Day Thirteen

What is real to me now? How eternal…


The quintessential anomaly about human existence is that it feels linear even though we know it to be cyclic a phenomenon. The idea of chronometry as it is a manifest interpretation of this anomalous perspective gives rise to the question…. Is this linearity also an element resultant from this linearity we imposed on memory? During this cataclysmic motion through time, we have evolved and thus meaningfully attributed time to what we have collated as memory. What then was this memory complex we had to develop for survival as a species on a harsh and brutal planet? Do all the days matter? Implying, does a human access the vaults of a millennia of memory in a single lifetime? Does the idea of life-time also impose a limit to the access to those vaults? Would immortality mean having unstoppable interface with the divine memory of our evolutionary path? Ok, basically I ask is the memory I am creating an element that would eventually drain into the fountain of the species’ collective unconscious? To be Jungian a little. And when faces are itching with death-trance symptoms…. During the chore of the living… would existence be a dream we all traverse from this evolutionary incarnation called humanoid unto the next and eternal? Do the contents of this life mean a mechanical design for my forth coming resurrection? What is life if not a florid mystery? Am I living or merely alive as eyes of a divine nomad through space-time…the god creature?

Day Eleven

Day Ten - Reality is just a point of view.

Day Nine

Nothing...
No thing...
No Thing... I can't come with you.

Day Eight...

Video Dream

Day Seven

Another raw summer’s day in this harrowing journey. People sweltering like convicts in a blaze that torments heads. Disheartenment and utter despair assailing me, the image of eternity I was born with being spoiled by morbid reflections. What have I become? Embezzled lover and exiguous father… But I am elsewhere now – where memory ends with conversations with the skies. Styes are blistered by constant tears and my bones need a walk. I eventually muster courage to take a walk among slouched drunkards on sidewalks, faces glued to arses and other museum relics of a boding terrain. It was actually the heat that woke me up - a Pretorian commonality I suppose.
I had intended to sit alone in the vacant flat after everyone had gone to work and perhaps finish a script. But I rather opted to list places to visit during my planned excursion, and motley list emerged indeed, from those vaults of memories distant with my past stay in this city.
Option 1
The Gallery
The gallery is situated too close to a brothel; and I wonder if prostitutes do appreciate art. Movements of commoners mingle with mine towards an eminent failure of explorations. Museums are too far apart; with kilometer long blocks to cross from one to another.
Option 2
Second Hand Bookshops – if they haven’t shutdown to make way for salons and internet cafes.

A bout of dementia settles as I realize that I have not written prosody in months… I think, and the twitch is unbearable. Trundle of cars up sloppy alleys, and the intermittent silences charge me with guilty thoughts. Taverns are filled with young lost men, women thronging salons for nail-biting efforts at beautification – whimsical debauchery swimming in their eyes. Pimps lounge along park benches and drug peddlers lie comatose under weird shadows at noon. The reek of marijuana filtered through heated drafts, and it is when I decide the walk was a bad idea and I had to escape the scotching sun. A visit around the block sees me in a company of old friends, further fueling militant debates with some eclectic music blurring though tattered audio speakers. We sit the day to blots on floors, no furnishings necessary here. For now, I hope.

Minor Observation

I discovered that here, a packet of cigarettes is called LAPTOP…
It is rather boring day in the story that could get senile. I sleep in the afternoon, only to be roused late at night by my hosts returning.

Day Six... In Pretoria.

For an early day’s mining, I got so sloshed I could not spell Amuz backwards, the whirl of lights and neon sign benignly cooling in the spheres of my eyes. Wine came pouring, bottles marking a social territory… us feeling like runaway fires in some pristine pastures of nude souls. It was all well still this dawn when I had to plunge my thoughts towards departures. I had unburdened myself to The Common ear the evening before, an ear that held supplication with my soul… I talked about my pain, my faults and flaws, the Dionysian delicacy brewing truth in my belly. I slept peacefully, strangely, having torn my eye-sack and bosom’s privities for the glare of hurt. My sexual apparatus lunged with virile force at the zipper, and I knew the addict to copulation was looming and desire had un-clamped the stale sense of loss. But having to reach the thoroughfare in the earlier hours of the day, this notion fills me with a strange vacillating rage. Not that I am becoming exhausted by roads devouring my feet’s histories… but because, I have no place to stay and it’s becoming veracity beyond complaint.

I have become a wastrel, on the road to nowhere - succulent petals of sweat grazing my brows with piercing crystals. I reach Noord under a stupor and daze of Johannesburg’s unrepentant belly, under the common tutelage of demons abound the abodes of the homeless, feeling turpitude splayed in my chest pages – the city’s chilly heart pumping, filling me up, clouds stilted in the un-nature of my past passions… eye bleeding morgue tongues. I recall again why the run… the termagant who coined the demise I find myself handling and singing. The place is a mess of commuters and I sigh…On my first attempt to board a Taxi to Pretoria, the conductors demand green and red cards from passengers (a cacophony of perfumes and scents of endearment transuding from every female armpit)and I soon discover that things do really change.

Upon my unannounced arrival, I chase the sunny streets of a town going down a drain… infantile juveniles bursting from residence windows… wheezing calm calls to passerby tourists like myself. I decide to lounge an hour at a local pub beating African pulses with sounds of shrilling guitars and un-tuned keyboards… the clamor of Congolese sound merging with other brute noises of a rhythmic street. I meet Shaun in this clique of the infamous; second his brother who had been jailed for four years. It has truly been long since I had seen this city. I embrace the souls plundered by the toils of tar, and they call me a saint. I am offered a beer and concur, and the night begins with its hues, eye-bound and the bile innards giving way to creeks of relaxation. I loved too many… so does love bestowed me in the caves of another anomalous terrain of my adventures.

Later outside a barred doorway, I wait for a response from a buzzer device installed at most of the properties in this enclave. I meet a prostitute, I guess, wetted black hair streaming upon prim cheeks. She looks roused by an early shower after a glorious bed filled with coinage… and recall that here the highs are without limits. My brother is nowhere to be found. He’s gone home to a sickly daughter and mother. I sympathize, and watch the friends in whose care he left me with unblinking concern for the turmoil of their trials. The Eskimo Child speaks of good hours of days gone by, younglings shagged by muscle maniacs fisting penises like hell’s door knobs… and I believe there is a glitch. He blesses my visit with a charge towards the queer girls and men in automotive crazes, cars and lulling machines of their pleasures… on wide streets made for donkey-cart turns. The Arcadian prostitute hives are brimming with teasers and made women, their sane ways coaxing warmth from pockets of guardian men… the sugar daddy types of our cosmopolitan age. Watched wenches with sorry eyes of nonchalance… and I asked why am I missing the game?
Pedi accents are un-nerving at first: “My Bra, ga di’ntshe bana”, he clamors out at some sanctuary and hidden-out furnace of revelers. And while my disabled palate kept sticking to my tongue; and only for so long I could undertake chatter… inebriation calling me further to the par of my brains brim. We arrive at Mallet, a complex downtrodden my mere utility. The haven for the studious kind, men at colleges of their future toils. I love the girls here, nubile and dream eyed… and how the ploys were mounting abound their voluptuous booties… and soon a gang of cops throng the place - in seconds; to investigate suspicion of illegal activities… the place looking horded by the uniformed officer brains… their operation Vula Isandla being a kind of philanthropy they undertake… and say that Pretoria is a nightmare. Ok, we decide we have to vacate ground-zero and we return to the flat, and all that is left is to read are the quotations My Brother has jotted across his walls like stale pictures of frozen brains.

