Woodsmoke

I’m nearly happy

How oddly my ungreased wheels

Leave worn out tread marks in my turf

Soon there will be the smell of wood smoke

And then I will rest

Happiness lurks in the corners

Of my heart

Where once it burned in the nickel of my core

My core is cold

But once I drove home

On a rim

And metal on sand

Sends out sparks

That can ignite the possibility of joy

In another time and place

Old women hold fire in their hands

And have learned to breathe the impossible

Into life

I have the spark

I just need to find my kindling

And then...who knows that new tracks I will make.

matchless candle

The waste of waste

a fingerfull of light

spells home

candlelight burns on my children’s souls

and yet they burn new paths

wasting a fingerfull of light

burrowing into darkness

blinking in new light

with sticky eyes

wasting

carelessly

unforgiving power

briefly owned

what howls

will burst

across dry river beds

before my children

unstick their eyes and

dare to live

The waste of waste

Is too tiresome

For me to see again

when I die

I will be put into a plastic bag

and there

‘rot’ ingloriously

Sweating my death...

Hoping for a pragmatic quickening

No thicker than a candle wick

Waiting for a match

grey flats

A grey sofa offered in passing my by sister

Is home

The smell of her life

Will undulate

My flat

wild dog

The Eastern Cape is wild dog-

Hunting in packs bound by

Dogged dark infringed isolation

Hills not quite tall enough for mountains

Crack wind through narrow passes

Thin grass grows on shrub thickened

Patches of wonder

Gown under sullen sun

Such is the wonder of the intransient Eastern Cape

And so it shall go on....

As the sun shines

On dull grass

And the sky narrows

As sharply as a closed eye

Seeking shadows

In the undergrowth

Whatever way you see it

wild dogs start a kill

at the anus

the end of beliving

My atheism is wavering

In human light

A child has melted my core

A child that has few words

Who lives animal broken bone time

Stretched across her own oblivion

Wild and dangerous

Living free

In her territory

Yet trapped

In a world she has no concept off

She is wild freedom

She is the terrible truth of genes

The terrible fact of fragility foiled

By betrayal

Handed down across generations

Into broken bodies and minds

Human genes have worked a terrible power

My atheism is cracked

By the fact

Of such limitless cruelty

And yet the fact remains-

Tartt to the tongue-

We seek blood.

The ether is neither here nor there

Nor is the wind howling

Between canvas

Burned by lion breath.

The laying on of hands

Offers deep transitory comfort

When fine hope bleeds into hair shirt.

The ugliness of beauty

How tirelessly

Sunsets claim hope

How briskly eastern sky

Sweeps up the dust of dreams

My atheism is wavering because

I cannot bear the facts

And that as they say

Is that....

War

My dusty days

Miller driven

Expressed in the oblivion of a web site

Motes spell

War

In the dust

Of the truth

Seen

On my son’s face

Somewhere in Africa

Where blind sun shines

Oh mummy you are drunk again

Yes child and the tracks still weave

Oh mummy why do you do this

Because my tracks drive true

Oh mummy do you know how you break me

No child I don’t

Oh mummy do you care

No

Oh mummy you won’t be my mummy any more

And that is how it should be for a while

Oh mummy I hate you

And so it is in the tumble

Oh Mummy what do you mean

Just take your time hating me

Oh Mummy.......

My point......

Mummy?

I will see the sun tomorrow

Brightened by old eyes

Mummy I hate you

I hate you to

sleep well