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White (Exzema)
Contributed by
otak
on
Friday, 25th November 2005 @ 10:20:23 AM in AEST
Topic:
dedicatedpoems
|
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.
Copyright ©
otak
... [
2005-11-25 10:20:23]
(Date/Time posted on
site)
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Re: White (Exzema)
(User Rating: 1 )
by soad811 on
Sunday, 12th November 2006 @ 08:52:37 PM AEST
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Info | Send
a Message)
|
very good. it's descript and original. keep up the good work
soad811 |
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Re: White (Exzema)
(User Rating: 1 )
by Former_Member on
Sunday, 19th November 2006 @ 10:38:50 PM AEST
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a Message)
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| this is a very good poem! Keep it up! |
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