I Tell You Once How it Began
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I Tell You Once How it Began
i tell you once how it began
with a shimmer; small cracks appearing
in the picture
here in the streams running
inside my head, begging me
to rush ahead, no knowledge where i was meant to arrive
I was to arrive, to bury the open grave of
my father ⎯
who will bundle his grudges?
who will rig the lottery with me?
who has hope for the fog melting like an illusion
like I have faces that look like me dreaming?
i am him, i have prickly, have things spitting
at the tendrils amassed at my grip
he’s not there, to edge his face closer to me
there’s this tear
i hear
as most of my eyesight
is ripped
*
it’s been long after i’ve left
the tubular throats of the sabc
built, one can say, so that no-one hears
with erect policies
with voices from a pulpit
and those plastic dungeons
now my mind has started to
sing with work that hangs still
on washing lines
and an exhausted jhb city
has been painted
with visions
with missions
so many times
*
it was a cross-eyed time, to be
riding ben schoeman
beneath the moon’s preview of the night, and me
fed, until i nearly fell with the car
horrors: children peeling off
every layer of their skin, no-name brands
for every stream, every mountain
and this moon
constantly avoiding
taking this
or that side
*
look, ben schoeman
tonight makes a minister’s
national budget feelings
actually appear
but i’m sure
of my poet’s salute, i am
at the correct height of my regard:
tonight my drowsy eyes
think the highway stinks
like an iran nuclear reactor
yes, the one suspended
from every news line-up, every wireless
between billboard of the tv shows
and pictures calling us to compare our banking cards
where reconstructured lanes unpainted lines
are the perfect con/dolences to
the slippery road we took to the future ⎯
*
oh my, how evolved wehave got to
get, get, get
to keep our phrases of each and every season
worth the weights carried in our sack
as i check the gauge
of my agency, amid the terrible engulfment
in all the storms blowing south, north, west
middle east
in all of these
*
in this city, when
air is so dry, in my car radio…
stevie wonder
…you’re moving in the positive
your destination is the brightest star…
master blaster, stevie wonder
blind like motherfucker
you ask me am i happy/
well as a matter of fact i am/i can say that i am ecstatic…
ghost of the father, this is my kind of religion
i tell you once how it began
with a shimmer; small cracks appearing
in the picture
here in the streams running
inside my head, begging me
to rush ahead, no knowledge where i was meant to arrive
I was to arrive, to bury the open grave of
my father ⎯
who will bundle his grudges?
who will rig the lottery with me?
who has hope for the fog melting like an illusion
like I have faces that look like me dreaming?
i am him, i have prickly, have things spitting
at the tendrils amassed at my grip
he’s not there, to edge his face closer to me
there’s this tear
i hear
as most of my eyesight
is ripped
*
it’s been long after i’ve left
the tubular throats of the sabc
built, one can say, so that no-one hears
with erect policies
with voices from a pulpit
and those plastic dungeons
now my mind has started to
sing with work that hangs still
on washing lines
and an exhausted jhb city
has been painted
with visions
with missions
so many times
*
it was a cross-eyed time, to be
riding ben schoeman
beneath the moon’s preview of the night, and me
fed, until i nearly fell with the car
horrors: children peeling off
every layer of their skin, no-name brands
for every stream, every mountain
and this moon
constantly avoiding
taking this
or that side
*
look, ben schoeman
tonight makes a minister’s
national budget feelings
actually appear
but i’m sure
of my poet’s salute, i am
at the correct height of my regard:
tonight my drowsy eyes
think the highway stinks
like an iran nuclear reactor
yes, the one suspended
from every news line-up, every wireless
between billboard of the tv shows
and pictures calling us to compare our banking cards
where reconstructured lanes unpainted lines
are the perfect con/dolences to
the slippery road we took to the future ⎯
*
oh my, how evolved wehave got to
get, get, get
to keep our phrases of each and every season
worth the weights carried in our sack
as i check the gauge
of my agency, amid the terrible engulfment
in all the storms blowing south, north, west
middle east
in all of these
*
in this city, when
air is so dry, in my car radio…
stevie wonder
…you’re moving in the positive
your destination is the brightest star…
master blaster, stevie wonder
blind like motherfucker
you ask me am i happy/
well as a matter of fact i am/i can say that i am ecstatic…
ghost of the father, this is my kind of religion
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