Events

Musing,

dozing, wrapped in a blanket,

the fire alive as a serpent’s tongue

I’m lost

in the events

amidst the embers.

9.6.2017

Snake

All day

I’ve been the snake of the medicine cards:

weaving over the sands of my mind,

thoughts coruscations I slide across

and leave

along the way.

10.6.2017

Matter

My legs folded,

I went down on my knees

before the filthy gutter

– but kind folk came,

got me back on my feet,

steadied me,

made

the experience

matter.

19.6.2017

No matter

Where can we write:

tissues of visions

that melt into one another

no matter how one withers.

17.7.2017 (This was Norman’s penultimate poem)

Norman Morrissey

Best drier

The best drier

of tears

is the wind.

23.7.2017

Still calls

I put your underpants

back in the drawer,

your t-shirt into the cupboard.

A time will come

to lose

those rituals

but for now

the Wood owl

still calls.

25.7.2017

In each other

At our usual

picnic spot

on the R63

I stop

to note my gladness

at these places

across

the country

we shared.

We were

without wanting

to be

a restless pair

forced to travel

these roads

– never really

at home

except

in

each

other.

16.8.2017

Silke Heiss

Time

Three women sit,

cooking, eating lunch,

while the working team

shovels and pours cement,

pounds down the shapes.

At the door of the container

where wind swirls, it is cool.

Inside, the office part

and storage space for brick-making machines

is deeper in heat.

The women’s shoes are sensible,

like boy’s shoes,

cement splattered, shaped

to the work, speaking

of their place on this earth,

this work, hard lives.

We’ve had to wait for our meeting,

because cement, mixed,

waits for no one as it sets. 

- Brian Walter

            Peace in Our Time

This bronze dome

drove ants to nest

in the moistened pot of the Peace Rose,

they have leached the roots

so there can be no flower

– the bud that tried

starved on the stem,

Peace in our time

sorely struck:

Isis gnawing at the guts of its own civilisation,

Malema preaching genocide,

a Trumpet of Jericho braying in the White House.

The rough beast

has slouched to Bethlehem

– been born.

                                    21/12/2016

 - Norman Morrissey

            Scarecrow

Wings,

a raven

wild about the hollows of my head

– croaking fears

I finally talked back

into the skies,

made my heart a scarecrow

to keep him

there.

 - Norman Morrissey

Helenvale evening

In the twilight the last children

play the pavements,

pigeons circle the waning grey

where a few kites tug

their twine,

the boys catching the last breeze:

and close to the houses

flits

night’s first bat.

 - Brian Walter

Carry on

Numb from news
– hate-speech, violence, lies,
noble essays, reasoned tries
defending values, hoping
to avert bad trouble, blues –

pained by poems
I’ve proofed
– by children and their guides
in townships under siege
by gangsters (“Satan’s servants”) –

I walk The Bluff
knowing, seeing,
but not feeling
the cliffs caressed by mist,
grey old bracken bending,
looking at their young
in bright green hoodies
coming up.

Stop.
Will I ever be
at one
with what I see
again? Grieved I stand
for loss
of me.

The mists heave lightly,
sucked by sun’s eternal thirst,
revealing slopes of trees
that never have been cursed,
the Proteas and Watsonias
hold up and shake
with flirting birds
(whose avian tongues dispel the worst)

and this
they do:
cancel me
to pull me through.

And I continued
walking.
I saw a Longcrested Eagle …
the wind flipped
through his crest
as if it were the Yellow Pages,
and there in silhouette:
he was all focused, black
and grand
and free
to look about him
there
on The Bluff;

and a little mongoose
did its delicate staccato stipple,
frittered over the path
and was gone;

and I knew
I must go on
cancelling my self
– cancel news and lands of pain –
if I want
to carry on.

