Grace/The Elegance

Running helter-skelter through my new life,
Skipping and sliding around, 
Feeling blind sometimes, and then
Through Grace, found,

I hold the Book of Stories in my hand - 
The grand span of imagination and all the fictions
That succeeded in filtering through Genius and Muse
onto paper, into physical Time.

I clamber up onto the giants’ shoulders,
All those who have chosen to go quietly inside,
Recognise, allow, accept, meet
And converse with their selves,

And read about all we bring into life
And take back through death:
Compassion for and union with the organism;
How, having witnessed up close, through stillness,

Words and impressions so self-evidently beautiful,
And the divine fleck of light in the animal’s eye,
We are moved beyond the compulsion to record, keep, store in story
For it is already complete and exists for its own glory.

Dear Human

Hissing and sizzling beetles in summer trees now,
Squeaking song of crickets and river frogs,
And mosquitoes filling up the spaces in my sinuses,
All singing, ringing in the sinews in my head;

Butter-filled flying ants yearning for 
That point to get to,
Bats swooping down and through them,
Feasting on their hopeless fat;

All yelling at me to remember I am in a body,
And to forget the rush of getting things to be done,
As though I were aiming for that same point.
To remember I am here to play.

There can’t be a point if I can’t have fun.
The last of the friends has been harvested and
My heart can not be broken any further,
Suffering this I, dear sweet human. 

The Saddest Girl In The World

The last mental flickers of a human

unable to talk any longer

her moans and groans

is she in pain. does she know where she is.

can she feel her body shutting down.

can she see anymore. hear. feel.

the weight.

the heaviness 

of wanting 

to remove all that.

a human 

unable to do away with that.

the angels of darkness, 

Aletta and Quincy,

full of compassion and grace at 9PM 

on a Johannesburg Saturday night.

Their clear, reassuring 

instructions. 

We will now check to make sure

She has departed. Say your goodbyes.

We will now take off her rings.

You may wish to

We will now

My wretched father and uncle

appalled at the prospect of 

helping to heave her new husk

into a body bag and onto a gurney,

jumping to attention when

their manly muscles were required

The saddest, 

happiest, 

most curious

most exhausted girl in the world

adamant 

at taking in every second with her eyes, her body

the sound of the wheels clicking 

into place

rolling across the bricks and up the driveway

into a van.

doors close 

she walks away. 

Junk

 1 - acceptance

Ten thousand breaths taken

each day

three hundred days in being creative

(64 and a quarter doing nothing)

each year

decades full of years well lived

each life

a hundred thousand million lives deeply experienced

each cycle

this is exactly the place we sat when last we met

seven years ago 

now again, barely two weeks after our mother died.

Died. 

we say the word. no beating around in bullshit, like

passed from this world or transcended.

What do we do with all these blind spots

like feeling but never really understanding

not being liked

or grasping at the visions of what we look like

outside of ourselves 

what do we do with trite and tipsy hipster tattooed

conversations about evolving as a human

or overplayed, kicked-to-death pop music

playing through scratchy speakers

or how now only Nelson Mandela quotes

appear on the back of sugar packets.

what happened to all the other mighty orators?

and

where does all this seemingly 

unnecessary plastic detritus get generated

and what is the purpose of it?

we live in the ideal that it is an easy

navigating system

thoughtfully and elegantly designed to guide

the would-be discerning through 

to the good stuff

that it flows in fun back to its source.

to be recycled.

surely. 

2 - laughing

For history and trauma are slippery

narrow and biased

who said what and who fired the first shot

a series of convenient omissions and

half-baked authorities 

on what really happened 

as though we could ever be certain

in this sort of prison system of lost truths

and locked-down lives 

lived colourfully and mysteriously otherwise

bodies 

are buried under petrified volcanic lava comet strike floods,

blood and bones on battlefields make up green hills,

deserts, beaches

bodies

lie preserved in submarines or served as food 

in sunken ships on blind black ocean floors

nameless names, our ancestors, comrades:

myriads and myriads, anonymous,

smitten. 

wiped out of sight, mind, memory.

horror. darkness. silence. cold. 

