kagablog

inside her,
from time to time,
there still
lives
an angry
little girl.
 
they say
her mind is
razor sharp,
her tongue
slices,
the words
draw blood.

“the mood state americans are in, on average,
when watching television is mildly depressed.”
- mihaly csikzentmihalyi
 
 
we have become
a world consumed
by reality shows
 
about people
who do the things
they fear the most
 
for money

if i let the
loneliness out, it will
swallow me.

late friday afternoon, the weekend waits -
an unopened book longing to be discovered,
savoured, held.
 
*
 
lying in your garden, lazy, unperturbed
cigarette smoke drifts upwards;
sky stretching out horizon to horizon.
 
*
 
bare feet, naked calves wriggle into green;
the grass is cool beneath my back,
the earth firm, unrepentant beneath grass.
 
*
 
rocking back and forth,
pine branches cross, uncross dark needled arms,
virginal candles, treasure cones.
 
*
 
tubular bells sway high above your front porch
sounding resonant harmony
 
mother deep chimes
floating on the breeze, blending in unison
 
with delicate silvery fairy chimes
hung twirling
from a small, bright bedroom window.
 
*
 
i am content to lie here very still, to listen
to clear sweetness of birdtalk, to enjoy
the flooding
of everything perfect in its place.
 
*
 
it arrives on silent wings; this butterfly
on my shoulder
 
it will leave as simply, to return once more.
 
there is no answer,
no equation for happiness.

i miss
                  the touch
of your
                  masculine
body
                  lying
next
                  to me
in my
                  single bed,
defined
                  shoulder blades
& buttocks
                  to lean
into
        & around.

you’ve played your cards
with irreproachable subtlety,
never asking me to hang around,
betting all the while i would.
 
tired of long days, longer nights,
wrestling loneliness that threatens,
dark & chill,
to swallow me whole,
 
love, i am weary of waiting
for you to decide
whether i am
worthy enough of you.

walking long stairs
of mental hospital outpatients
“lady spare a cigarette,” a
disembodied voice floats up.
 
wraithlike in government issue
hospital gown, your
yellow crow-fingers twitch
up-buckled against high-wire.
 
driving away through
guarded exit gates,
you remind me
how much i take for granted.

last night
i fell
in lust
with a latin american dancer.
 
broad shoulders,
bare chest bronzed,
tight black bell-bottoms
in matador stance,
 
he smiled constantly, charmingly,
flashing sharp white teeth
like the devil,
 
(of course
i felt like
the only woman
in the dancehall.)
 
heady music passion
pounding,
he samba-rumba’d his way
rhythmically
into my loins;
 
i couldn’t get enough.

eight o’clock dash
on a saturday night
to the
service station kwik-store
before home
to bed
with a cup of tea & a book
 
yet
there i see you
it gives me pause to think
the pity
in your carefully made-up kohl eyes
as you survey with some disdain
the faded sweatshirt
tracksuit pants &
scraped back hair
 
you
in your immaculate
elegant ensemble
a passenger-princess
in your boyfriend’s new shiny car
could never know
i was once just like you

in dead of night
i wake to think of you
across thousands of miles,
 
imagine you sleeping
stomach-down, sleeping-bag
pulled up around your ears,
 
i hear it is cold there
where you are, i hope

good-looking cosmopolitan couple
on an evening out
 
to the outside world
they could
easily
be mistaken
for real
 
so far, no matter how close
 
he is all
fluidity, restless
oceanic change
reliable only
in unreliability
& taking
what he can get
when he can get it
 
she is red welts
black-purple bruises
internal haemorrhaging
jagged lines &
list-making
colour upon colour in pretty
patterns, despite herself
because of herself
 
to the outside world
they could
easily
be mistaken
for real
 
so far, no matter how close
 
strangers
 
you and me

good-side facing, shiny red,
the half-devoured apple is
offered casually,
 
an afterthought.
 
the garden stirs,
uneasy witness,
abused, abandoned,
 
lonely, overgrown jungle.
 
history repeats itself,
time again.

terra incognita, the trek towards
the region of you
is a great and wide expanse.
 
i have prepared for this
overland expedition
as well as i can:
 
scented candles
french perfume
full-bodied wine
 
clothes (though i hope
not to need them).
 
i intend to explore this
unfamiliar territory,
penetrate this landscape
of unpredictable flesh,
 
map the interior silence,
mile after painstaking mile,
unfold the secrets
of your longitudes and latitudes,
chart the climatic zones, prevailing winds,
 
cover the verdant contours
of your heathy hills and plains,
roam your pleasure-wilderness freely.
 
i want to bury my face in this warm earth,
taste the ripely bursting wild figs,
caress your shoulders, thighs, belly,
outline your collarbone, ribs, your
unrelenting jaw,
 
discover beyond what nameless mountains,
what undulating green slopes,
what deep overgrown ravines,
the fierce kingdom of your heartland lies.

