5th. Lovely evening at The Commons, Muizenberg Pub at Surfer’s Corner for Poetry reading and open mike. I went with Angela who will partner with me as Featurred poet in the new year.
I read “Shadows of Sudan” which althogh writen in 2004 is sadly still all to relevant today. Sudan was back in the News again last week, for all the wrong reasons.
Shadows of Sudan
In the shadows of Jebel Marra,
in the province of Darfur,
from Nyala to El Geneina
there’s barely a building left standing.
The schools and the mosques of the tribal Fur,
the homes of the Masalit farmers,
are smashed and looted beyond repair
in violence past all comprehending.
Their women raped, their men folk dead,
from villages in the thousands they’ve fled
across the boarder to camps in Chad
where their suffering knows no ending.
The vast destruction is systematic
carried out with ruthless military logic.
With people left hungry or terminally sick
it smacks of ethnic cleansing.
No one remains to sow the seed
and fast behind the Janjaweed
Nomadic strangers bring camels to feed
among the orchards and fields.
Just coincidence? or was it planned
to give these nomads the upper hand
in the African farmer’s ancestral land.
The question, no answer yields.
Khartoum and the Arab Alliance protest
that they do not support the current unrest.
It’s not what the evidence would suggest.
El Bashir and his men are lying.
In the shadows of Jebel Marra,
in the province of Darfur,
from Nyala to El Geneina
a land and its people are dying.
19th. A really great evening at Obz Bookshop where The Red Wheelbarrow were hostying an Open Mic evening. Got a lift with Peter Key which was great as Obz doesn’t feel like an area where I would like to be leaving the main drag to find my car after 10pm – probably just me getting old!
In any event I had writen three short poems that I wanted to dedicate to Pete for launching The Southern Wright (as in the whales) whatsapp poetry group and instiring us all to start writing again. Sadly there are not so many folks posting as there were o day one or indeen attending the open mic sessions. So there were no other members at the venue.
We got there early so that we could order the best hamburgers in town prior to the start.
AMUSE A MUSE
I search for your name in my whatsapp list
To send you a message of thanks, I think!
Peter the plumber, Peter the painter
Alas no baker, candlestick maker
But Peter the poet, who said
“you can do it.
you can ditch the polemic, the angst and the pain,
Be light hearted, and joyful and frivol again.”
You know not how hard
Is the task that you ask?
Your insistence on meter and rhyme.
I have tried, I promise but continue to fail
Time after, time after, time.
The iambic pentameter failed on line five,
Rhyming couplets are painfully few
I have to admit it’s hard work being jolly
If I am to satisfy you!
ZARA
Such a wanton bitch
Who scratches an itch
On her private parts
In public spaces.
Such a naughty girl
Saucily unfurls
Lies legs wide apart
turns her head and faces
me, boldly demands
my affection.
Such passion for play
All times of the day
With a frisby a ball or a stick
We could frolic all day
In the field where we play
When I dive for her toy she’s too quick.
So if I want a topic to raise a smile
To render a poem that’s gay
My rescue girl will win by a mile
My mongrel that’s here to stay.
SUNRISE BEACH
Zara and I, predawn walk at low tide,
While surfers wait for a wave,
We head east to watch the sun rise.
Over the Hottentot-Hollands it comes
And lays a gold path on the strand
Gilding beach huts, waves crests and sand
My spirit soars in a mighty Praise-song
On my face an idiot grin
I congratulate me
For choosing to be
In this time, in this space, in my skin.
These short poems were really well received and made people laugh too. Pete was very happy to have the recognition.
After the break I read a poem from my Botswana days
BOTSWANA MEMORIESI love the place names that roll round my mouth
like ripe marulas, indigenous and sweet.
From Molopo in the dry and dusty South,
sand river meander where the boarders meet,
fossil from a more alluvial time.
Not flowing, past Tsapong and desert dunes,
dotted with feral sage and wild thyme,
to Ramatlabama and the customs post.
Mabuasehube, romantic and remote,
abutting the Gemsbok Park, where it plays host
to herds of antilope, on grassy plain.
