardrooms and rural communities. She is a Director of Treetops Consulting (www.treetops.co.za).

Lucille writes because, as with breathing, it’s not much of a choice. She lives in Simon’s Town with her best friend and partner James and their sons Tariq Phoenix and Björn. Her long term goal is to be as graceful as a jellyfish.

Glaskastele / Skylight of the Heart is her debut anthology.

bittersweet memories
of extorted
kisses
caustic
loving .
lies
moaning,
our own
guilt
and greed..

clearing
our
tabernacles.

these shackles,
they hiss
sing,
ping -
ponging

rising
above the net total
of our own
dwelling ..

art
is
my vein.
the body
of
my being
its instrument.
you are flesh
beauty
sound
and
fury.

I don’t think it will ever spit me out.

i have to stop crying.
it just feels more impossible to speak about anything every time i try.
and i have to try.

(From a collection of free verse by the cockroach Archy; collated and published in 1927 by Don Marquis from a series of newspaper poems beginning 29 March 1916.)

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself

archy

to speak as you are
say i”
and streak across
the tiled floor
your feathers stripped
from you.
lost without
wings
to fly,
high above
these devilish
crews.

old women
sneer
young
women
snicker,

you feel
the
heaviness
of time
from
those
who
stalk you..

let us go
you
and
i
into
the temple
of
the shrunken
the broken
and
the despondent.
the carry go
bring come
of
thy
kingdom come
the will
of all men
laying on
the floor
as cum.

The very first time I thought I had sex
I had no knowledge of the word
nor its roaring golds of heat
nor its aqueatic shades of
after-ripple..

I knew only
some abstract scent
of stink-gogga
- a burst which
dismayed my bumble-berried mouth -
I had lifted her into the tree
awkward,
desperately swooned her into secret branches
dripping
with shiny blacks
and lustrous purple

Snorting and violently shaking my
head I
realised
the stink-gogga had sacrificed itself
to alarm my senses to her naked belly

She too had a belly-button
gentler
it soft-sloped inward

pretty complement to my gently
vulgar one, jutting out shily and
proud all at once

We once, standing tall and awkward
in a miniature forest of grass
me bow-legged, her flushed on tip-toe
fit them into tickling couplet
mine in hers
bellies blushing with foreign hungers

That night strange colours kept peaced sleep at bay,
‘One day’, they whispered in
queer scapes and boiling shades,
‘You will taste the violence of magic..’

a cat barks
a mouse farts

the sound of awakening
the buddha meditates

remembering
this
.. only this,
you cannot outpace,
what you have been
to people
(in minds)
when they encounter
you again
after a
gap in time.

Don’t miss

GENNA GARDINI

share words and wisdom.

*************** OPEN MIC ******************

BE THERE
IF YOU DARE
BRING A POEM
TO COMPARE
AND ENSNARE

ESPRESSO.KOM
Village Place, Erica Road, Kommetjie
Telephone: 021 783 0944

South Africa, 2005, 52min, DVcam
directed by Geoff Mphakati & Aryan Kaganof
produced by Ziyanda Ngcaba for african noise foundation
original music score by Johnny Dyani & Lefifi Tladi
director of photography - AK Thembeka
sound recordist - Basiami Bitsang Segolo
sound editor - The Dark Magus
final mix - JA Assagai
edited by doc zabalaza

GIANT STEPS is an Afrocentric approach to Blackness Now!

Dashiki poet Lefifi Tladi guides us on a journey of consciousness, analysing and interpreting the meaning of independence as opposed to freedom. He is accompanied on this radical exploration by the cream of South African poets, musicians, dancers and visual artists, including Zim Ngqawana, Don Laka, Kgafela oa Magogodi, Lesego Rampolokeng, Afurakan, Mac Manaka, Thabo Mashishi, Moshe Maboe, Moeketsi Koena and Motlhabane Mashiangwako. GIANT STEPS is a moving tribute to its co-director, Bra’ Geoff Mphakati, who passed away tragically during the filming of this, his first documentary.

spies
and
death
the devil’s
cousin
hustled
a gun
from
an ole
haitian lacote
to rob
his friend
who drove
a truck.
story had it
he was
hauling a load
of steel
he shot him
once
at the
side
of his
head
and left
him
fi
dead

Gary Cummiskey’s April in the Moon-Sun, published by Dye Hard Press in 2006 and now out of print, is an astonishing cut-up prose sequence with delirious images shifting between Johannesburg and London, capturing the instances of experience through a simultaneous and multi-layered kaleidoscope rather than by linear perception.

It also formed the basis of a short film by Aryan Kaganof, called Velvet.

April in the Moon-Sun can be downloaded for free here

did i say the moon hangs
low
like the black mud face
of
a thousand thieving nights.
snapping from the flames
like gunfire

knersh

Let us take this pale
infant already struggling
so with this trick called breath
faint heart bare training its rhythms
crumpled pink of
hands weakly clenching and un
clenching let us take this
weak mammal yes and wrap its weakness
in cities and vast machineries
and undulating technology
and thermo-regulated blankets
lest it learn to grow strong
and healthy
and hungry embrace the
hulking splendour
of this too-wild cosmos.
Yes let’s.