The cautioning epithets:

‘Whatever it is you are feeling is a perfect reflection of what is in the process…’

‘All that we are is the result of what we have thought…’

‘You create your own universe as you go along…’

‘The universe will correspond to the nature of your song…’

‘Most people offer the majority of their response to what they are observing…’


And I will sleep in the reverie that all that art is what ought to be… while Nommo wails other rudiments of a fractured heart…

Day Five...

But the streets called… and I was where the curse had brought me. My head is bacchantly numb still and the streets brawl with juveniles in search of pleasure zones. It had rained the night before, and now the alleys carry the stench of stale armpits. I call The Common Man and ask for a place to crash; and we arrange a rendezvous at the blizzard clime of conned eateries. I meet him slouched in affluence’s décor with a drink at hand. A blazing cigarette and a female companion posing her serenity with pride. I am looking distraught, tired and charred by travel, the Township stench creased with the wrinkles of scotch. I ask him dearly if this won’t be a nuisance… and he’s calm with an answer that’s bright with concerned fright. He is also house-sitting. And stuck in a domain of fevered pockets as well, we hassle for coinage for a short trip out the bustle and bedlam of Bree Street and head north. But… he has to first wait on another culprit in the land of the beat of another kind.

Having being trusted with a key to a foreign abode I lunge forward towards the Taxi and board a trip to my nest for the night. Incidentally, I arrive a street away from my last head resting pillow… with Her. Her, again. There is surely something in the way of this misadventure. I watch myself fall like a feather off a wing of luck; acertitute overwhelming… that this is a method of alchemy from sources unfathomable and that which behoves me to act out my rage.

I arrive and the place is filled with books. Walls covered with page stink, and fossilized brain laboratory for a bedroom, I marvel at Bell Hooks lynching the myths about black masculinity and I feel vindication of a somber kind. I read it before he returns, that as soon as he rings his arrival I’d had kissed the better parts of my life good-by, and sacrificed all in the fire places innards. The house is an ethereal library of leftist literature, Dostoevsky, Pastenak and the like of other Soviet psalms of suffering. I love it here, reading blindly into my reverie that the nightmare would end. The silence, and then the film I watch called Steel City enrapturing me. The minor joint of marijuana, the tobacco breath growing shrubs in my muddied lungs… I cough and the echo is beyond repair. I know I have to cease the hiding from the stars of my end… I feel them creeping…

Suddenly I recall a friend I shared a house with, and how she spoke of a death of a child in nursery school. About how caregivers prostrated themselves on the floors, in mass hysteria, of how children cried while her performance troupe sang jingle bells accompanied by a weeping pianist. And she wept bluntly with placid pain – a bleeding toddler in her palms, feeling like an integer within the positive scheme of things…whence they whispered the soothsaying that she was the elect to usher this infantile soul into its after-life. She said he was in a good place yes, but why? when she was praying that he might not die… There stood a puddle of blood in the middle of the playroom, minor minds chiseled to shreds by a deformed view calm of their familiar space. The elders were kept at bay, their weeping frightened the young. The jingle went blazing through this death chorale, the one who attempted mouth to mouth resuscitation pallid with awe. The Head Chef eventually rings about a throng of horny feminists in town, I am far from that space I tell him: I cannot deal with women right now…

A Small Book on Debauchery...

This Day

How did the lush of youth fly past those moons of our discontent? There we were, moribund, messed up with charred rhythms in our souls, assailing the stuff of life. We were twenty then, candle minds raped by the last twin decades shunned in the blessing bloom of this sabbatical. This proved that we are simple and made of stone, the mystery of life we could handle with a bard of torture’s personalities. When they had come the last time, we had shoved small memories in boxes which we later chased. This was how our world reeled, breaking window eyes, commiserating a mood of television excess complications. We were here, two special friends and I, a rocket soul mauling lust’s avenues; a splintered cranium spewing vague tutorials of rage, pacing the mansion penitentiary of suburbia.

Waltzing our common dark of age… wayward the later phases of this dream, the maw that imbibes promises, before the culling… at this subtle hour of the sun’s trot into the earth’s underbelly, we thought of the bulging sky’s chest tearing… in words of adornment mashed for nirvana’s brew. He chokes, genuflecting spine of hearty poses, twisting a roaring laughter, actual mess marooning coiled hair… fleas in tripe buzzing a melody at his eyes’ choice. He had to record the events in spirit, a slight float in ransom of some ancient thoughts – a dog vomiting from fresh grass; the dances and jazz blown sparks impressed to memory’s chorale.

Locked gazes, bass flowing with a girl carrying a silver coated glass of ale; engulfed in notes glowing purple and green, orange with the night’s hideous infestations. Crimson petals hang like glitter-balls from earlobes, arms flung like oak branches on shoulders of louts – old sights and voices saying:
‘I don’t know what it is you’re on… but what it is is possible.’
A table is mapped by beverage spills, jabbed - slim elbows moving with travel of sounds, murmurs of delight pulsating toe taps in slouchy muddied sneakers.

And he says to the woman in a mink coat: ‘I know Frederich Nietzsche.’
‘Oooh wow…’ she exclaims with an indifferent expression of surprise. ‘And what does he have to do with the note you passed me earlier?’
‘Hedonisius instincts…’ he confers. ‘A pathless journey some say, where the journey is the destination.’
‘Hug me then.’ She demands, ‘write that down,’ another says; the thought missing a link to the piecing potency of a past referral.
‘Always spontaneous, I see… a joyful release of a soul in need of play,’ miles in her words - a cataclysm so wined up in terror.
‘And then the rooms like fill with balloons and other unbranded delicacies…’ he jesters,
‘Yes.’ A faint smile twists a broken halo on her face, and he wells up fatigued.

The sunset was on our war – peril of youth’s claws causing jitters on brows… Jews flocking the loo – darkies flabbergasted by joy’s smoke. Horn psalmody was awhirl in a cauldron of bitter-sweet gestures; lulling diesel morbidity bending towards the slots of our owned hypocrisies. Yet we were here, at Niki’s Oasis, freeloaders miserly lifting in nihilistic tonality. No after-life for the melody. I sit in its mist of wanton calm, syllables of hatred hugged to my loin, knees and lips blazing rings. And the common lament – jazz - skeletal rears posing – eco-enlightened women in a pale trend, pointing fingers in raw wails for attention and sex.

‘Beauty. Who defines, feels.’ I overhear a sublime epithet blown into thin air, an effeminate voice, charged with song.
‘I love these friends,’ he hunkers and staggers to the beat, ‘strangers who have become inspired friends. Ah, life is beautiful.’ A cloudy sigh.
‘But – hello sunflower.’ He ambiently utters another sibilant noose unto the figure, ‘my name is The Fat Tenant.’