                        20th November 2016

 - Silke Heiss

between the cavities of my ribs

that is where i want to be

there where continents of sound

flow from my throat and fingers

and i give birth to a whole new earth

there where the mighty poetry

determines the rhythm of the day

i feel the interminable knocking in my throat

the never-ending pricking of my ears

i stand to attention

ready for the mighty verse

to land on my palms with full-blooded wings

i dig in the seashells in search

for the truth of the word

i scratch under the toenails of the ostrich

hungry for the metaphor that will surpass all other metaphors

the words lie like ghostly footprints

on the shadows of the night

refusing to be seen or captured

and yet, like small black poppy seeds

the relentless willpower of

the poetry

lies

between

the

cavities

of

my

ribs

when the word comes

i know how rapturously the syllables

will melt like ripe slices of avocado on my tongue

let me lie deep within the grip of the word

make me swoon, make me unconscious,

make me fly, make me laugh,

make me shiver

and
make me free

 - Lara Kirsten

Hanging the exhibition: 1989

Artists work in the gallery,

moving things,

calling orders, pitted against

the tempest of time:

outside, a little flock

of white-eyes,

a twittering group of swees

brush the bush,

dab colour on the trees,

like autumn hands at work

with palette, brush and turpentine.

 - Brian Walter

Freedom is

The wind on your skin,
your mother’s voice,
embracing a friend,
and that tree
against the skyline
dancing
with its branches.

                       2nd November 2016

The melody of rain

The melody of rain in gutter,
the quiet glow of light,
the sated tummy after supper
when everything is right.

                        21st November 2016

 - Silke Heiss

in die skemering van die verlies

in die skemering van 
die verlies
is my keel nog troebel
van die wil-wil trane
die dae sonder jou hang soos
sugte aan die deurkosyne

dit is asof my selle nou weet
dat ek nie aan jou kan klou nie
iets in my het laat gaan 
die hunkering na 
jou fisiese aanwesigheid 
het 
so ietwat
bedaar

in die skemering van 
die verlies
is my hart stil
vlietende beelde van jou 
beweeg in my geestesoog
soos wolke in die wind

oralste lê leegtes van 
jou nie-hier-wees
ek kyk met 'n hartseer gelukkigheid na
die reën wat op die pompombome val
die aarde juig oor die breek van die droogte
maar my hart klem met die wete
dat jy nie meer die nat-aarde-reuk 
deur jou trillende neusgate insuig nie

in die skemering van 
die verlies
staan ek mymerend in 
die diep rivier wat 
die onafwendbare verhale 
van die lewe en dood om 
my ledemate fluister

 - Lara Kirsten

Fruit

My mind is Port St Johns,

with feathered clouds on a morning sky,

sub-tropical tall tree ideas

standing still,

and above all ravens turn

dark feathered, hard birds: no shit.

Their full-throated high rasps

turn the morning

and my mind is in their distant eyes

a-watching.

Now they are down

hopping, or stiff-legged stalking

on the green, like thoughts in fruit,

never as imagined ‒

bits of bread in pincer bills,

and all the other things they eat.

 - Brian Walter

My tiny master

I set my alarm for seven,
but by three fifty
my ears
were conscious,
by four
the Chorister Robin
unlocked his breast,
unleashed his nature,
his duty
to exhort me
and eternity
to the force of morning,
stocked us with warm-blooded abundance of song,
conquered virtuoso trills in the conviction
that forever
the day
must be seized
by music
from
the beginning.

Up, up! Up! Yes, you!
And I
helplessly laughing
on my pillow
tossed the duvet aside
and obeyed
my tiny master.

                     26th November 2016

 - Silke Heiss

how?

how does one poetize from 
the thoughtless place
there where it is 
only pure spontaneous metaphor
that leaks recklessly from the throat
and in filigree syllables
drips like stalactites in ears?

nucleus

every morning my spine thaws
and truly, it is my wings that keep on stirring
right into the primordial nucleus
of sensation of the embryonic darkness
that luckily has enough throat 
to groan with the stubborn will of flight

like nails

poetry grows slowly and patiently 
like nails

and like nails poetry is there 
to scratch the itch

and even when the body dies
the nails keep on growing

word-fever

my fingers shake the sweat 
of the word-fever over
the holes of your ears
that are the subways to 
the underground of your souls
the mercury in the tube 
of your mouths
breaks free with the pressured heat
of the unmasking feverability of word

 - Lara Kirsten

In downy mist

In downy mist

the robin sits,

repeating patterns of notes,

practising sweetly.