Blackheart (epilogue to insanity) by Lesego Rampolokeng

Pine Slopes Publications
First published September 2004
ISBN 0-9584755-5-5

“i started out writing a story. trying to weave webs of stingray
words of steel hammered to the point of truth where time &
place meet history at the counter-point of their eternal strife.
& now i’ve got nothing to prove just have to groove
whipping up a storm of sound where the typewriter clicks in
battle mode on the sights i paint, visions i strive to point out
on the map of experience. & now there’s nothing idle here
none static i can can tell no riddles. so this strip of flesh unwinds
off my bones & moans its way into print. feed on what you
need & throw whatever lacks meaning to you into the trash-
bin.”

Lock yourself in a quiet room with Lesego Rampolokeng’s apocalyptic vision, Blackheart, and read it aloud. Words will explode off the pages, flood your mouth, twist and trip your tongue, and bounce off the walls to batter and bruise your brain. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the nightmare. Hell is not a mythical place. It is here and now.

Blackheart reads like a long prose poem more than any other literary form. Rampolokeng, a controversial performance poet and misanthropic paradigm shifter, juggles language and reinvents syntax with the dexterity and ingenuity of a master magus. Words come alive in rhythm, rhyme and rebellion, jostling with each other in density of expression. There is no smoothly unfolding linear narrative or logical character development. Events are haphazard and inexplicable; sentences are splintered and dark, bloody prose is interspersed with gouts of desolate poetry that roll off the page to the ominous pulse of revolt.

Rampolokeng howls the unspeakable in a sustained incantation that penetrates the darkest emotional instincts. Ferocious language and visceral imagery are used to engage the reader’s imagination. Like a coldly gleaming executioner’s axe, the author slices savagely through social pretensions to expose a stinking morass, a world mired in filth and despair. America, the global economy, political manoeuvring, oppressive social forces such as the apartheid regime and law enforcement, religion and art are all targets of his relentless rage and scathing contempt. Blackheart is a shock to the system and undoubtedly raises relevant questions with its incisive and satirical commentary on contemporary society.

“cigarette smoke spiralled whirled twirled pivoted ceilingwards in the hug of brandy beer wine whiskey whiffs tempered with the breath of bubblegum beat. they thrashed twined embraced and changed course at some hot level of passion. met growls grunt guffaws in heavy jowls. shrieks giggles in powdered blushered foundationed vanishing creamed cleansered cheeks. belches as broad as nips pints quarts waddled across tables over chairs and bounced against swaying hips bobbing breasts of limp balloons and machine guns, lodged in crevices within. mood of cloud, drifting, bound to come down. sweat, tears, though hidden by some sun of fantasy, are rain. electric storm tumbled from stereo skies, a beat of heat and a throb of a heart screaming, on heat, lamenting some lost plastic love. toes wriggling drunken worms. feet liquor cemented to the floor. legs in the sway of uncertainty. breath beechies perfumed peppermint hit the nose of his heart. wine drowned…berry lips shone, glittering, sensual, an invitation to dracula. tongue the pink of birth strolled the mouth’s parapet, model with sights on france, new york, london. temperature took off on an olympic sprint.
“lovely, of course i’m not a material woman. i don’t care what you do for a living. i just want to know for interest’s sake.”

Blackheart is not easy reading. It is often baffling and sustained concentration is required due to its style and its disquieting content. This is not a book for the faint-hearted, the easily offended or those concerned about political correctness. The author paints the grisly landscape of a deranged world with a deluge of obscenities, human detritus, sexual predation and graphic violence.

I am reminded of Robert Lowell’s poem Skunk Hour in which he wrote, “I myself am hell.” Lines from Yeats also reverberate in my mind: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned…” Lesego Rampolokeng bears witness to a butchered world in a complex and challenging work that offers no hope of redemption or salvation. Blackheart will turn every reader’s sense of complacency on its head.

“the state of mind is what’s wrong. the reality is here. in the thoughts ratting my peace, raining rattling drumming this head, this lease, this respite, this protective gear from the jagged edges of broken glass promises shattered on the uncarpeted floor of this room that is the reality i live and the world i live it in. the only sane man is a mad one.”