Or travel East, follow the line of rail,
take the overnight train, again and again
the station name music echoes the rhyme
of wheels on tracks.
Lobatse, Gaborone, Pilane
Lobatse, Gaborone, Pilane.
The clicks and the clacks
Palapye, Mahalapye, Serule
Palapye, Mahalapye, Serule
till dawn in Francistown.
At dusk in the dining car you clattered past,
too fast, to catch the comfortable compounds,
that are Mochudi’s pride.
And while you slept, starch sheeted,
pillow puffed, Matlabanelo’s
pot-shard scattered hillside,
silently slipped by.
In the wee hours, the Swapong range
was lost, with hidden relics from the Iron Age.
And sipping steaming morning coffee,
through the siding at Macloutsie
as you round the final bend to journeys end.
Then further East, the great Limpopo,
green and Kipling greasy, flows,
fever tree banked and humming with mosquitoes.
Or West crossing the Shashi at Matangwan,
chewing Mopane leaves to slake your thirst,
through ever dryer bush to the great salt pan.
Mgadigadi, jewel of the Kalagadi.
Jewels of sound and jewels of carbon
Jwaneng, Letlakeng, Orapa.
Diamonds in the desert.
Mkalamabedi fords the Botletle south of Maun,
where the river was born.
Daughter of the great Okavango,
mysterious delta of channels and Islands,
home to the shy sitatunga, the sly crocodile.
Marvelous maze of lost days
soaked in the sun and birdsong
of a makoro meander along
the Thamalakane and Boro
to the tiger fish bays
of Gomare, Namaseri, Shakawe.
A rattling ride over roads less traveled
to Kudumane, Katata and Kwaai,
where a twitch in the grass is a lion’s tail
and the king is the Tsetse fly.
Savuti, Moreme, Linyanti
form this small monarch’s domain,
this slayer of livestock and cattle
and patron of all wild game.
To the Chobe and Zambezi Rivers
where the hippo and elephant bathe
to far flung Pandamatenga,
and the rumoured elephant grave.
Past pans and pimples that pass for hills
in terrain as flat as a shambva
but as round in sound as Metsemetlaba,
Ramotswa, Notwane, Gaborone, Gabane
Hukuntsi, Mababe and Molepolole
Singing an anthem in my memory.
On our way out some of the younger poets waylaid me to tell me how much they liked my work. I was well chuffed!
26th. Another Poetry evening, this time at my local library where the acoustics are really not great. I read to poets reflection on growing up in immediate post post war England the other a lot less serious whih raised a laugh.
YANKEE GO HOME – a war story
Unkempt, ugly, unloved, cold and hungry, the child.
Uncared for, running wild on the unsafe bomb sites
amist the Willow-herb.
Or dancing on the kerb plays “chicken” with the trams.
In the smoke stack, soot black,
red bricked, terrace housed, home of heavy industry.
At the post-war, back door abortion, on ration,
no bacon,
poverty time, of her beginnings.
The war’s won. So Yankee go home.
But they stayed on and paid in cigarettes and gum
and silky hose, for those favours women give heroes.
Nights in the Mess with boogie, jazz and all that raz-ma-taz
They stayed in clean shirts and creased pants.
All polished boots and smiles, put local lads to shame.
And who can blame widows and girls caught in the whirl
of Victory?
One gray day, quite suddenly, they left.
No “Uncles” raced with us
along the corridor on castored tea-trollys.
Or any more, drew pictures in the mist of their breath
huffed hotly on the cold glass of winter window panes.
Women and girls grew dull under the jealous eye
of duller men, care worn, unemployed.
Vengeful for their women’s past bold perfidy
their flirty ways, and their own current poverty.
JUST A FRIEND
There’s no such thing as “Just a friend”
It’s not the “friend” I question it’s the “Just”
This phrase used to disabuse others
of the thought that you are lovers,
degrades friendship.
Just say, “We don’t have sex.”
Don’t use this pretext
as subterfuge.
And whether you do or don’t
Have sex, that is,
For goodness sake don’t use “Platonic”
unless you’ve read the Greek.
I am really enjoying getting back into my poetry again.