His end trill I know

from a robin at home –

it must be the fashion

among robins this season.

In downy mist

the robin sits

practising sweetly 

his song.

Married couple at evening

Elbows on a low leather pouffe,

bum warm before a fire

she’s stretched in catlike twist

eyes closed

ears pricked

hearing

the rain

stop,

her husband’s hand shift

on the page

where his poem is coming

into being.

Clouds

Flat-bummed clouds

sit on the air

as if it were

a pane of glass.

 -  Silke Heiss

Writing season

Storks circle

in a hundred sky-high miniatures

the bush fire rages:

summer heat, South Africa.

The swifts are in:

Palm swift, Little swift, Horus

‒ cutting air-paths.

There’s nothing I can say

any longer, I suspect:

I am a smoke voice

in the winds, signifying fire,

smoke-smell, but not the thing

itself. I am a door, opening

on a hinge to nowhere,

and no-one stands to knock.

Once, under anaesthetic,

they cut my body:

I woke up bloody, and hurt.

It took weeks of blood-smell

and pain before I felt

right. Now the wound

is in my very flesh and being:

the swifts swoop close,

the storks circle in.

- Brian Walter

Wither?

Someone brought me a hurt swift
that I laid in a box
in the hope he’d recover;
but he slipped away
through a hidden crack
‒ so I laid what he’d left
in the earth to wither.


Heart's Journey

We travelled all day
through  country
close to my heart;

then I read poems
that traced
my heart's journey.


Dance

Last night
we talked and drank wine
and you and I danced

as you settled into the old house
through the keyhole
of a bit of ritual

that made you feel at home
at
last.


Brief Passing

As the brown leaves
thicken
on the paths,

powder underfoot,
my heart is heavy
with mortality

 – with the brief passing
of
things.

 - Norman Morrissey

Greater than I

i.

Once

I remember a time,

once I was a person

before I was powder

crushed

by a husband’s betrayal, his buckling

under a woman’s decrees

that he divorce immediately
disown his family

and I not see our son

except in times and places fit for her –

ii.

so the long, long road

to and fro gruelling

endlessly re-fuelling

to get my child

– resentful, grieved, skin and nails bitten –

breaking my heart

by a to and fro aching:

thorns of a foreign province

iii.

once

before I became powder

through illness in the man I loved,

his hole of debt,

his mental scree,

his efforts to endure and help me

I was

– was I? –

a person

apparently

iv.

before the office job

 – three telephones crying for hospitality,

the screen a diarrhoea of mails

each day to be wiped away quietly,

and praising or complaining guests

to be sweetened equally –

v.

dimly I remember far away

– was I once

a person?

… this implosion is not of the body:

my thighs are silky, strong,

I wash myself still,

go through the rituals of toner, moisturiser, lotion,

hungrily eat what you cook …

vi.

but it’s a once-was lovely shell you feed,

inner mettle crushed

to powder, dust.

I suffered too much

so you must not,

don’t come near me now.

Nothing holds

together –

there’s nothing to hold these years on me,

the pressure has been

greater than I.

 - Silke Heiss

klok

my hart trek

in die vorm van

‘n klok

ek prewel ‘n gebed

mag ons nie lui raak met liefde en

nooit die noodsaak van die skeppingsdaad minag

ek begin lui van diep binne my bors

dit tril en ril deur my al my spiere totdat my lyf 

opstyg en beier die wye lug in

           word wakker wêreld, word wakker!

           die nuwe dag breek aan soos ‘n swael-seisoen

           in vlug na die reuk van somer

 - Lara Kirsten