An early tormentor,
Gerhard Something:
scalped on a Friday
by the unbuckling
early eighties’ bonnet of
his mother’s white Corolla.
The news on Monday drifts over
the assembly- draws
gasps, sobs, palms to young mouths,
before the bloody,
eagerly embellished details
reliably seep through the school veins.
His eyes were open.
Still holding his Coke.
Alive…Still Gerhard Something.
Alive, but dead, you understand?
I had no doubt that
the early eighties’ Dutch Reformed Jesus
I knew and feared then,
would have sent him,
Coke in hand,
swiftly to hell…
Yet.
He’s an angel now,
Headmaster,
Van Der Walt eulogises.
Here among us, eyes open.
Dead…Still Gerhard Something.
Dead, but alive, you understand?