3 - yes

Flung fast forward i once was born

i was tough once

innocent

moved through life

got tenderised, me

spiced, marinated

beaten, prepared

for sacrifice

in crisis

so excited 

witnessing first hand paradox

adjusting perspective constantly

so i don’t slit my wrists 

or drink myself to death prematurely 

just because i tend to 

often forget

Haiku: The Inexpressible

Things seen, quickly sketched

All the Allness, all at once

Time in timelessness

Haiku: Enough love

To take Things not so
Personally. They’ve got no
Thing to do with me.

Haiku for Andy

Sitting Bull, Black Elk
We don’t just “go with the Flow”
Lo: it moves through us!

A Trick is Perspective

Gravity is a constant Trickster.

I am so incredibly sad.
Alcohol is a poison,
As is any poor relation.

I can do anything and go 
Anywhere I want. I am free.
Nothing except gravity controls me.
I am a leaf connected to, loved by a tree.

There is no justice for the ego save that which is 
Held by universe. And by the time I get there
All I find is concept-confounding, quiet, 
Unassuming, mischievous mystery;

What’s beyond being ancient, the lithic 
Scraps of earth DNA memory 
Whispering the Presence of something Divine,
And the way in which it comes to me:

Quiet and supernatural, like
Spiders flying in the breeze,
Stones, 
Bones of trees,

Feathers and space ice in the ocean this eve.
Praise for the new names being revealed to me!
For what side of the sword we may be on
Is the heartspace we’re choosing to come from.

Haiku: Blessed long Line

Blessed be your Life
Blessed be your Mother and your Father
And your long Line

Haiku: Day 2

When I have nothing

Left inside me I can not

Give you anything

Woman

Woman,

Marvellous mirror,

You are part of Pacha Mama.

You are warmth and light.

You are brown and gold and green.

You are silk and perfume 

And so many fine things I am not used to,

Do not know, yet know I like.

These are strange new times

And you have stilled my gaze.

You help me see how full of magic I am.

You walk in front of me along the shoreline

Of sublime deep grey misty oceanscape

While dragons circle and swim in the air

Beyong my reckoning.

You are part of earth, part of sky

And part of everything in between.

You are light,

Blue,

You are some fair green, luscious, thirst-quenching

Welcome back to sacred ritual space;

These things are in you -

Can you see?

Fire! A rush of change, a wave of love, now,

To wash down and bring cheer as we write

The words to guide the song,

The beginning to a focused dot, all that is

In heart intention and promise:

Art, music, poetry - unfurl! Brave,

Bold, sexy universe of brown gold,

Green. Happy birthday, turquoise, teal,

You Godhead colours joining heaven earth 

and heaven sky in deep grey misty oceanscape,

Past, present, future

Womanchild!

Woman.

Bee and beetle

A bee

Separated from her hive:

Does she experience loss

Or simply have an other experience?

A beetle

Walking seemingly suicidally towards

The incoming tide:

Does he sense death by water - wish for it, even;

Or is he having a kaleidoscopic visionary adventure

In bliss,

Being alive,

Just being alive

For what seems, to us, like

A paltry few days?

Five haikus: early tide, laughter of dawn

Morning mudra
Movement greeting ritual 
With my giant ocean friend.

Freestyle tai chi:

Code connecting minuscule me

To eternal sea.

The stories we tell 

Ourselves about our selves,

Ancient water creature!

Early tide, dawn's laugh:

That we matter not is what

Really matters most.

When I am in the 

Water of the sea, something

Starts to move through me.

I forget I ever forgot

When I am inside

Her early tide.

Haiku: Over

Many things served their
Time and Purpose. Farewell, Old
Friends. Goodbye, Old World.

to: Life

Flattened by you.

Lying head on desk.

The pencil lifts up my hand.

Soft tears escape my surprised,

(cont)rolling eyes.

I get up.

I asked you to please

Stop shouting so loud, 

So harsh,

To please talk to me gently,

Talk to me so I could hear you.

You listened.

You stopped shouting, 

Just kept quiet and

Picked me up.

I softened my sharp, contracted,

Tense and frightened edges,

Relaxed and started to put on fat and muscle.

Your shouting was a primal scream to wake me 

Back into wildness and 

The knowing that each waking moment is sacred.

My being is no longer haunted by sin

But stands tall and strong, 

Honoured to be part of your divinity.

The call is now, and has always been,

To stay close to you, Love, learn how to

Be inside you, make you my home.