I sit and ponder shafts of lights between thighs with wet near closed eyes. Psychic abandon was a prudent move I thought. I had been sleeping massacred by drink nightly for twelve moons now, the exploits of a weak mind slopping into slaughterhouses of funk. Skinned sunken eye sacks I implore not to surrender me to torpor. I feel toxic, yellowed teeth cringing, eyes crying for a draft in August’s dust. Another day will soon rise behind these eyelids – weeping blots of a maddened orange in the frenzy of the sun’s art. Unshorn chin, a template of queer negation of self - a wincher with empty palms – an incorruptible aim chained to bony shoulders. All antique demons I have orphaned were rising, moaning – thunderous and searing like a tin drum inside.

Recalling the evenings when this man-child whined under Shiva’s trample – is like seeing myself reflected in a dog’s eyes and never had I seen myself like that in any human eyes. I was to floor amid maidens who loathed wombs – heads glossed with bladed perfumes of masculine oratory, but wearing cool eyes – entreating gazes. There were suggested plans for a train trip down south I hear about, over weeks of creamy dialogues with these women of no moral regard… bliss, and debauchery’s nightmare over steel tracks towards a journey that was the destination. We would cross over open dead lands, given to a fear of open spaces.
The common disease of city image-bound catwalks would until then leer its nauseated tongue and puke at natural splendor vinyl-slide crawling outside stained TV style panes. But uncertainty was the great nemesis to premeditated hedonism as I would have to later deal with the trip in the story of this wretched company.

Creaking doors whispered among the noises of smokers some forlorn wail stinking with time’s rust. Posters glowed heavenly with moguls of sound poised and waiting still. On this night miserly faces spoke in cultured tones, brews of assortments like a hospital dispensary cabinet gurgling froth over lips of glasses.

The eve wailed rowdy with lusty informal deities and eternal puzzlement that settled when there was talk about witchcraft, how relatives have hidden hairs and nails in pot-plants for alchemies beyond youth’s common gaze. The wild resonance of their fears when living an age that exterminated such mystical séances, I found unnerving. A generation born beyond the whims of tradition’s intransigence, cosmopolitan sycophants with skins peeled over their head, how dimensional shifts affect them – harm their blue ignorant souls? That which relegated their ancestry to oblivion seemed too invincible for their challenge, and they had failed for a while… I see it everyday in faces of those who live with ghost tenants and possessed legions of the cursed. I sit and ponder the electronic age shamans and sorcerers amidst the bile forming in my throat – ales labeled black slick on buds, watching my friends, one a charm’s peril and the other a soul muscle lynched with souls akin mine. They have always managed to arouse the alchemist in me every noon under covers of delirium.

Earlier clouds of hail pour outside the venue of disgust’s revenge unfit for re-birth’s awe; babes rushing among droplets, serpentine waltzes unto the morale of bar chorus.
‘Lovely art thou,’ I murmur, chasing with wrecking ball eyes, sighing that they have saved me from in-birth and its wallowing maw ground beneath my lopsided rear. Now and again they fairy a tale at me, about their grilled destinations and choir souls who wish for their company – whom I might leave somber if they happened to indulge in conversation.
‘Just keep close,’ they’d warn amiably, languid fellows lounged braced by metal whilst the grass was dappled with droplets of sky’s spit. Some faces peeped strewn with melancholy still – old men at play when jilted by anathema’s shames. Stooped at mad portraiture poses, their guffaws bellowed as they watched their fears through me, a foolhardy sleuth – grey boned, and a ball of unkempt hair.

I saw stars, a moon halo over curse’s embrace piled with love for truth – leather thighs and pinched lip-gluttons parading hell’s make-over. I sneer initially, self-possessed – flaunting my drudgery and catching bait traded by demon pulchritude. A beast I had become once again, culling my jaws in wonder; a rained out night tasting stale flowers wired on lightning strikes. My saints watch and smile indifferently, caressing foods to sewer their bellies. Loved were they, all – as sinned out for no sin to churn my hell. The in and never out jockey steering on, wide – chest heaving of sound, bearing flowers like nightly wizards on his brow. It’s a friend’s aging day – they said, her face colored in young pain surrendered to inebriation, and so were we of these dying young – at life’s bazaar without exits.
There were no specified entries either, with moist lips charring my chin at intervals wasting sentimentalities; I figured my hands dirtied by chores of this theatre.


‘What detergent was suited for these crucified gadgets raging for hugs and polite holds?’ an inner self queries desperately within the stupor of gin and juice.
A kiss on the forehead – a saintly shock to black martyrdom it gave. As we shuffle the dark wept by strange corners later that eve, pierced by walls; we speak of how the sound was bursting suns in our ears.

I live with these vagabonds, twirled journeys with bloated knuckles, saying still memories are for an after-life and a life of before. Now was for mere remembrance or rather the membering of all dis-membered terrains of our travails. Suddenly a succulent poke into my ear raptures my senses. Past other boozing rooms of mystery staggeringly, dj brooding over decked signals of a generation’s wail. Women brawled uterine gossip at their postcard gents – lustily, them who goggled at this chaos sorely needed in their prim lives. I felt at the prime of a monstrous orgy, light footed as grass blades danced dewed waltzes under toes of hobos. Chest folded charred with efforts for air, nicotine blockage bubbling like an infernal comet twitching with my voices phlegm. Cameras flashed, shuttering stout prayers for visuals of my collapse… I was done for, the floor calling.

At her home of parties, gold glowered on the rubber pool – silent youths in pig-tail charms blazing hopes for fun. My twin saints carried me here, slump sack of bones, caressing my hair with bold fingers. A woman buzzes a strut past the stricken eye and I stare, a sweet visage on a dawn’s glory. She bows to name me: ‘The sun’s pose,’ mingled with ‘Brother loved.’

Hail storm was sizzling in guts, the whole world seeming drunk with bright breaths. South Africa – me seeing all, now you being nothing, a rand’s ransom, quarry fever reeling in your bones. But all was well with me.

‘How’s he doing?’ mutters concerned pink and rosed lips.
‘I am divine.’ I say.
‘And the smile?’ they giggle, womanly red windows spewing marvel in laughter.
‘My dear… please just give more floral chatter to this ball of slurs, around his mad buzz,’ I lie still saintly impugning, no rude face necessary. I bask face up looking at those who pass over me, feeling elated despicably. Then the street fight’s motion graces the lapa filed with mannequin fellows, enraged by ill-luck in sex slums… weakness compensated with jeers.

There was however one trait of these saints that throttled many here – good food, sung with knives among choruses of coal god’s throats. I blazed at the crested surf over these souls impaired by pride – when shame’s call wasn’t akin nudity, but souls merely nudely darkened within shards of exploded moons. And tonight groans with infinity, heralding red confessions in coffers of the miserly. I recoil into sleep, my craned out assemblage stretched over the cooing and flight of the crowd’s tongues.
Pillars of air we trotted through with women of strengths lost, at my virtue’s desolation – slipping past swift dreams, warning and sultry with the draft mounting their thighs wayward a bright room awhirl with night’s echoes.
Whence the culling of memory burst acid mucus showing stale need, how fooled I felt. But no love – that progeny of futile youth gnashing its jaw – reversed to a beyond – matriarchal curse for the unborn. A cackle of mockery assails my skull; profaned efforts of all my love slumped when a grizzled heroine called earlier that night demanding I cease to contact her. I was ashen, inner ravine gone putrid with marsh as I blacked out, blanket tailed between bony knees – paralyzed.

