Two Cuts

My English pleas:

dead butterflies on an Afrikaans desk.

Van Der Walt gestured for me to select a cane.

 

Or should we make it three? 

His dastardly crew of hitmen, 

clipped into a glass-doored cabinet:

mean and thin through to thuggish and thick.

Spoiled for choice, hey? 

These men are gone;

their accurate arms and wrists, 

dust, bones and ash.

Swish! Swish! 

Their canes are just sticks,

preserved by lacquer 

and a sadist’s dead love. 

Don’t let me see you here again! 

Refractions

On this beach of smashed shells,

and sunning pebbles,

for you I dig

a Sisyphean pit, that trickily floods

with buried sea and tiny darts of life.

Then, while the walls inevitably

collapse over my burrowing hands,

I naively dwell on nurturing journeys 

 and the illusion of destinations.

***

I sometimes take long ocean swims, 

almost sightless save 

for the opal opacity below

and the dizzying rush of light, 

as I drink in a breath 

on every three stokes. 

There are inexplicable pockets of cold,

and the currents play games with 

time and space.

The sea is more volatile than it

looks from the beach.

***

Lying next to my grandparents’ pool, 

circa early eighties:

filter humming and every now and then,

the Aquanaut would climb the walls

to slurp in air like a lungfish before 

slipping below the surface.

Breathing into the crook of

my folded arms as my head rested on my hands;

my hips pressed sharply into the hot slate, 

while water striders once again jigged their way 

over the calming water.

74 Model

74 model:

workings exposed, 

leaking altruism,

sputtering hope;

yet all’s not lost

you softly say.

The floor: 

an undone jigsaw of nuts, bolts,

memories and ghosts.

Your face and torso
hidden beneath 

the dissected chassis;

I feel my heart 

revving in your hands.

What broke?

What broke?

Your voice chimes
as a surviving
saucer pirouettes
quicker quicker
on the kitchen floor

From where I'm frozen
amidst devastated
porcelain and glass
I can picture you
vividly

Stretched out on
the couch
Warmly socked
feet crossed
like long burning logs

Finger suspended
a kingfisher
over a churning stream
of social media
and happier fish

their unbroken
lives and crockery

Zithulele

I can remember

the susurrations 

of snakey, knee-high

love grass, 

breezed into the

effortless uniformity 

I now glimpse in
West Pier starlings 

on lucky autumn days.

The evocative 

scent and shade 

of thatch, the lightness

of a single sheet.

A mattress on the floor.

The sea: 

a soft riot somewhere

behind hutted hills,

through the truthful smoke

of wood fires.

Seidel

Seidel

like paracetamol passed its best

you’re not helping

I look to you

for a pinch of filth

and fanciful suppleness

But this day

under a cold quilt

of clouds

when conversations on the air

carry like lost children

off the street

through my window

and the wind

whips saline tears

off the ageing face

of the English Channel

you bring nothing

but confusion

and the foreshadowing

of more rotten Brighton weather  

Monet's Sea

The sea’s a Monet

today.

The slight chop

pieces away into

the idea of a

horizon;

this is where I set

my gaze,

beyond borders

or edges.

I’ve never been

to sea

but can imagine

the secret that

voyagers to this

point must hold:

that they come apart

here,

as the painter's brush

intends they should,

undress and lose shape;

run like colours

into the notion

of another’s arms,

as floor gives way

to bed,

and lips to thigh.

Then back to the

photograph

of my sandaled feet on

this pebbled beach.

I won’t set sail today.