“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery,” Bob Marley exhorted the world in his Redemption Song. Perhaps, the fact that powerful, disturbing and unusual books such as Lesego Rampolokeng’s Blackheart can be found in our bookstores does give us a glimmer of hope.

* * *

Blackheart is available at better bookstores countrywide, and is also available directly from Pine Slopes Publications, PO Box 86, Westhoven, 2142, Johannesburg, at R150 per copy, including postage & packaging. Cheques should be made payable to Aryan Kaganof.

this review was first published by litnet

hey, picture pretty - - pretty baby - - wild boys - - good-time girls - - heart-breakers - - high-rollers - - love junkies - - soul-shakers - - the kings & queens of cool. they call us Trouble, with a capital “T”. our beauty is vanity. we take life for granted. we don’t know any different. (where are you, god?)
 
hip-happening-jaded. our open-mindedness, egotism. we’re a danger to ourselves. mirror obsessed useless in drug-cocktail daze. don’t name the price of needles & pipes, we’re poised for The Big Escape. arrogant & beautiful - - reckless & remote - - we want The Easy Life. (where are you, god?)
 
life’s a finger-snapping bore. the flavours come & go, when you’re beautiful & corrupt. glamorous, diamond-eyed cynical. are we mad or are we trying too hard? faithless one night stands - - love ‘em & leave ‘em - - frantic one hour stands - - back seat of your father’s car - - against the door of a nightclub john - - any place will do - - old, young, under-age - - single - - married - - straight or gay. who cares when there’s always someone to fill up the hole. seasons of pretty are what we are. (where are you, god?)
 
we’re callous, cruel & condescending - - cardboard cut-outs - - shadow shapes - - debauched, detached. derailed in hard-hitting, high-flying, hunger-driven disillusion nights - - riotous days of out to shout. we’re crying to be seen, “look at me, man! can’t you see who I am?” image is everything. (where are you, god?)
 
at the end of the night it’s not enough to pay your bills for booze & dope. when the sun comes up you pay the rest. better be ready for the almighty CRASH. still, we’re bored & ripe for trouble. we’re coming back for more. yeah, dying for immortality, we’re dying inside. seasons of pretty is what we are. (where are you, god?)

 
mother, mother –
tossing & turning
in self-appointed
isolation, your
single bed,
this room of
your own,
padding the house,
an insomniac spectre,
 
reaching out
in the dark
for a voice on the line,
a telephone messiah
to quiet
or deny
your violent
inner tumult,
 
you, with your
handful of happy pills
& maternal guilt
might recall,
i too have seen
my face
in that mirror &
become stronger
for its
reflection.
 

after you -
 
the awful earth-bound
     plummeting,
wings outstretched
     to buffer descent,
shedding feather upon feather
     in spiralling free-fall,
 
after you -
 
the cathedral bells toll
     dolorous monastic
songs of gloom,
     proclaiming one more sacrifice
for a love that will not
     own its name.

lying awake in bed at night
listening to cars drive by,
i wonder if any could be you.

for william carlos williams
 
 
this is
just to say
 
when metaphors
similes and
fancy rhyming
schemes
get me down
 
i take heart
in red wheelbarrows
and plums
in the fridge

you asked me if i would take you back.
“no,” i said,
“leopards don’t change their spots, and
there’s a reason why clichés are clichés.”

he swaggers
loose-limbed through swing-doors,

lightning
strike sparks prairie fires.

heads turn
in a smoke-wreathed room,

barmaids, farmhands,
porcine gamblers with gimlet eyes.

sunburnt smile
sits down at the counter,

scuffed boots, blue jeans,
little darlin’s wet dream

hand rolls
sweet cherry tobacco rizla,

orders double
whisky on the rocks.

this time, she pays her bill,
reaches for her car keys.

the image I have of jesus
trudging up the hill,
cross nailed to his back,
is of a poor, lonely man,
head bleeding (not a plaster in sight),
wondering
why the fuck
he got out of bed that morning.

my muse blew in this evening,
unannounced,
i rode him like the great west wind,
i rode him like a wild stallion,

a witch-woman riding
her broom, her pen, incarnate phallic,
hair streaming out,
black cat familiar behind,

and yes, he blew out,
unannounced,
as muses tend to do,
still, the fever remains.

what’s wrong with
having our cake
and eating it too,
after all,
we baked it.