Category Archives: poetry

octavio paz – no more clichés

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Beautiful face
That like a daisy opens its petals to the sun
So do you
Open your face to me as I turn the page.

Enchanting smile
Any man would be under your spell,
Oh, beauty of a magazine.
How many poems have been written to you?
How many Dantes have written to you, Beatrice?
To your obsessive illusion,
To your manufactured fantasy?

But today I won’t make one more cliché
And write this poem to you.
No, no more clichés.

This poem is dedicated to those women
Whose beauty is in their charm,
In their intelligence,
In their character,
Not in their fabricated looks.

This poem is to you women,
That like a Scheherazade wake up
Every day with a new story to tell,
A story that sings for change
That hopes for battles:
Battles for the love of the united flesh
Battles for passion aroused by a new day
Battles for neglected rights
Or just battles to survive one more night.

Yes, to you women in a world of pain
To you, bright star in this ever-spending universe
To you, fighter of a thousand-and-one fights
To you, friend of my heart.

From now on, my head won’t look down to a magazine
Rather, it will contemplate the night
And its bright stars,
And so, no more clichés.

ameera conrad – on exhaustion over a lack of understanding

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ameeraI am tired
God Almighty, I am tired
of being told that we need to move on,
that we need to forget,
that we need to put the past behind us,
that Apartheid is over.

They don’t understand.
We never will.
Our bodies are monuments of centuries of torture,
trauma
terror
these exist in us
we live it every day.
We built this country
slaves
whips at our backs –
The Man holding the whip did not build –
we built.

Apartheid is not over.
No magic TRC wand can bippity-boppity-boo! it away.
Our glass carriage is still a pumpkin,
rotting,
pulled by rats.
A polite revolution over tea and crumpets, good Sir,
‘twas the order of the day.

When could we mourn?
When could we cry?
When could we scream
for our loved ones lost
our chances trampled on?

Please Mastah Baas Meneer,
Asseblief,
Gee my ‘n kans om te huil
vir my ma
en my pa
en my susters
en broers
gee my ‘n kans om te huil.

Let me stand up for myself
and for those who stood before me.
Let me march for myself
and for those who marched before me.
Let me call out AMANDLA
and raise my fist
and let me cry
after hundreds of years
let me cry.

— Ameera Conrad
4th Year
B.A. Theatre and Performance at UCT

Please visit Ameera’s blog, HERE.

ethel waters – his eye is on the sparrow

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Pause to watch, listen and reflect.

Have you ever experienced the weird magic of coming across something obliquely on Youtube, on your way somewhere else, and it speaks so powerfully, so uncannily, to all the things happening right now around you that all the hairs on your body stand on end? This is one of those times. The scene comes from a 1952 film called The Member of the Wedding, based on the book/play by Carson McCullers, starring Ethel Waters, Julie Harris and Brandon De Wilde. I came across it because my housemate Khanyi and I were singing this old hymn, hamming it up Lauryn-Hill-in-Sister-Act-2 style. I wanted to check out some of the older versions… and this clip revealed itself to me, complete with contextual preamble.

Just to tether this to a little of my own current context (I unfortunately don’t have time to write much right now), here is something written by one of my MPhil classmates about the student protests demanding the removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes that are currently happening at UCT, and here is the official SRC statement on the matter.

member-of-the-wedding-julie-harris-ethel-waters-brandon-de-wilde-1952

thokozani mthiyane – black hole

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Image: THokozani Mthiyane

Image: Thokozani Mthiyane

black hole
we have sunk in
the spinning time
lost again
just a drop of rain
and the grain of thought
or was it the image of the dead
that kept you from sleep
or just us again
listening to the sound
of words against the mind
energy for the vision
or is it just another path
to safety – the circle
of vulture and all
until you fall
you won’t know how the earth
smells
but hey love – let’s breathe
it is now
it is tomorrow
dreams remind me
that i am reason in reverse
reverse until that verse
before i thought
like a musician would
about an abstract note
i thought it was the syllable
that syllable –
now i know it is the verse
not even the word
the verse
as orgasmic
as the poetic

debbie pryor – sometimes the day

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Sometimes the day
just caves in on you
like you were porous
made of sand

you woke
steady as rock
you showered
you dressed
you stared off into the distance
whilst the coffee sipped your sleepiness
away

you dropped the kids
at school
you weaved from this lane
to that
hoping to escape
the modern day slow moving
tragedy of traffic

but you were forced to sit
in your luxurious alcove
where your miserly wits look out
at the others
in theirs
the place where eyes
lives
compare

and then I saw him
I don’t know him well
but i do know
that his baby died
suddenly
long before he was five

and there he was
sitting like all others
obedient in their lanes
abiding by the rules
of another day

nobody would know by looking
what he has had taken away

So the day caves in on you
like you were made of dust
because no amount of tears
or empathy
can fill some holes
in those around us.

