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33°57' S 18°24' E
1 July 2008

I've been told that disciples
on a journey of 12 steps
struggle to locate a Higher Power.
In this city, they look up
to a solid lump of sandstone rock
and carefully place their prayers
on the altar of its table top.

More than half a lifetime ago
a small girl visited
her bight eyes, awake, looked up
and fell in love with
its overarching stillness.
When she returned as a woman
a mother, a friend, another's lover
the mountain looms ever the same
yet now it seems aloof and strange.

There's something about this space
that sets the stones in us ajar.
City of light and dark entwined
a playground for the rich and foolish
as well as bread and butter for the poor.
If I'm supposed to build a home upon a rock
how the hell can I ever hope to scale its wall?

That colonial tin-pot bastard Rhodes
planted his first imperial seeds here
Now we (poor sods) reap what he has sown
and carefully water our own small dreams.
In landing here, I hope to find myself
instead, find questions
more immense than any stone.

A Yellow Rose
Wednesday, 9 April 2008

According to those in the know
a yellow rose bud means
friendship and
a still small voice saying
"I care".

I wish I knew the cure for a broken heart
but even if I managed to distil five small drops
of magic spell
I would have swigged the lot
so many heartbreaks ago.

To grow a seed of love
watch it burst into bloom
as you water it with joy and tears
only to see it wither with neglect or betrayal
these are harsh cruel lessons
in this life we call meaningful.

I could be maudlin and say:
every perfect rose
carries an armoured underbelly of thorns
but you know that already.
Better to guard your heart
and allow your own
bruised petals to heal.

Love is not lost
Nor is every lover untrue.
But hope
now there's something
worth keeping alive.

Five
11 November 2003

Exactly five years ago
I held your wrinkly little prune-lined body
in my arms for the first time
You weighed 3.86 kilograms
Almost as much as four bags of sugar
Really nothing at all
but I felt I was holding the world
at my fingertips

I looked into your tiny face
gasped in wonder at the size of your small toes
the length and breadth of your squealing mouth
and your nose, such a cute little button of perfection
like most you announced your arrival
in the earliest hours
so dark we almost took it for a false alarm
but I had to run to keep up with your mom
as she chased around the ward
clutching at her tummy
and yelling at you to
"Hurry up already and get on with it"
(we were so eager to meet you).

Eventually I caught her and rubbed her
lower back for a long time
and held her hand helplessly
as you pushed your way to the surface
and took a lusty gulp of air

A daughter
(we hadn't wanted to know before the time)
a daughter
and I promise when I held you
and gave you your first careful bath
I cried like a baby
Don't know why -
not joy not sadness -
just sheer emotion
at meeting you for the first time
and knowing deep down in my deepest parts
how lucky I am
to have two such special people to love

you and the woman I made you with
now you're five
and alive and smiling and laughing
and for today
"all's right with the world"
as another poet said
and you truly are the princess of today.

eyes to see
sun 12 Oct 2003

You haven’t taken my eyes
but you know why my
sight has forsaken me.
I’m back in the pews
with your people again
praising or bleating
in worship to you
(depending on your perspective)
We like sheep (and goats)
have gone astray even as
we try so hard to follow
a straight path of our own choosing.

You are good and we love you
more than anything
more than eyesight
but I don’t understand you
I never really have.
When I no longer see this path clearly,
please be my eyes and guide my feet.

I love you more than
the eyes I used to know
Some people say:
(call them mixed metaphors
if it pleases your grammar sense)
they’d give their right arm
for a pearl of great price.
Can I truly say:
I’d give my right eye
to know you more
to taste a little bit more
of the depths of your grace?

I’m not sure
(really I’m not)
but given a choice
I want you
and
I also want to keep my eyes.
What good is knowing you
without being able to see
your love in action?
Without being able
to measure (by eye)
the creative leaps and bounds
of your grace?

I love you more
more than I did before
and although this love
I measure out in days and hours
and doctors’ appointments
will wax and wane
I want to believe
that you will
always love me
so much more
than I ever can when
I say I love you.

Give me eyes to see
help this blind seeker
to accept what I struggle
so blindly to understand.

Love me more
so much more
than the meagre portions
of my love for you.

Speak –
your servant
is
listening.

And I want to hear
what you’re whispering
to the ears of my heart
and
please
please
please
teach me how to use
the eyes of my heart.