Had a nightmare that nap, amid this eve’s discord, whence I dreamed of L for some reason having paid a visit. I am a teacher at a school held beneath industrial chimneys. An age that seemed locked in a future’s death, boys and girls abound. A suffocated nose keeps rousing me for attention, am I at school to teach? A huge ditch runs along the playground, clogged with muddy storm water from which I see her ascend. Water is crashing violently with sounds of break time’s resonance as the dream shift to interior a maze of a depressed warehouse shelter. Those fatally normal shifts of space careened as unpredictable as the fall of an avalanche. And spooned with the overture outside, we caress like old frozen covers, her touching face clear as well water.
Then suddenly a mirage of my grandfather swells in my eyes, him looking away; rear against mother squirming under a floral plastic rag clad kitchen table, blood soaking her skirt from that crimson crevice of my exit from that life to this afterlife. I wonder why; for it was my birth I was seeing.

Her pimpled nose milkly kissed; a metropolitan setting crowding the dream, an unknown fall behind – only to see her sharing a brace with a stranger, a man dreamily black and dreadlocked. I pass them nonchalantly, with a sea of doubt preserving scars, bile of disgust for the familiar ridicule I have endured on love’s trials. Another change in eye’s dream folds a face in car, seated with an elderly woman, in her seventies I guess. A mother she seems from an initial enquiry, walking still among patches of dying grass as she climbs into the backseat lowering herself for a nap. The strange fellow follows into the seat, crawling and sliding to penetrate her from behind a vividly raised skirt. Then lucidly in boiled presence of this calm mother companion, they fuck raucously.

A while of moans and orgasmic fervor creams ears of passerby girls, eyes saddened for me as though this was a fatal blow unto my charred chest. She looks my way in shame’s coolness; waltzing out the wagon of her displeasure’s expose… flaunting the scent of a newly flogged maiden, wet, sweet sweat seeped into creased fabric. I shuddered, really trying to make talk, clouded by revulsion, sexual wizardry amok a primitive craving.

The car drives away with the twin occupants – mother and son – as she approaches me, inner voices muttering how shameless all needed to be, petting the welling pain as clarity vanishes from bleak dream-eyes.
How vile is that a dream can last minutes yet feel as though eternal? Damn, my soul is still stuck in the city for sure; I figure the window a place to chill. By its myth’s pane I loose the pain and smile in denial… beauty bashing shards from all sights raped in the dark flow of dawn in mind, but - was the heart there? Weed was on my mind, meetings at the night’s square creeping some more in the face I saw swearing the might I never sold for a dirty note. I wanted to dream with her again, but she went away - I had to forget about the deeds I said were ok. I saw soil stuck in her locked hair, and I could not best it that any more. How has the universe been treating her soul-manure?
Was her soul-book for the after life filled with awe or mirth?
Had the tree's love cornered her in its shade?
Did peace exist in the certainty of a frail life?


*********************

There was talk of musicals about dead kings at midnight’s cry; we were here, our palms grasping their heartlessness for the first time. Curses going on with clapping hands; and so wet were eyes, getting on with someone’s birth date. You could shake the silence but never disappear. They tore my name out the window and I found it difficult to get to myself and the forces of loss. I was happy, wrapped in the robe my mind made up.
And here they step into the room looking like in-between nightmares… ruined city towers hovering in the distance. The rut of terror in my throat still thinking that it was prophetic of occurrences to become of her visit. But why such clarity of color that I’d even recognize the skirt’s silken fabric in glossed pinkish orange daubed embroidery? I had hoped to awake and sing to her instead, a greeting:
‘Molo Ntokazi Entsundu...
Ngaz'ba uluhle lwe'ndalo lisa khanya nga'mehlo wakho na?’
Hoping to share a breath through fingers and sigh...in awe of the beauty she etched in my MUD.
And yet so brilliantly divine, I took pride to have known a sister who could do that with dignity, without making my unsealed being feel loathable. Anyhow, still admitting that it would be futile for me to claim I will stop yearning...and besides, that would prove me a liar, may he who art loved in the depth of her heart be content...as I have noticed the contentment in her face about the present engagement. Love is impersonal and may it be that which binds all souls in the union of a celestial copulation.

****************

Feeling lost in that school of reveries, I recall a sudden slap by the greenery blotched for a forest thick – walking weighed down a winding stretch of a path cut by paddlers. My placid twin saints were there with me through sense not sight, perhaps dancing around my sunken head as I lay there in torpor.

I meet uncles drooling and familial friends who died with youth’s dark clime, clouds of plastic lives floating over the puddles dried by feet. We chat, glittering faces blossoming with rouge freedoms. Along sleek bends we reach a house - a cool stroke of ease filling our breasts. A joint is lit in this dream, intoxicant even to in-life’s eyes. It seems one who fucked the girl is here, my face flushing with glacial rage. A bony and tattered van speeds past and we swallow its mutinous fumes, gone hidden over-head upon that road of our descent. We wound around shrubs that concealed monsters of our star-lipped whispers, and it keeps flowing, raging, blue lights flashing on its roof like a demon at bliss with wind in its hair.
It pulls up rapidly in front of our shack in the bushes; dust specks rising as the car’s door sways open.
A bulgy policeman with impervious eyes begins a sly silent inspection of our coiling smokes and dusty puffs cloaking tree-tops, and says: ‘You are under arrest,’ tearing my white plastic sack to reveal my measly tattered belongings. He ties one of the saint’s wrists in metal cuffs and calls us to bend over.

I wake up tired and in tears, head rushed with what shame I had withheld for this pen’s death; radical cells running amok in poisonous trails across my skull – combined with the sour after-taste of an immortal dream land’s deathly air. Serpentine were those rays of thought that posed in my woken stupor, acid in girdle twisted around my belly. Much of the dream contents were for deciphering in further mystery spaces. But I was here still at this lovely place full of drunks, genuine threats pinned across faces of bored vagabonds and their queers. I felt irate, entangled in gloom though among the jubilant, chatter feeling like a gnash of teeth, toneless hissing of a delayed lung burning in my chest. My shriveled palms were feeling ghostly since the previous dusk and now the final glasses were being gulped with stale vigor on sleepy brows.

*********************

‘How are we doing this morning?’, comes a voice piercing the bubble in my head, sickle arms stretched to my yawn, sword face flashing duly before I could strike a response to my throat.
‘Dumbfounded my friend,’ I say with tears blistering my eyelids.
‘What’s wrong?’ a saint stammers bending over my face disheveled by pain. Twisting his hands and hair poked sincerely in this morning light dolefully climbing creased curtains, my poor breath blasts like tar smog from a warmly drained nasal cavity - a scalding heat swimming through an open window. The saint rubs off sweat dribbles from my forehead, mingled with droplets from blindly stingy balled sockets.

I awake with ghost dull aroma of dawn sullying other overheard snores bound to each breath’s horizon. Church thoughts being lighted in mirages holy as art us of piety’s burden. I was dumb struck with a gnawing pain. Saw two birds peaked in a duel over a worm. I fluttered inside with shamed pity, love smitten and fouled.
‘Is there a fucking drink in this house?’ I inquire in loose death breathing its demand for relief. The saints tear a thimble, lips parted by heaves twiddling in my bosom. Froth ascends at the scarcity of a numbing drink, and then awkwardly joints grease to a forlorn brace for strength. They hug me, bravely and brazen with comments of courage. I heave putridly, moans leprous upon their soaked shoulders, plumes of misfortune intermingling with rage exuding from love’s hatred.
Thoughts frittered away my machismo as we stood, beard bristles daubed with spittle and mucus; brimming silent curses at love.
‘We should visit father, I say’, the other suggests in a warring dare, ‘for brews they will never muster… to avenge the poisons injected in us.’