anne sexton – a story for rose on the midnight flight to boston

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annesextonUntil tonight they were separate specialties, different stories, the best of their own worst.

Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy’s laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first story. Someday, I promised her, I’ll be someone going somewhere, and we plotted it in the humdrum school for proper girls. The next April the plane bucked me like a horse, my elevators turned and fear blew down my throat, that last profane gauge of a stomach coming up. And then returned to land, as unlovely as any seasick sailor, sincerely eighteen; my first story, my funny failure.

Maybe, Rose, there is always another story, better unsaid, grim or flat or predatory.

Half a mile down the lights of the in-between cities turn up their eyes at me. And I remember Betsy’s story, the April night of the civilian air crash and her sudden name misspelled in the evening paper, the interior of shock and the paper gone in the trash ten years now. She used the return ticket I gave her.

This was the rude kill of her; two planes cracking in mid-air over Washington, like blind birds. And the picking up afterwards, the morticians tracking bodies in the Potomac and piecing them like boards to make a leg or a face. There is only her miniature photograph left, too long now for fear to remember. Special tonight because I made her into a story that I grew to know and savor. A reason to worry, Rose, when you fix an old death like that, and outliving the impact, to find you’ve pretended.

We bank over Boston. I am safe. I put on my hat. I am almost someone going home. The story has ended.

kyla pasha – poem on a paper aeroplane floated across the border

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Dancing

She danced all night and suddenly
it was all about being
loved like a woman ought
and I thought I would die
of gin and adoration, I thought
if only I could freeze this dance
into a loop, carve it out of whitefaced
time and paste it into a sea of brown,
if only the earth permitted the holding
of hands across borders, heroes and grandchildren
would be born, but it was just a Berlin night
with the earth still spinning drunk off her axis,
that if it weren’t for fucking gravity, she could fucking
love the sun again.

—

More of Kyla Pasha’s poems from High Noon and the Body HERE.

come with us to the edge of wrong tomorrow

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I’m part of the South African curatorial/organising team for this series of collaborative multi-medium performances. If you’re in Cape Town, check EOW 9.1 out tomorrow night.

It will involve an insane mash-up of guitarists, violinists, opera singers, noise musicians, circuitbenders, chiptunists, avant-percussionists, pianists, body modification, visuals generated from cellular automata, experimental improv dance, provocative video art and the livecoded sound of the Ebola genome…

More information HERE.

poster2b

 

ravel – shéhérazade, part II – la flûte enchantée

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(Bożena Bujnicka – soprano, Paweł Sommer – piano)
A song cycle by Ravel, first performed in 1904. More information about the composition can be found HERE.

The shade is soft and my master sleeps
Wearing a conical hat of silk,
His long yellow nose in his white beard.
But me, I’m yet awake,
Listening to the melody of a flute outside
which pours forth, in turns, sadness and joy,
An air in turns languid or frivolous,
Which my darling love plays.
And when I approach the window,
It seems to me that each note flies
From the flute to my cheek
Like a mysterious kiss.

kay nielsen_arabian_nights

L’ombre est douce et mon maître dort
Coiffé d’un bonnet conique de soie
Et son long nez jaune en sa barbe blanche.
Mais moi, je suis éveillée encor
Et j’écoute au dehors
Une chanson de flûte où s’épanche
Tour à tour la tristesse ou la joie.
Un air tour à tour langoureux ou frivole
Que mon amoureux chéri joue,
Et quand je m’approche de la croisée
Il me semble que chaque note s’envole
De la flûte vers ma joue
Comme un mystérieux baiser.