Of Borges and other myths
30 Oct 2002

So what's this whole love thing
about anyhow?
Memories of fragments of
Borges-styled ziggurats
Monuments to might-have-beens
Towers of Babel in the mists
of Babylonian sacrifice

When all it comes down to

(even in the middle of a
riot scene set in the
period costume drama of
some 16th-Century French
adultery-liaison-orgy)

Is a matter of two minds
reaching
for
the other's heart

Flesh, sexual prime, desire...
all these seem arbitrary
in the face of spiritual longing
whether it's on my knees
seeking the face of God
or gently pressing the centre
of you as you struggle to
suppress your moans

When actually it's simply about
pushing deeper into you
In search of white heat
No Freudian salute there
But a longing to slide with you
down the slippery slope of
my feelings,
my heart
my soul cry
for you.

coffee@six
sun 9 sep 2001

Sitting @ six am
in a 24/7 coffee shop
actually it's disguised as a
Woolworths & Portugese chicken takeout
in petrol-station clothing

Waiting for the sun to rise
and my woman to pick me up
Stayed up all night
worked some
wasted most on technical stuff
I kinda tangled myself in a Web of confusion
but I'm here now writing
on a wobbly tin table
as Bob Marleyesque muzak washes the air
on a perpetual rinse cycle

'I wanna wake up witha yoooou'
the speakers croon
and I consider a woman at home waking up
s-l-o-w-l-y
and a little girl who's not yet three

I think I'm happy but I ain't sure
what feeling broods beneath
this shoulder load of tired

All I know is
I want things to change
I wanna stay married to
a woman who's happy with choices
she's made
and years, her best years
invested in me

good seed good fruit
none of that worry 'bout
money chucked @ gen-u-wine trash

So I'm here
the writer waiting for the counsellor
and the future of who my child becomes
lies asleep
like the station forecourt
just outside.

early monday morning
Mar 1995

You lie awake in my dream tonight
your long hair strewn across the sheets
of my bed
I see your smile
the laughter healing gushes up
inside me
spilling out into my life
my world
and all the scenes
I rehearse with you
so many times
through long dark nights
of space
it takes to piece
together fragments
towards the understanding
of deep water
between us

When I fall into darkness
you are the one I long
to curl my spine against
yours the hidden eyes
I want to swim
inside
and when I wake
sunlight filling each
delicious crack
in my longing
yours are the arms
I run to throw
my self into

Dreaming without you
in the flesh
is like reaching
for fruit that
is not here:
your perfume fills my nights
and your skin is the
only smoothness I yearn for
woman who inhabits my dream
come back to me

Your toes
2 Mar 1995

Tonight I choose to remember
your delicate toes
the touch of skin beneath mine
as I held your feet
gently between these fingers
these thumbs
we laughed about distance
discrete space
and now we:
oceans apart.

Tonight I long
to touch your toes
to feel your wriggling warmth
snuggle up into the palm
of my hands
I should like to wander
above your ankles silk soft
smooth the roundness
of the ball and socket there
then watch my fist uncurl
begin its delicate climb
up beyond your knees
to the warmth of you inside

Tonight these are the thoughts
of fancy embraced:
for the record
diligent scribe
I must declare
that these fingers never yet strayed
beyond the articulate
reaches of your beautiful feet

That is entirely my fault
I confess
but tonight
I wish you were here
beneath my touch
I yearn to leave
my fingerprints
all over your body

Tonight I choose to remember your
delicate toes
and their weight
considered carefully
between these hands.

Woman with long strands
of delicate hair
tonight I cast off all
meaning of your
anatomic grace
I long only
to hold you
softly
to touch your toes
tonight.

Nice Christian Girls (NCGs)
January 1995

On the steps of an almost Italian Bakery
wedged between the cracks
of post-colonial Harare
and shopping mall suburbia
I volunteered the thought
(whilst rummaging for conversation)
that Nice Christian Girls
rather got my goat
or didn't
if you see what I mean.

"What exactly do you mean?"
she asked with a twinkle of dismay
and the tip of her nose wrinkled
in the most delightful way.

Being in the thick of it
attempting to retrace my steps
and keep my head above water
(cappuccino to be precise
this was Italian fare)
I doggy-paddled my way
towards an island of retreat.

Nice Christian Girls are pretty
I've hardly heard one swear
or tell an awful naughty joke
(all quite proper I presume)
but the human heart
the woman's flesh
beneath the doll's wrapping
stays well away
out of sight
out of mind
out of touch
perhaps

I should be scared
to show my human form
to such a mind
afraid she'd shudder
and convulse
hide her heart
behind a prim and proper
picture of some ideal
that's been planted
nurtured carefully
ever since the first dead seed
was sown
in Sunday school
by some lovely lady
well meaning in her holy fiction.

"Ah but," my fellowship
of friends retorted:
"We have another side
we keep it hidden from the public eye
guard it jealously
for the dynamic young man
who alone will steal our hearts
and fall asleep in our arms."

I heaved a sigh of deep relief
to hear a confession of frail humanity.
Yet without the clues
of passion furtively hiding
behind the veils of prudent
purity · I fear I'll never
find such a woman:
one who'll kindle my fire
and teach me how to keep it
glowing
through the nights
that skulk towards us
through the gloom.

Having thrown myself
so recklessly
into this furious debate
I hover on its edges
sipping my coffee
watching these women
throw a fear about their minds
wonder what type of self-adhesive label
I've stuck between their eyes.

I chuckle as I float
above the rim of my cup
laughing cynically at
Bright Young Things
with a spiritual bent
yet longing
(yes I confess it)
for a Nice Christian Girl
who'll simply charm my pants off.
And survive to tell the tale.