*******************

At Noon...

At Noon…

Feasting on his eyes
A mental midget becomes a drunken piano…

A friend with a hearing aid tunes his skull,
Doctor blind prescribing red and blue pills…

Seeing orange flies and peach trees
An echo breaks plates in his bedhead…

Aware of open graves of his youth’s funeral,
He calls on rainbows – dancing like a drugged donkey…

Nommo

Towards Sustaining Developed Audiences

Towards Sustaining Developed Audiences – Media is SA

I should outline from the onset that these thoughts I am about to give claim not to be a ‘common sense approach’ to understanding how media relates to democracy…but I will innocuously attempt to reveal what I feel are their links of inter-dependence. I wish also to explore whether the two ideals have converged as tools for public interest appropriation. Whether the interests entrenched by the sector are purely monopolistic in their development and executive mandates.

Media as a civil society institution plays a critical role in shaping human consciousness in relation to particular interests, but the question becomes…whose interests? There has been evidence of flawed democratic sentiments from all over the globe with regard to media democratization, these being in direct contention to the concepts of representative democracy as a norm to date. The notion of governance by the people has honed the problem of whether this governance is by those represented due to class privilege or truly all those who partook in suffrage? Is this form of democracy being modeled into governance of/by the elite?

Media can also reveal dichotomic paradigms as highlighted by Clive Emdon in his FXI Lectures, these being canonized by the separateness of world media representation between poles of the First World of the modern, free market economy, owned by upper and middle class elites and that which can be defined as Third World of marginalized masses, those who truly strive to use media as a tool for development and advancement. Sadly, the latter section of the consumer populace has been trivialized and over-ridden by the interests of the owners of various ports of expression, considering that government now sees attempting the use of First World economic strategies to develop Third World economies a global pre-requisite for success. This has proven to be an incarnate diabolical top-down communication approach employed even in the media sector, creating the conflict situation of people on the ground not partaking in decision-making/trend setting.

Media accessibility has been a class-privilege for a long time in South Africa, so the question arises of whether socially-built consensus of interest takes into account the possibility that centralized interests being punted and reinforced by the elite-section of civil society inclines minorities on having more power of expression than others, thus homogenizing interests. This implies pre-selection and construction of information for audiences as determined by those with enough muscle power behind Media Institutions – homogenizing interest through systematic manufacture of propaganda under the guise of facts. Prepackaging information for micro-market profit as seen by these self-delegated public commentators has been argued as a pre-requisite for a globalistic perspective necessary in this millennium. Thus, we find aspirations towards what can be called the globalization of information channels shared by profiteers… and this, in contemporary society they have achieved as more information is packaged for specialized audiences.
Society at large now yearns for the unattainable as expressed by its doctored lusts, their interests and life-styles having morphed to suite the criteria of the elite as designed through homogenous reality-definitions.

Private media institutions such as Johnnic/Avusa, Media24, ETV, MultiChoice and other major broadcasters and holding companies can nowadays rival any state-sponsored public media institution and even community media movements…information being no longer a public asset. This advent within the free market system has proven itself a democratized method of homogenous information flow that transcends national boundaries/state monopolies and any ideal of personal freedom, be of expression or other natural right. This private media sector seems characterized by the precedent monopolization of telecommunications leading to a violation of the right to receive and impart information. While universal access to information remains a far fetched dream for most African countries, the present pace with which information systems are being deregulated will ensure that cost will rise, as with all specializations within the sector.

Only a few will be privileged with regard to concentrated ownership of the by-products of the sector considering that fewer people are engaged in control of more and more information.

This so-called ‘electronic democracy’ we keep hearing about; how is it to transpire where information does not flow freely. The convergence of broadcasting and telecommunications and the wider exposure of the internet have not heralded the utopian information dissemination we dreamt up yet.

But, there is also the problem of markets censoring themselves, through limited exposure to a variety of information; this has been achieved through inflated selectivity/niche complexes. With this insidious reduction of diversity in media products we are finding glitches in the promises of democratization in the media. We start seeing consumer control through selective marketing of certain information/media by-products, thus the resultant westernization of most indigent reality-definitions which serves to set aside each human pride in natural diversity of opinion.

A Report issued by the Digital Freedom Network states:
Broadcasting is an integral part of Africa’s development and a means of communication over the vast areas of the continent. Improvements in broadband infrastructure and the emergence of Third Generation (3G) mobile systems are now opening the way to convergence of digital media and telecommunications. With far greater ownership of TV sets compared to PCs in Africa, the broadcasters' viewers represent a huge potential customer base for Internet services as well. Interactive TV, especially the variety using mobile phone text messages (SMS), has found its way to Africa and is growing fast. The Personal Video Recorder (PVR) was introduced in South Africa in 2005 and will become available in other African countries in 2006.

At least four African countries are currently trialing or planning to introduce Broadband TV and Video-on-Demand services, typically converged with voice and data services under so-called Triple-Play models.
This should be great news for all sectors of media, but the incurred problem is that of accessibility to these cherished technologies necessary for the transition. There is talk of conversions to align local broadcast materials to DIGITAL standards, predictions about dual decoding mechanisms which are optional for audiences; all this becoming sedative epitaphs employed when the bulk of discrepant realities are overlooked.
What will this transition mean for production of content suitable for such formats of telecommunication? What will be the congruently beneficial factor with regard to democratization of such technologies? Who will afford this new technology?
Are existing portals of distribution sufficiently equipped within the perimeters of our continent’s economic capabilities? What does the advent of neo-liberalization of media mean for South Africa? These and other question I will attempt to deal with in the following pages, from a perspective and capable knowledge that does not claim solutions nor mechanisms which have a proven track-record - but, bearing the hope that these can form part of newer strategies towards media for development that is sustainable.
Before explicitly delving into the crux of conditions ushered in by Globalization and its neo-liberalization of most creative practices; I would like to offer a brief overview of a case study conducted over a period of time while I was exposed to some enlightening literature about African Cinema. Below is a critical outline of certain extreme modalities which were employed by elite strategists in Arabophone countries, and their policy-making which led to the extinction if not the crippling of one of the most vibrant cinema cultures on the African continent.
ELECTRONIC DEMOCRACY.
• An overview of SA Film Industry Fragmentation.

The starvation of project development processes has ushered forth an advent of skills-for-sale attitude that transudes in the industry’s work force, and many factors have been both cause and effect of this weakness. First, there is a lack of effective processes of weeding out projects with no realistic prospect of social relevance and commerciality – result, lack of capital for reinvestments in project development for future productions. Cabals form in the midst of this cultural stagnation, with mushrooming sects proclaiming auteurist tendencies, multiple production houses seeming to monopolize marginal genres in the name of their universal appeal. Fragmented practices/mechanisms of identity expression ensue, falsifications occur for the sake of commercial palatability, and other detrimental individualisms begin to take hold of the sector to an extend that it solely becomes a platform for personal enrichment. Cinema for Profit.