 

eart mudder

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‪#‎BedtimeStory‬: "every mouth you’ve ever kissed was just practice all the bodies you’ve ever undressed and ploughed in to were preparing you for me. i don’t mind tasting them in the memory of your mouth they were a long hall way a door half open a single suit case still on the conveyor belt was it a long journey? did it take you long to find me? you’re here now, welcome home.” ―Warsan Shire

‪#‎BedtimeStory‬:
“every mouth you’ve ever kissed
was just practice
all the bodies you’ve ever undressed
and ploughed in to
were preparing you for me.
i don’t mind tasting them in the
memory of your mouth
they were a long hall way
a door half open
a single suit case still on the conveyor belt
was it a long journey?
did it take you long to find me?
you’re here now,
welcome home.”
―Warsan Shire

 

lena khalaf tuffaha – running orders

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They call us now.
Before they drop the bombs.
The phone rings
and someone who knows my first name
calls and says in perfect Arabic
“This is David.”
And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass shattering symphonies
still smashing around in my head
I think “Do I know any Davids in Gaza?”
They call us now to say
Run.
You have 58 seconds from the end of this message.
Your house is next.
They think of it as some kind of war time courtesy.
It doesn’t matter that
there is nowhere to run to.
It means nothing that the borders are closed
and your papers are worthless
and mark you only for a life sentence
in this prison by the sea
and the alleyways are narrow
and there are more human lives
packed one against the other
more than any other place on earth
Just run.
We aren’t trying to kill you.
It doesn’t matter that
you can’t call us back to tell us
the people we claim to want aren’t in your house
that there’s no one here
except you and your children
who were cheering for Argentina
sharing the last loaf of bread for this week
counting candles left in case the power goes out.
It doesn’t matter that you have children.
You live in the wrong place
and now is your chance to run
to nowhere.
It doesn’t matter
that 58 seconds isn’t long enough
to find your wedding album
or your son’s favorite blanket
or your daughter’s almost completed college application
or your shoes
or to gather everyone in the house.
It doesn’t matter what you had planned.
It doesn’t matter who you are
Prove you’re human.
Prove you stand on two legs.
Run.

writing wrongs

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my wrists ache
wrest them
look out
a deck of shards
sick notes
cutting in
cutting up
cutting down
cutting out
cutting off
the pulse
wound up wound
wind up wind
wound up wind
wound down wind
wind down wound
wind up wounded
binds unbound

an unstruck sound
this name means nothing to me
rolling off my glossed tongue
the missing ink
the beads of spittle in the pink
the drown flying in my drink
sink for yourself
sink or blink

outside carries on
the whorl of a banshee
howling at the pane

open your eyes
close your mouth
close your eyes
open your mouth
open your close
eye your mouth
mouth your silence
silence your eyes
make the whirl go away

vice v – mr president

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“Mr President” is the controversial first single released on Long Talk 2 Freedom. It is a work of hip-hop protest literature which deals with the failed presidency of Jacob Zuma. The work remixes, and was inspired by, Tunisian rapper El-general’s classic, “Rayes lebled”, which became the theme song of the Tunisian revolution which brought Tunisian Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali down in 2011.

Written, produced, mixed and mastered by Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh aka Vice V
Recorded by Tiger.X

Speeches referenced:
T. Lekota, “Response to the State of the Nation Address”, February, 2013.
J. Malema, “They Shot us Behind the Mountain: Address on the First Anniversary of the Marikana Massacre”, August, 2013.

http://longtalk2freedom.com/

laurie anderson – the dream before (for walter benjamin)

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” A Paul Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; his wings are caught in it with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.” 

— Walter Benjamin, 1940

paul-klee-angelus-novus

Paul Klee – Angelus Novus (1920)

wislawa szymborska – consolation

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Darwin.
They say he read novels to relax,
But only certain kinds:
nothing that ended unhappily.
If anything like that turned up,
enraged, he flung the book into the fire.

True or not,
I’m ready to believe it.

Scanning in his mind so many times and places,
he’d had enough of dying species,
the triumphs of the strong over the weak,
the endless struggles to survive,
all doomed sooner or later.
He’d earned the right to happy endings,
at least in fiction
with its diminutions.

