Tired.

You write. The table moves rhythmically.

Sip hot chocolate. Pages scattered.

A candle burns, shadows flicker across

Your face. Concentrate.

Inky blue fingers, bic lighters. Lucky Strikes.

You are studious. Hands in sleeves.

Rosy lips, hidden behind your shawl.

Velvet jacket. Passionate.

Your hand writing is bold, round

Friendly but forceful - excited or in a hurry?

You tear pages apart. Swear, and write on.

The only blank page is your face.

You write with your eyes.

Expression impossible to detect.

What do you think?

I want to know you. How will this end?

I will learn how to read you.

Know you. Second guess you.

Where will you be? I hope.

Fingers crossed.

To be scared, terrified of repetition.

Rehabilitation.

Finally I am tired. You have worn me out.

Mind Body and Soul.

Wonderful exhaustion.

But your presence keeps me awake.

Short sighs - of love ( I hope )

Just audible over your pen scratching doggedly.

Sleeves on paper edges. Leaves rustling. Sandpaper.

Kiss me again Ridiculous Girl. You pause,

Stroke my hair - an eternity of navy blues,

Greys and strawberry cheeks.

Paint in my hair. Sugar at the bottom of my cup.

I miss you, though you sit in front of me.

Bushfire Season

My feet sweat, my shoulders burn

But I am indifferent.

Nature plays around me.

Close your eyes. The last thing you see

is a white butterfly dance past the tree-line

into oblivion blue.

Bush leaves crackle above you in branches

and below you, let loose through brittle grass.

A light wind conducts a symphony in which

Each shrub plays a part.

Each dry branch, kindling ready to explode,

Itching to snap its dangerously perfect note.

Thorns whistle sharply - reeds hiss and hum.

Every breeze is a clown, taking up instruments

And jostling melodies to play all at once.

The grass rushes to its queue, dry as a bone.

Leaves follow behind in vague harmonies.

I wait on the edge of an eventful storm.

The sky is blue.

A storm of events - something big,

Behind the horizon, behind the mirage.

A rhino.

A microlite .

Electric fences, purring.

A wan nation celebrates, then groans behind the hills.

Natures orchestra sings to no one in particular

To T. (Part I.)

A lyrical scarf to warm your throat,

And stay up with you on cold winter nights.

- Keeps you going, keeps you sweet,

Alive and merry.

Relieves you, revives you, releases a smile.

Complimenting the stars, the moon.

And tobacco on your lips.

Or Sunrise, early showers, soapy skin

- Waiting in the morning to greet you gently.

Takes you to bed, where it keeps your body warm.

Snug –

While lavender soothes the little of your being it cannot.

Reflecting emotion. Moods.

Mild, sweet, milky.

Bitter, dark, hot.

Black or white.

Satisfying the palette.

Settling your stomach,

Quenching a dry mouth.

Hospitable. Welcoming. Kind.

An Icebreaker.

An offering.

Pulling down barriers.

Instructing courage, calming fear –

Spiders in life’s web,

Guard dogs in foreign countries,

And smoky kitchens are overcome.

- Strength, heart and peace of mind rebuilt.

Stirs thought as a spoon stirs sugar –

Feeding a fire, a flame – billows to a weary mind,

Wind to lifeless sails. Perpetual motion.

Washing motivation into your soul

Somewhere between breakfast and lunch.

The afternoon’s unsuspecting catalyst.

Preserving optimism.

A fifth hope. Tshepo.

Encouraging self-erudition. Articulation.

Translating and unwinding complex language.

For two and a half minutes, the world is a simple place.

x

Trains, Games & Choices.

Girls wearing pearls & flexy morals round their necks,
Write cheques to boys in cars from soho bars.
They're wined & dinned - all the time,
Purring like cats, strike a match
Light a fag, have a drag.
They let the good times roll too far out of control,
Far too long ago. There is no hope.
Fur coats slope down shoulders -
We all grow older.

She wear's his scarf, just feels colder.
Down cobbled streets, under christmas lights,
on dark december nights,

the story strays & no music plays

they loose their way.