The concern is on the part of benefit from such exclusive ventures going elsewhere, than towards a collective wealth of cultural information, but to other bodies intrinsic in production links. The term ‘production’ from my perspective involves the creation of a whole value added in a film project, inclusive of the costs of doing business.
In any industry, the true cost of value added includes the cost of equity and debt and those costs of services such as legal, financial which are critical to the business of creating film projects. But such merits have been eroded by self-centered producer/artist sentiments fueled by the craving for capital affluence. Most of the ventures undertaken under these Cinema-for-Profit merits are signified by nepotistic collaborations, financial mismanagements, and overall leakages which tend to be the fatal blows when completion of projects is concerned.

These forms of fragmentation have crippled the narrative cinema culture and replaced it with the cult of stylization employed by creative practitioners when bastardized by a consumerist commercial industry. Temporary ventures such as entertainment series, reality shows, game-shows, sports, studio talk shows and the like have absorbed a great pool of creative practitioners and taken centre stage as the primary output of the South Africa Film Industry.


In reality many South African productions remain scarce, either obscure and solely representative of High Art aspirations of auteurism (looking for instance at locally produced feature films like Tsotsi and Hijack Stories); and it should be noted however that in our supposed quest towards crossing linguistic zones and accessing a broader market, a homogenization of expression through language might retard the output of indigenous language cinema, thus hampering the representational capacity of cinema in identity formation and communication.

Further fragmentation is still inevitable as we are beginning to see during this epoch of globalization through communications technologies, whereby cultural by-products that are poignant decline in numbers and frequency of output. Specialized technologies such as the internet(as a content portal as opposed to broadband content portal) have overtaken the exhibition monopolists of the previous century and in fact proliferated uncontrollable access to virtually any information, but as noted in the pages above the idea of electronic democracy… where does it feature when all information is being allotted to a homogenous cultural pool, close knit through language – English; and other western trends so punted through the audio-visual medium?
This brings me to another question concerning the crucial importance of the cultural dimension greatly reinforced by most African Filmmakers who aimed to counter the overwhelming influence of Western cultural values. How does a homogenous form of expression transmit identities which are transient and in constant reformation through their dynamic linguistic realities?

Further questions that arise therefore become those about distribution of such essential information to the underprivileged and mechanisms of countering commercial distribution by means of competitive selective systems. What other automatic systems aught be in place that can continue to reward success to information dissemination required at grass-root market-levels on linguistic terms relevant to their reality-definitions?
How does the South African Cinema industry impact indigenous knowledge systems’ dissemination?

In this regard, Rishile Bosele Mutlimedia’s audience development strategy still remains a pivotal blue-print for further creation of networks that are mandated with alternate channels of information dissemination. But their impact alone cannot counter the flow of subaltern cultural products into our national/continental territory as has been the norm thus far. Collaborative linkages based on sound commercial logic still need to be encouraged and nurtured in the industry’s project-chains.

Over the next four/five years South Africa could see an emergence of a highly competitive distribution and access sector. Technological innovations might remove most barriers to entry and direct intervention ensuring consumer access to a broader choice of distribution systems; also enabling a switch between these systems relatively effortlessly and at a lower cost. However, I foresee certain negative consequences for content creation and provision. With the markets easily accessible by content providers, with their distribution systems desperate for the best content; the overall level of risk for investors in new content creation will increase exponentially.

Overall investment in indigenous content will diminish; value would migrate to tried and tested content dynamics (football, game shows, programme archives and B-grade Hollywood rejects) rather than new productions. Even when investment is made available towards the creation of indigenous content, that money would merely flow to those few players who can claim brands created long before the era of new suppliers. Some producers would likely merge and consolidate in order to provide the stability and risk pooling that no one distribution system can provide in the competitive battle for the consumers’ time. The precariousness of consumer-based income for content providers will in addition force them to seek alternative sources of funds; may it be through advertising spaces or brand placements in their productions. The matter of consumer protection might explode into legal wrangles, but ultimately plurality will be reduced.

Without media pluralism, the consumer will have less access to diverse cultural perspectives; will be plugged onto homogenous yet broadly dispersed information portals.
Now, this returns us to the premise of Electronic Democracy…what are my understandings?

In spite of successes in recent years, the South African film industry has encountered a number of weaknesses which must be addressed if it is to advance to a new phase of development. With its strong literary tradition, there still appears to be a difficulty in adapting our literary skills to visual media. A lack of visual storytelling capacity characterized by the nature of our cinematic output’s lack of appeal to other narrative traditions of the world is a handicap resultant from exhausted reservoirs of our self-knowledge and analysis. We have become vicarious characters within a dream-play about departures, the mirror through which to reflect our identity being merely cloned to create suited replications of other worldliness and fantasy.

There can be no negation of the fact that we also suffer from an insufficiency of creative talents in the fields of scriptwriting and project development; and this will forever plague our modest successes with uncertainty, especially when it comes to reinvestments into new projects. The lack of business and managerial skills; the matter of film production houses being administered as small corporate entities thus becoming under-equipped to undertake international marketing and the distributions facets after the project completion which seem plagued by symptoms of under-developed market intelligence. These and many other constraints are glaring at the industry, more especially in the face of no focused investment and expansion of new creative skills. The detriment augured is that of stagnation in product output and the death of indigenous knowledge systems in the face of homogenous information exchanges.

But before dealing with the perceived effects of electronic democracy versus homogeneity will have with regard to freedom of expression, I would first like to address some ideas around strategic systems which have being formerly employed thus reinvented within the South African cinema distribution industry at its present stage in its evolution.

This reactionary zeal is in part fueled and based on a simple analogy expressed by a former lecturer of mine when still in film school that ‘ …under the Apartheid Government cinema flourished because of certain tax incentives which were legislated to sponsor growth of local content creation capacity and training required to sustain the industry as it was essential tool then.’
What other models can be referential in planning our own way forward in the face of globalization and competitive markets? I should admit that the models I will expound on draw from tested international models and apply to most broadcasting situations under any applicable legislation.

Tax-based Incentives.

Incentive-led subsidy schemes have been adopted by various industries in the world; and mostly those who were feeling the brunt of western cinema monopolies on their local markets. These incentives were mainly derived from taxation on all box-office sales of Western Films (France still has a quota legislating and ensuring this), other tax resources were directly sourced from the public basket which often tends to be neglectful of the arts and cultural products of a society. In 1997 Ireland ranked No.8 within the European Union in the number of feature films it produced – a creditable performance considering the youth of its film industry and its size. The Union drew from reserves widely ranging from State Aid, tax based incentives, soft loans, grants, guarantee funds and so-called automatic systems which reward success to a home market. But that was not all, because the culture of dependency on subvention and production would drive the industry down-hill – hampering diversification and solid growth. They then introduced programmes to monitor the dispensation of the financial accumulations resultant of these localized models and thus began to diversify the utilization of such reserves in creative ways.

The focus was placed on training, development and distribution. It operated through a range of intermediary initiatives which negotiated for emphasis on commerciality, attention being drawn to exhibition and trans-national distribution channels. The commercial imperative of the development of a stronger film industry imposed the systematic strategy of selective supports operating on a competitive basis. Best projects from distributors and producers we infused into collaborative linkages with the corporate sector; these and other models assisted the Irish Film Industry reach its pivot within the time-frame of the EU MEDIA Programmes’ formation in 1990.

