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after all these years...

it was a fault of shortsight.

to read chalk

on a blackboard;

the bridge between

seeing and learning,

built another

crooked bridge:

out of malleable bone

and pliable years.

And in the ninth,

heavy coke-bottle glass and names,

gave way to new sight

I could poke into my eyes every morning.

but still the nose

I wasn't born with,

I said, ruined by spectacles so early on.

Fingers in mirrors trying to undo

the done, see,

this is what I'm meant to look like.

but now I see pictures

of daddy looking away,

profiles of a man

with perfect sight.

and I see a bridge 

between him 

and I.

Fingers in a mirror,

tapping a line, see, 

this is what I look like.

monkeys on typewriters 1

Click on graphic to enlarge.

Made at www.wordle.net

spoken word

The audio renderings of selected poems in mp3 format (a pocket voice recorder makes for low production value):

Another Boxing Day (1016kb)

For Unknown (1mb)

Meanwhile Juxtaposition Adorns Dreams (710kb)

The Postcards I Never Sent (1mb)

For Those Who Just Never Got It (2mb)

For those who just never got it

This will 

pick at the knots

of your years

where stanzas and

rhyme schemas

were the ababa

of babies babble

and old men forgotten.

This will dissolve

the cement

of metaphors

such as like

beyond your mindscape

and things you give a damn about.

I want this to tell

you that

a poem

is a smell.

It is your nostrils

flaring

at the fennel of

tea after the storm

in the mug.

It is you drawing

steel from the safe musk

of your fathers embrace.

It is hospital disinfectant

and the camphor

of bereavement.

It is the stinging talc

of gunpowder 

and earth of the rocks thrown

by children who should not

be looking so intently towards death.

This is

a poem.

I want this to tell

you that

a poem

is a taste.

It is strawberry softserve

more on your fingers than tongue.

It is the cardamom of sweetmeats and family

bursting through the roof of the house.

It is the spice of home.

It is the spearmint of that first kiss.

This is

a poem.

I want this to tell

you that

a poem

is a touch.

It is the cotton of his shirt

before he slipped away from you.

It is the bubblewrap of distraction.

It is sandpaper smooth against wood and bruised on your skin.

It is your mothers arm against yours

when all was strange.

This is

a poem.

I want this to tell

you that

a poem

is a sound.

It is the comfort of mantras.

It is the pull of prescribed prayer.

It is the ribbing of gutstrings.

It is the first heartbeat of that which grows inside you.

This is

a poem.

I want this to tell

you that

a poem

is a picture.

Can you see it now?

"Them that takes cakes..."

Sometimes
I kick
geriatrics
in the shins
in the dark
of half-price cinema.

Sometimes
I weave
new birds of paradise
into your pristine
chobi
from gum
my feet bring in off
of the street.

Sometimes
I split
infinitives
and dangle
participles and modifiers
from the
hanging mobile of
my prose.

Sometimes
I forget
the salt
the sugar
remembering instead
the exuberance of
turmeric.

Sometimes
I
just
make
mistakes.

verse to verse or catching zephyrs with a colander

there used to be

poems
for every
pavement crack

ballads
for every
boy with
stained sleeves
and a hole in his chest

couplets
for every
gambler with a broken dream
losing fast on a threadless seam

elegies
for every
father who lived
too short
and died too
long

epics
for every
Madiba-shuffling
Ghandi
with his face on a t-shirt
made in shanghai

ghazals
for every
lover so loving
love itself could not requite

odes
for every
sunset
burnt behind an
eyelid

but now
my verse
is
blank.

Women's Day 2008

A treat
for Women's Day;
manicures for all the girls.

How nice to have
one's hand
wrapped in another's;
soothing
exfoliating
grooming.

A drive
to the shops after.

And there's a woman
at the robots,
her baby growing on her back.

Her hands hold out
a plastic bowl.

Window wound down,
buffed and filed fingernails
bounce off sunlight
as coins hit plastic
with the
cadence
of
guilt
and
impotence.

the accidental plagiarist

we must tread around these words
on the very last threads of our socks,
careful,
care-full,
for it would take one slight mis-step
to crush a well-placed verb
with our heavy un-finishing schooled feet,
and these shards of alphabet-genius will cling to our ungainly soles,
and when we next step on to pages of our own,
we will find the prints we leave behind,
other than with the mud of our clumsiness,
will sparkle with the crystal of your cleverness.

pain in community of property

don't hurt
coz i hurt
and the hurt
is so bad
coz you're hurt.

it may as well have been

my neck wrung by
spectre hands

-- my queendom for instant ken
of therapeutic massage at 3am.

or my sleep bruised
by the sandpaper alarms

-- I, procrastinator-pro pushed on snooze 5, 6, times 17?
My sorry can't write your lost-dream endings.