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Array
(
[sid] => 110356
[catid] => 1
[aid] => mick
[title] => White (Exzema)
[time] => 2005-11-25 10:20:23
[hometext] => To Jacqueline - in admission of my own failings - Grahamstown 2005
[bodytext] => 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. [comments] => 2 [counter] => 171 [topic] => 55 [informant] => otak [notes] => [ihome] => 0 [alanguage] => english [acomm] => 0 [haspoll] => 0 [pollID] => 0 [score] => 8 [ratings] => 2 [editpoem] => 1 [associated] => [topicname] => dedicatedpoems )
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