Standing on the sands of these years,
strolling on this desolate shore
where the night unfold her eiderdown of darkness on my shivering body.
I look back at my past
staring over my shoulder like a one-eyed gargoyle.
My future is a tottering wall
lashed by the force of human hurricane.
My hair jumps on end
as seagulls veer and swoop above my head
tearing my thought with jeering screams,
and billows brawl amongst themselves
as they race to pickle my voice in a bottle..
Their noise deafens me
I shudder,
I quiver in terror,
I clutch my puny poetic fists
and punch wildly at the immense powers.
They laugh with hundredfold scorn.
I scream:
No sound comes out from a mouth
wide as the gates of hell
I weep the reservoirs of tearducts dry
as a Vaal riverbed in a drought.
Where am I?
What am I?'
Am I just a minute beetle hiding under a clod of sand
ready to be squashed by a white beachstroller's foot?
My body writhes helpessly in a python's crush;
and my mind is strang ed in the tentacles of an octopus.
I spit my last defiant hiss
and gasp the death breath
for freedom to be free.
Only a whirling brain remains alive drifting in a dark cloud
to a desert mirage of fleeting dreams
where a golden water jug pours into a cup of unquenchable desires
I grope nearer to snatch the water pitcher
a policeman snaps his handcuffs on my wrists
and drags me into my hell
where am left to chew spiders and scorpions
with a dry swollen tongue.
In the grave I meet my mother
black is ebony
smooth as ivory
sweet is syrup on a cake.
Her body lies embalmed
in a handkerchief of my tears.
My father is not there.
He had left me, a child,
with his penis to eat for a boerewors
and his testicles to slice as onion and tomato
to grovy my dry and stale mieliepap.
Vaa: -river forming the southern border of the Transvaal
boes wors: boer sausage
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