Poetry / White (Excema)
I wake to
This tightness of white skin.
It itches,
Raised in protest.
Angered,
I pour romance onto the blaze.
Peg down the struggling sylph of identity,
And I am intoxicated by the rising vapours.
There is a distortion in the air.
A melody is falling
From the ceiling.
And now, seated on my bed,
Guileless, I watch the
descending images,
the spinning colours,
I see iRhini and the Eastern Cape
Blood red aloes,
Burning dust,
Donkeys and
Whitewashed walls
Fade to White.
Hospital drifting.
Mother in a makeshift bed
To stay with me.
I cannot breathe.
Gulp the white stream of air
And medicine from the plastic tube.
Stricken,
I am under sedation.
Covered in sores,
Skin peeled from my ears.
My father, clumsy, authentic,
Makes me tea.
Medicated, I sleep.
A white space.
I wake and page through a photo album.
That dark cove
With Julie in the foreground
Collecting shells.
Mount Baker in the background
Just across the Sound is Seattle.
Canada is wholesome,
Well-funded, ruled by Apollo.
But I am home-sick.
Africa has her teeth in me.
I long for continuity,
But this montage is mute.
A sideshow.
The drunken fools are loud
And chaotic, rendering
Forgotten the sinister and the faraway.
And I deepen in drunkenness.
Now,
I am on the periphery of Zululand,
Thunderstorm shaking the balcony.
The Indian Ocean seething,
Lighting shatters the black dome of the sky.
Jacqueline is in pyjamas,
Holding the kitten.
I wake in the pre-dawn
Stillness
Drink water
Look at the garden
I am singing behind the wheel
in an old Ford Escort
Somewhere beyond Plettenberg Bay
We pass the polo fields
Where the royals
Drink gin and tonic.
Bearded bohemians
In the back seat.
Mr Ginsberg you should have been with us.
You could have played the drums in our band
And taught us how to chant.
I shower
My skin burns
In the heat
I am aware of tightness
Pink and tender
Sweating in red smoke
A grimace in industrial screeching
Wide-eyed and primal
In the indulgence
At the edge of the precipice
In the bewitched Eastern Cape
Spitting and clawing
Against the ideologues
I am aware of a new scratching,
The toy soldiers
Of a new set of indulgences.
Above my bed, there is a
White space
Onto which I project
My fears.
Winter tightens and
The steppes and smoke stacks
Of the old country
Trawl across my eyes.
Skin in ragged anguish.
Katowice visions
Of bedraggled drunks
And blackened buildings
I am aware of myself spanning
Continents
Not at home
Not at peace
I consider Phlebas,
The wandering Jew,
The nomad,
The horse thief.
I watch the vomit slide down
The stubbled chin
Of high school heroes,
Over their insignia.
Don’t you respect your school?
Don’t you love your country?
I want to ride with the Tatars
Against my country.
I hear Leonard Cohen
Through the wall.
A drifter must pierce the irony.
Masculinity is not what it was.
Kerouac is dead and dishonoured.
Carolyn Cassidy, I am truly sorry.
When did we become clowns?
And the omnipresent reality
Of Jacqueline: a complexity
The like of which I know
No precedent.
Fierce and fragile,
Comforting and hostile.
I watch a staged battle
The Xhosa warriors are stunted
They lob pointed sticks
At the guns.
Toy soldiers.
Africa remains a closed book.
Alan Horwitz, you seem to understand.
What do I want in these red spaces,
Acacia trees and dust?
Oh, to be a sycophant,
To slide my own knife into the
White man.
There seems very little point.
My skin stretches tight.
I rise and hurl the fragments from me.
Scatter them to the Berg wind,
Trudge back down the slope.
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“I rise and hurl the fragments from me.
Scatter them to the Berg wind,
Trudge back down the slope.”
What’s a berg wind?
“Katowice visions
Of bedraggled drunks
And blackened buildings” Not hard to imagine building burnt out from fire, or perhaps abandonded buildings with fire lit in the by perhaps that “wandering Jew”. or maybe just buildings reduced to rubble.
- add/view comments (1)
Overall, I really liked it.
“Canada is wholesome,
Well-funded, ruled by Apollo.
But I am home-sick.
Africa has her teeth in me.”
That part really stood out to me and I thought it was brilliant the way you put it.
Your use of words is beautiful, setting the tone for your reading perfectly, but i must be a little slow or you like to confuse your readers. i keep reading although not understanding, and when i’m done even though i understand nothing i still have a unexplainable feeling of sorrow and calm at the same time. don’t know if thats what you want to hear, but i think sometimes u don’t have to understand to enjoy
June 14, 2006
Deleted User
Wow… you have a handle on your feelings here… I can’t imagine the pain but here I can feel somewhat of what you are reaching for… RW
May 25, 2006
Deleted User
That was excellent. There seems to be much that you have seen. I marvel in those that know experiences that i have yet to render. I love how you blend those places you have been and those places you miss in with a disease that thickens on the skin. Great write, i am very impressed.
I like this composition because I do not really consider much my home except for my body. There is quite a lot to understand in world places, cultures and developed ideas… sometimes it’s the big picture that is defined by one’s own experience (as opposed to such experience’s relativity to the big picture)- the contrast between Eastern Europe and Africa is quite effective how you portray it, the despair is key… I sometimes get lost in your imagery, but the emotion is always there.
I found this poem breathtaking. I had to read it over twice to make sure I wasn’t missing something to dislike about it. The way it flows from line to line and thought to thought and image to image reminds me of one of my favorite poets, Sylvia Plath (especially her poem “Lady Lazurus”.) She was able to tell a story and invite the reader to intimately share in her universe without having to explain things in minute and mundane detail, and you have that same amazing talent.
This is very interesting! “I wake to the
tightness of white skin.” This poem does an excellent job of painting a picture. Very good reading. This poem takes any reader way out of the box.
“I pour romance onto the blaze.”
very fresh thought, i adore this line.
“And I am intoxicated by the rising vapours.”
seems too obviously stated for the piece as a whole.
and i am biased to love you inviting ginsberg simply because im in love with the beat generation.
although, it is a bit cluttered towards the begining i like. Maybe you should consider breaking it into stanzas though.
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