By their nature, tax incentives of course meant a sharing of benefits between different parties, and unless there is some sharing of benefits there would be no function for them.

Irish Film Industry was thus capacitated with a pool of talent and commercial acumen that propelled it to heights rivaling the British Film Industry. It had nurtured creativity through training initiatives; and rooted in the passion towards the impulse to utter their stories, the principal of their incentives became centered on Irish Language development and thus ensuring adherence to local content mandates.
Self-consciousness as sprouted from their local artists’ commitment to cultural identity and diversification became a source of pride. Irish language film making contributed to their radical perspective which was both worthy in its own right and contributed to Irish Cultural Mosaic. This was done with no regard for cultural defensiveness; art had to be shared. Artistic creations by Irish Film Artists began to express ‘Ireland in the world’ in ways that engaged with the world. Representational federations were formed by the creative-practitioners of the industry; without the false dichotomy which pervades most industries – that of Art Cinema versus Popular cinema.

Despite Irish Language cinema being prevalent mostly on television, there was adequate support lobbied with local broadcasters who provided the market for such productions. A greater flexibility and scope for original programming on television began to take toll and thus commanding serious audiences within their own cultural and linguistic areas. The tax incentives also assisted to strengthen the producers’ ability to access local airwaves, another mandate which Rishile Bosele is embracing in the nature of other global revolutionary activities towards public broadcaster synergies dedicated to Public Interest Television objectives which would benefit African and other independently produced films and media products.

The models outlined above can agreeably be prevalent in the South African Cinema Industry, and they are. There is SACOD, and recently FEPACI which has mandates and continental responsibilities; also SASFED as a federation for the protection of various laws applicable to intellectual/creative property. And also FRU had been playing pivotal roles in all these initiatives, ensuring their continued competitive edge within a competitive market system. Within the mandates of SASFED we observe a sustained closer monitoring of broadcasters. The matter of power to institute penalties or sanctions if local content is side-lined have been tabled I hope. But where to now, or rather perhaps - where from henceforth?


• Are annual reviews of the findings of these monitoring federations keeping the broadcasters’ compliance with public interest mandates?
• Are we seeing an increase in fixed annual co-production agreements?
• Are the initiatives lobbying government stringently enough to forge sustained co-production agreements with broadcasters, production companies and other relevant government departments with the view of increasing the amount of content produced and distributed for local and international markets?
• Have there been effective relationships established with the private sector to access funds for the industry?
• Are we seeing an increase in production capacity development, i.e. training?
• What innovative fund disbursements have been approaches that are envisioned?
• What constraints are hindering the establishment of Distribution–led Productions?

Rishile Bosele Multimedia’s responsibilities in the context of South African Cinema Industry.
My Views.

• Script Development – Making available to producers various scripts through access to SASWU, SEDIBA Programme and other resources.
• Advice on high quality script development with the orientation towards Indigenous language appeal and the prospects of commercial viability of the final products.
• Providing Development Fundraising models at a level that can support sustained developments of scripts.
• Develop strategic business interventions in liaison with existing agencies such as the NFVF. This function would include devising new methods of financing the industry while developing relationships with international distributors and broadcasters.
• Generic marketing – This forms positions in the market which are of accessibility even within a competitive market. Inter-programme linkages such as the one with GFC should sell South Africa as a filmmaking Location.
• Training expertise is required for the market we are developing and sustaining. CAC Workshops, distribution courses and the like are of essential strategic business development for The Film Industry.
• Coordination with the Television Broadcasting Sector of synergies around matters of co-productions, distribution of commissioned projects (Heartlines for instance as has been with Project 10)
• Technological Foresight and Policy Development with regard to the impact of new technologies on the industry, their accessibility to a broader audience and in liaison with appropriate agencies formulate models that are centered on the aforementioned idea of Electronic Democracy.

But for any distribution entity to execute such responsibilities, it will first need to receive some pointers on effective strategic development.

In the continuously competitive arena of Public Interest Film Distribution, we now observe that a need for flexibility and capacity to respond to market changes is essential. Not mere operational effectiveness which could entail reactionary tendencies with regard to other practitioners mimicking our strategies. The quest for productivity, quality and speedy deliveries has ushered new ideas around effective management. The rule of aggressive outsourcing to gain efficiencies, the drive to competitiveness in the race to stay ahead and strategic positioning of brands in dynamic markets confronted by rapidly changing technologies have collectively changed the rules of the game once thought as stagnant. Total quality management, time-based competition, partnering, re-engineering and even change of management have become common strategic devices to increase profitability and superior performance in a company.

Any company can outperform any competition if a difference is established, not just through a change of operational activities because this form of contingency activity-led management is dysfunctional. Despite dramatic operational changes, many companies have been frustrated by their inability to translate any gain into sustainable profitability. What is needed then is change of activities, capturing unique competitive edges through inter-linked affiliations while sustaining a unique profile. Strategy lies here, choosing a different set of activities and positioning the activities in relation to perceived market requirements. But should we then strive towards need-based positioning alone?

My answer is no.

If strategy stems from a creation and sustenance of a valuable position in the market, then it follows that access should feature. Access-based positioning has proven that competition can be fended off by different sets of activities directed at diverse positions in a market.
Rishile Bosele Multimedia screening in Townships, schools and Beer-halls – this exhibition service has been our niche profile, but it also requires trade-offs to sustain its impact. Having chosen a position does not guarantee sustainable advantage as it also attracts imitations by incumbents considering the lack of fixed and ideal position in any market.

While operational effectiveness can achieve excellence in individual activities, strategy should be about combining activities, inter-linking activities. This can lock out competition. When Media Forums or Festivals and Outreach programmes produce a catalogue of African Films synopsis for Video/DVD sales purposes, the same product can be a catalogue for agent training.
A training manual used for capacity building for video/DVD sub-distributors can be a concise literary journal with information on Audio-Visual Practices, brief histories and articles on developments in African and World Cinema. And all these can function as promotional tools in Branding and Profile advancement processes.

Now, with all the responsibilities I envision for Rishile Bosele Multimedia, would they be achieved with mere operational effectiveness? Would the executions sustain the company when it still needs product differentiation with powerful branding?
Capital requirements are any company’s nemesis yes; but Rishile Bosele Multimedia has redressed the economy of scale with regard to its activities and this has allowed for transparency.

Together with these questions I would like to close the paper by saying… With stringent strategies I see Rishile Bosele Multimedia taking their revolution beyond continental borders. I envision a Distributor of Third World Cinema capable of rivaling any monopolies so insidiously bastardizing world-minds with homogenous perspectives. I see diversification of information being one area Rishile Bosele Multimedia can spear-head. Innovative management techniques and commercial prudence will propel the company to heights that no broadcaster would ignore considering the capacity to penetrate areas where most media does not dare venture.

Yours,

Paul Zisiwe

Diary of Space Given

First Day

It was a Friday, and had been a week since my curse for departures bore its acid truth through the motley fabric of my universe. I say UNIVERSE, because I was ultimately intent on re-membering my sundered prior ones into a stoic body, endowed with colossal experimentalism and thus the assimilated knowledge. I am in love and am torn by first, the slight mirage of mistrust I inspect upon my lovers face; then second… her consistent eluding of my passion’s exhibitions, like hugs, kisses and even the copulative sharing of our bodies. My only consolation was the child since morning rose, but it now also seems that the past night’s quarrel might have painted all sordid. I remember crying myself to sleep… I wonder why tears have not washed my vision for I am still a fury at loss’s clutch. That wretched night of a brawl alchemically bred, how the inner soul of a black man could hammer fungal stumps into a crisp heart.

