Category: Poetic Leanings

Rain does not fall

It is thrown-

Purposely, elegantly, divinely-

With deft hands and a fiercer arm

It’s been thrown.

Je suis tombé amoureux
de lui

I fall for the trappings of hedonism

I fall sick of my own limitations

I fall pregnant with silly hope and cloudless dreams

I fall in love

I fall out of love

I fall out of sight of my own ambition

I fall away.

The pebble forcing concentric circles in the lake is not fallen

With deft hands and a fiercer arm

It’s been thrown.

At the point of departure, a measurable energy for potential

At the point of impact, a measurable energy for momentum-

Purposefully, elegantly, mindfully

With deft hands and a fiercer arm

It’s been thrown.

The water slip-sliding down the tarred road has a compass within

Guiding it to fill out the punched-out holes in the yawning road

It finds a home in the holes of a long-ago tarred road

With deft hands and a fiercer arm

It’s been thrown.

I can’t fall anymore

So I’ll crawl a little deeper instead.

When caked up, pungent rivers of blood shore up against your front door

When human waste is let out to marshal streets of destruction and woe

When children, frail and forlorn, hold on fiercely to a mother two days dead

When a father, a dying child laying limply in his arms runs to a hospital nowhere near

When a daughter returns to a heap of rubble that was home just ten days before

When that daughter finds the corpse of a child two weeks dead-

So long dead, it hasn’t rated a statistic and even as a belated statistic she cannot tell whether it is a girl or a boy

When the nails from the shells flying precariously close above are as long as your hand

When a child’s brain is bombed out of his head with no reference to superlative metaphor- just a grim litreality

When a brother himself no more than ten is burdened with the weight of a bleeding, burned brother

When over on the hill in the distance the fall of each bomb is celebrated by another pair of brothers

When the head of a girl protrudes from a heap of rubble like an artistic echo of the world’s complicity

When the unborn child listens to their mother wailing for a husband who is never to hear the wailing of his child-

Who closes their eyes and walks away?

And then you realise, squeamishness is a privilege few can afford.

The granite table

Is the finest Rustenburg black

A sturdy rock in a German show kitchen

Tonight it’s decked for a feast

Silver charger plates,

Gleaming cutlery,

One of many special sets of Japan’s finest China is dusted off,

Glasses of crystal, their stems, knots of blue and green-

Beautifully crafted

Ridiculously tiny

We’ll reach for man-size plastic soon

We always do

These glasses offer no more than a trickle at a time

It’s kola tonic that’s our poison,

No champagne at this table

Just a cocktail of coveted black liquid so cleverly blended with a product of the Coca-Cola Company.

“Hey it’s the way the world rolls.”