She stopped thinking & started drinking.
Decided to come home
When she had that sinking feeling.
Should never have accepted

Whatever he was dealing.
Now the days are stagnant,
Oh, she might be pregnant -
Just wants to fly away, for a year & a day,
& never ever ever reach the end of her tether again.

The pain wasn't worth it.
She was told she'd regret it.
But listen she wouldn't,

And stay true she couldn't.
On a one way train too far down the line.

Well this my friend is the end of the line,

We're out of time.
Cut it some slack, she won't be back.
Let her lose, sing the blues.
Watch the news, who'd she choose?
She let the good times be, opted for revelry.
Ran before she walked.

Sang before she could talk herself out of the game.
Who's to blame, when it rains in the streets,
When Coppers hit the beat?

Oh, they'd weep for such girls & their pearls
'cos the world is their oyster
Yet they still loiter along cobbled lanes,

Past Soho lights on dark december nights.
Their story strays & no music plays.
They've lost their way.

The Black Wave

Back to a world of drudgery dearth and broken dreams,

Where a fatalistic sense of eternal loss

Washes in through the door of the classrooms I sit in.

Back to the futile sham that mocks humanity

And the selfishness that engulfs all around,

Touching us all in different ways.

An angry black and bitter wave waiting to drown us all.

Three hours of nothingness,

Lost to the past,

Contemplating what is required

For this machine I live inside.

The single, once crisp tulip.

I am dying

From within. I don’t wish to,

But I think of this skin

That holds me

Back and I feel ill. I stare,

Glazed over, at all the happiness I have tried to

Capture in moments of grace,

And self contentment.

But this does not do me justice.

This hand does not do me justice.

It all falls short of feeling.

Now I write blankly, efficiently, capturing

What I feel because it is easy.

Do I long for you, or do I wish happiness

Would knock me dead?

Knock me down,

The earth upon my head.

I wait, I long, silently.

Suffering all, wishing nothing.

Nothing will come of nothing.

Or shall I become a sod

So as not to feel and rot,

But just rot, unaware.

I am dying, like a flower,

Whose time is limited.

But unlike a flower,

I see what’s coming.

Unlike the single, once crisp tulip

That hangs aside from the others still-fresh,

Falling from the boring vase

I see my fall

And contemplate it often.

And read poetry which seems both

To help and to hinder.

Like you, an enigma.

The feeling seeps through my nib

Through my heart, through my ribs

Gushing out onto a page, limited,

Tired but taking shape.

Hope leaves me, to be implanted

In a line

A seed,

Sewn. Waiting, longing, wishing quietly

To grow.

But not knowing that its time is limited.

Romania

Light Fades.

Light fades. The sunset;
From electric purple, to a thin fleeting slash
Of amber just above the tree line.
I hold my cigarette up to the horizon –
No difference

An umbrella-tree shields me from the drizzle.
I try to distinguish the rain on leaves
From the rustling branches of gushing trees.
I peer out from under leafy-dreadlocks,
Across an abandoned meadow; it is calm,
But the sound of water tapping foliage is restless –
Its sound calling back to the storms of life.

It was merely a pause.

Dubai

Flashbacks.

Sting you through the chest. Jar running thoughts.
Reach in like lightning, plunging a green hand
Into your heart, and squeezing tight -
Life-stopping, heart-wrenching,
Bulging between finger - a nightmare,
Stifling panic in a back room - in a black room.
Your mouth trapped behind an irrevocable, greasy paw.
Suffocating.

The paw grows nails, the nails gleam, lipstick red.
she moves across the room, you feel her presence. . .
She leaves, the darkness deepens.

Pulses race through tubes,
Out into the world in multi-colors.
Her green grip tightens around your soul -
Fireworks gouge your eyes from inside.
Ready to burst, helpless, breathless.

Familiar hands clutch a glowing breast.
You fall back to earth
back to where you were.
It all happens so fast.
In a flash, like lightning.

Dubai

The Tin Box

The floorboards have done their crying.
All the sticky flap-jack has been spent.
The sweetness, and energy of youth has run out
in the biscuit-tin we call our lives.

The times before this will always be missed.
But now is a time to freshen your face
with a cool, calm cloth.
Wipe off, those, your last of tears, and restock.