Hence the indispensable
silver lining,
the lovers reunited, the families reconciled,
the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded,
fortunes regained, treasures uncovered,
stiff-necked neighbours mending their ways,
good names restored, greed daunted,
old maids married off to worthy parsons,
troublemakers banished to other hemispheres,
forgers of documents tossed down the stairs,
seducers scurrying to the altar,
orphans sheltered, widows comforted,
pride humbled, wounds healed over,
prodigal sons summoned home,
cups of sorrow thrown into the ocean,
hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation,
general merriment and celebration,
and the dog Fido,
gone astray in the first chapter,
turns up barking gladly
in the last.

the journey – mary oliver

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One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognised as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life you could save.

happy birthday, simone de beauvoir

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When she does not find love, she may find poetry. Because she does not act, she observes, she feels, she records; a colour, a smile awakens profound echoes within her; her destiny is outside her, scattered in cities already built, on the faces of men already marked by life, she makes contact, she relishes with passion and yet in a manner more detached, more free, than that of a young man.

WALKABOUT tumblr_mb7ukzuYA71qe0eclo1_r4_500

Jenny Agutter in “Walkabout” (Nicolas Roeg, 1971)

Being poorly integrated in the universe of humanity and hardly able to adapt herself therein, she, like the child, is able to see it objectively; instead of being interested solely in her grasp on things, she looks for their significance; she catches their special outlines, their unexpected metamorphoses. She rarely feels a bold creativeness, and usually she lacks the technique of self-expression; but in her conversation, her letters, her literary essays, her sketches, she manifests an original sensitivity.

The young girl throws herself into things with ardour, because she is not yet deprived of her transcendence; and the fact that she accomplishes nothing, that she is nothing, will make her impulses only the more passionate. Empty and unlimited, she seeks from within her nothingness to attain All.

― Simone de Beauvoir,  from The Second Sex (first published in French as Le Deuxième Sexe in 1949)
If you’re interested in reading this hugely influential text, you can find it online HERE.

genna gardini – goodbye to rosie

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For Rosemary Lombard (and Paul Simon)

This girl and this man sing together.

They are sitting on these steps,
which for them, which for me,
must also in some way be a stage,
scrim set and defined by a door shut behind
the camera’s squint squiz,
the gap between her space and his
grouted and flat,
locked like a spine snapped
between wings.

Complicating the exit.

It is early in the morning.
He has been asked to come and play music for,
no, with children. On television. On these stairs
which lead to the sort of porch (I write stoop)
that he has lately been avoiding.
But today he hovers near it, near her,
and says, and stops himself from saying,
that it was a brownstone (in my tongue,
a town house) like this where he’d first met his wife,

who tipped into him as stiff and iceless
as the drink he couldn’t buy her then.
He thought she would open up
as if an elevator in the building of conversation,
a device he could ride from across to sides
without ever having to construct a scaffold himself.
I’d say lift. He was wrong.
She divorced him a year before.
Now his problems are like his hair, parted.

He is 38.The girl is seven (or six).
They’ve asked her to come and sit,
to come and sing with him.
She says hello, ducks her head.
Small animal, small pump of blood
and possibility. She is made
of corduroy, he thinks, soft,
unmalleably furrowed. Without zip.
He can appreciate her wholeness,

he is weary of it.
He himself feels fetched,
feels stitched from thin material,
worrying at the connections.
You can see the marks of the alterations
he made, let others make, on his ancient guitar,
whose strings knot and flay where he has pulled at them.
This does not seem beautiful to him.
He won’t ever get another.

The song is about an event he refuses to explain
to the girl,
so he tries to only pronounce words like
“mamma” or “pyjama”,
leaving them placed sweet,
as if icing on a cake,
praying “Let her life lick past it”,
when, suddenly, she yells,
“Dance! Dance! Dance!”

The man is concerned, he interrupts her,
but she tries again, when the lenses turn,
this time pointing at him while humming,
“Look! I can see the bird!”

Two decades later, a friend will post this
link to my Facebook wall.
And I’ll think, “She wasn’t wrong at all!”
And I’ll think, “I’m nothing like you.”

—
This poem was first published on AERODROME. Thank you, Gen, for permission to post it on Fleurmach (and obviously for writing it! xx).

lydia lunch – cesspool called history

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Montage from film footage: Fingered and The Right Side of my Brain, attributed to Richard Kern, starring Lydia Lunch.
Music: “Cesspool Called History” (Lydia’s reciting over a version of the jazz standard, “Harlem Nocturne”), from the Lydia Lunch album, Hangover Hotel (self-released in 2001).