The Park

I won’t question the half-buried wires

Or tap inquisitively on the hollow rocks

We savour the birds through hidden speakers

In the shade of the city we shed our socks

I’ll take the prefabricated serenity

Rest on the lawn covered cement

Gaze up at the planes through plastic leaves

What’s reality if we're content?

A Ride by the Lake

I guess it made sense
to ride by the lake
where we'd apparently
fallen in love,
and see it under renovation;
It had seemed so remote,
so real.

You'd eaten a clover
and winced with its sour
after failing to blow free
the parachutes of a dandelion.

Now the entire lawn
was rolled into bales,
exposing its underside,
clearly a carpet.

The trees lay prone,
their roots exposed
as muddy mops of perished wire.

Also baskets of little things:
the insects, the dandelions
and yes,
the clovers (It must have tasted bland and rubbery those years ago.).

I'd dived naked into the water;
I'd heard you liked spontaneity
and had tried to coax you in;
I couldn't.
(You’d laughed though and fiddled with little things that grew and flew.)

I'd free-stroked
and held my breath
for what for you I hoped seemed like
a reckless length of time.

Now the lake lay dry;
cleaners swept sediment
from the fibreglass bed
and attentively
scrubbed the seams;
I doubt there'd ever been fish.

I guess it made sense
to ride by the lake
where we'd apparently
fallen in love,
and see it under renovation;
It had seemed so remote,
so real.

Some Certainties

Someday my love,

Death’s shoulder will pry us asunder,

And scatter the colours of this bubble

Afar where they will run and mix.

For my part until then,

I will pull in the corners of this portrait

And tend to the vertices of our union,

Adorn the walls with romance

Kind words and attempts,

And relish our unlikeliness

Each day my love.

Mayibuye

Mayibuye she says

Come back

You’re as arid as a glass of sand

You've forgotten us

Your land

The Song of the Pick

A wave of strong African men

Prisoners exploding with colour and song

Their picks raised harmoniously

Their ankles shackled

Prisoners exploding with color and song

Their rage and longing in lyrics

the withering warden dismisses

as the pleasant nothings of natives at work

Their picks raised harmoniously

high above the hatted head of their emaciated oppressor 

Oblivious to their power 

over him, the earth and the shackles

Their ankles shackled

The earth bleeds in anticipation

For the picks to strike down hard

For the picks to sing their song 

http://www.art.co.za/gerardsekoto/

I've only just discovered Gerard Sekoto.

Tragic that artists and important South Africans like him were kept from my school textbooks at the time. I think I'm still recovering from a pretty damaging education system. These paintings are incredible!

Energy

Father Boyce said energy never dies

Although scientists, he said

were observing some in the Russian depths of Lake Baikal

that looked to be on its last legs

Father Boyce said it hadn’t died yet though

and he didn’t think it would

So energy never dies said the priest

and he chalked an equation on the board

to put his point beyond the arguments of catholic schoolchildren

and budding unbelievers

So neither will you or I or anyone

God takes us home

God takes us home

On my scooter route to work knocked dead

some weeks back snarled a rotting dog

In death it had begun to disappear

I thought of energy and Father Boyce who must be gone by now

Red and white mushrooms popped up beside the dog

Cheerfully alive in contrast to the putrid carcass

Look Father! I screamed into my crash helmet

Angels!

Angels!