Now stand, the size of a cut on the tip of your finger,
in that vast empty tin.
Gaze up at the stars, and admire them
as they reflect around your box's silvery sides.

Or, at the witching hour, hear the flicker of a cigarette
burn in the silence of a leafy drive.
Keep that sound and let it echo, only for you,
in that spacious box.

And the next day, having worked hard, you will look upon the world with another sense of beauty
- not just seeing the trees and fields in the afternoon sun.
That afternoon, your cup of coffee will taste the same as that very first time.
Its smell fused into your lungs, luring you to try.

Put that in your box too, and close the lid. Tight.

Kabarega

Africa

I have thought you for five hundred and thirty one kilometers.
You have sat next to me, and passed me by the side of the track
In rich linen clothes, carrying water in yellow plastic bottles.
You have waved to me, smiled at me with bright flashing pearls,
And peered through wind tickled maize to meet my absorbing eyes.

Under shaded boughs, you have played the locals at their own game.
A game more ancient than trees,
As ancient as you.

I've seen the back of you, huddled in apathetic crowds
Standing round broken down jeeps.

Your essence flowed down the Nile towards me.
Your fragrance has breathed across townships,
Rattled past glass coke bottles on sun-kissed tables an hour before dusk,
Below ashen grills and above glowing hot coals,
Through my open window, as i race past an infinite world of senses.

You scream down dust-tracks and over sparse hills,
Chasing my soul, haunting my memory.

In my contentment, you pull me back,
Rushing through The Conditional, and all the Verbs -
Rushing- racing, loving- tasting, testing one another.

I have though about you for three thousand two hundred and eighty kilometers, but reality is daunting.
I ignore it. - we roll, instead, through long grass -
Between white sheets - through each other's hair,
In Equatorial Heat.

I lie on a faded green windowsill
And sweep eyes across lakes the size of oceans.

Kampala

Beastie

Creeping through its darkened rooms:
Creamy doors and forest-archways.

Washed, but unshaven, glowing skin in the black, on the windows.
Red wine and tobacco pass between lips,
As bare feet pass over cold flag-stones
From a brazen kitchen of flashing terra-cotta
Into it's depths... - a beast with a warm heart,
Hibernating in winter.

Sly drafts blow up blackened flights of stairs.
Up,
Up,
Up to the attic,
Past a broken trap-door
And up,
Up,
Out of the slumbering animal it gives life to.
Meeting with the evening air, it goes
Howling round the dusty orb of murky gold,
The heavy floating mass that is the moon
(As it slides silently and endlessly over silhouetted tree-tops.)

With the house too,
Shelves and cupboards
Bend silently under the weight
Of faded volumes and
Antiques.

Majestic paintings haunt long, frozen walls
And empty stairwells with bodies
And eyes that move with you
Along carpeted spaces.
And all the while,
Childish, abstract pieces bring balance to the eerie vacuum,
Rippling mirth out onto worn down furniture,
Even in Winter's shadowy grasp.

Single-glazed sash-windows fight off the frost from inside.
leafy figures cross the lawn outside,
As earthy rooms' sides
Reach out for other continents through wooden toys and tokens and candlesticks.

Cellas hide copper pans,
Hung like corpses from the noose, hours before dawn.
Shrouded in the sparse, misty breath of spider's webbing - clogging the beast's underbelly.

This building, this beast, is inhabited. - a gnarly group (not without their differences) reside within.
They endure the unwanted presence of Nature's iron grip,
For they know the beast annually disappears, -
Slinking off with sleep eyes
Beneath the feet of giant pines beginning to warm
In some musky woods.

Suspended in each icy room,
The hazy memory of glorious days gone by
Patiently wait to drive all the sharp drafts
Up-
Out of the cella - taking the cob-webs with them,
Through the hallway past gloomy artwork, on
Up,
Up through the cracks in the roof-hatch,
Sending them scuttling after the Wintery Beast
Like impudent schoolboys late for a field-day.

Behind is left a solitary air of radiating calm,
Which fuses merrily with the walls,
Reflecting the aspiring credo of one or two of the inhabitants...
But for now, the beast lies in rest.
Appearing for another year, only moments ago.

Fuerteventura