I nearly killed my queen, hands readied for neck-snapping and jaw breaking… my eyes with a rage that made even me a stranger to the self I saw in her eyes. But truth remains that at dawn, held to her vigorously performed tasks of writing scripts, she was brewing a method to expunge my being from hers. I was fear incarnate, and later she told me to fear is painful. I concurred that I would leave after sour attempts at apologies. Those that fell on rusted ears were the menial jests I threw into a rather pedantic monologue. I love the sound of her laughter, and it bears my stunted mind keenly. Krishna’s nanny arrives, and she tends to the child. A visiting friend stands as I am reminded that I have to leave the house (give her the demanded space to think about her prospects and the like), soon… so can be able to pay adequate attention to her work. I pack a small bag with two books (Big Sur and Ulysses) and begin to head out to the city… the home for the lost and outcast.

Before we could board a cab to town, I fall apart again… bilious tears boiling from the pores that give my eyes breath… stingy, a ball of thorny phlegm creeping sordidly up my throat. I cry the silent tears of masculinity, under shade of yellow spectacles… intermittently, pulling them from my face to feign rubbing sand from their lids. Only the tears kept rolling down the creased faced. I had to return to beg a bit more this time… and a friend acquiesced that the downtrodden pride that breaks a man should not stop me. We were on the same boat now… and it couldn’t be, he said. At least to fight for my life’s gift from above should ascertain that happiness does not leave an entire village unless war has truly befallen. I walked back toward failure, called out for the final that would pull her out of the mire that was swallowing her. She stared and wondered what was I doing to myself; and once again relieved me of my place within the scheme of things we were building.

I walked back towards the dejected city, met friends and had a couple of beers in one of those dingy pubs clogged by redundant old timers. Soaked faces, bruised by bulgy pores dripping unflinching sweat. We watched broken ladies huddled in comatose slumbers, ears a-tuned to the blurring twitch hissed by tattered speakers. Sedative rhythm and blues lulled us along a mean reminiscence, and kin to my present jilt, The Head Chef’s eyes slosh into my twitching skin … and the night became darker.

I had resolved to go home to visit mother, rather to cry upon mother’s shoulder like the foolhardy lovelorn child whose betrothal would never be… but I was still here, after dark… binging and stalling all possible crusts of pain from falling. We met The Prince when both huddled against some concrete slab to gain balance adequate enough for the duration of bouncing a cigarette… but it was ridiculous. We were near tears and somber.

The Prince guffawed wryly at the sight, two broken men… moaning about losses incurred through hearts given. He said something to the effect that: We gain through loss what we loose in our gains. The night’s dream shrilled through agape ears, music toxins brewed a satanic lager in my belly – as I danced at Sophiatown like I was dying. Gin, Whisky, Wine filled glasses canvassing the table before me when exhausted by rhythm, sprawling on the couch near my passed out friend.

Then came the conniving nag of club owners talking about we had to leave. Theirs was not a place for sleepers. We decided to find some spot to crash after midnight and it turned out to be in an office block that night. We had been renting space in this antique cluster of brick…. but tonight we needed to just jut unto its floor for repose after falling over life’s waterfall. Near an elevator, on a wooden bench… pillowed by my sack of two books; I had a tremendous dream that it was all a dream, and that she would wake me if it appeared a nightmare.

Second Day

I cease a dream with vigil with a snag of recollection that have not provided for my son in over three months. Her mother is fraught with disdain, an anger I understand. I have promised and disappointed my son the mirror bred with womanhood on numerous occasions… whence I had planned to visit him and never showed up with coin scarcity as the common excuse. I’d spend weeks without calling him… in fear of queries which might be marring him nubile mind. This confused my queen I realize. She was beginning to loose respect for me, strenuously; hence this arbitrary neglect of my sole responsibility to a soul who would carry my blood. I wake up missing him gravely, inebriation’s hell in skull only subdued by the thought that he promised to love me unconditionally. And what awe I feel in the sun’s reflection in my drunken eyes still, the glowing tungsten of filtered light blotting a square on a pale wall…

But… my back-bone is bruised by tossing on a plank, shoulder bones protruding savagely, with elbow-markings itching with the jab of starvation. I feel nauseous and needing something I can not put my finger on. It hits me in bouts that I will never see them again… at dawn, huddling The Black One while watching the queen climb an automobile to work. Suddenly I glare in wonder of the whereabouts of The Head Chef… he left the binge house an hour before I did. I get into the machine and it charts my search towards the ground floor. I find him in fetal position under a table, seen partially since I have this rush to relieve a fiery bladder. I have to see mother I keep mumbling to my inner sore. And when I return to enquire about his sleep, I tell him we are leaving; I need to get home. It is six thirty on a Johannesburg Saturday morning, and cold. It is obvious that all is lost.

Like a vagabond I pace beside this twin bearer of assaults of the soul akin to mine towards a corner shop. We need something salty for the after taste of hangover. We arrive only to scream over yawns of cooks looking prisoner-like for chips and a Russian sausage, dawn’s commuters queuing for their machine meals for a day’s sustenance during the wage war. We much a few slabs and bites of manufactured swine fat, and feel a tad better… nausea rising in my tripe like boiling oil. He wants to shave; and just as we shake palms he veers into nearby booth for a barber’s touch at the dawn of severance and departures from our youth we saw perish. The city’s traffic has raised its brow and the unblinking streets fuel madness in the eyes of late farers and corner stallers.

We smile the serene smile of angels having left paradise, the knowing smiles of beauty, truth unsaid yet shared through unknown facilities of our strengths. He knows petals that fell from my eyes at a mention of her name… he knew my fears and beauty clairvoyantly spied in a not so distant potential time. We bided the good by and slunk into the city’s brace like recluses chastised to vulgarity.

I pace sleepishly through masonry of an antique city with slime crawling upon it barricaded windows, piss bins brimming with junk and death calls from trees and other mineral souls. Cooks and hawkers clog catwalks and I say this’ the belly where the lost remain lost. I need to be lost… help me death slum.

After a momentary wait in half-filled taxi, a preacher approaches the gaping door and beckons to share a message and prayer with us. I find this rather weird and too coincidental for my appreciation.

He proceeds to lament the matter of poverty for which the many sprawling like ants are known for. He froths curses at the new disease and soon bursts into a prayer of such saddening vacuity that a nostalgia for my past days as a devoid born-again Christian are invoked in me. Later after an introspective wait we are finally riding over dust plains and distant horizons blazing under a fierce morning sun, a dead coffin humming its heart’s whiz with automatic precession. The noise is unbearable when one’s own thoughts cannot be distracted from its pestilence. I am seated next to a sleep-massacred other whose stench speaks of death’s city, concluding to leave the window slightly ajar so my nostrils would be in the gust of the wind.

I am vibrating with death of veins, with an abundance of toxic blood leaving me near unconsciousness. Only thoughts of mother, mingled with thoughts of past loves failed by what I wonder if was witchcraft of the heart, of the alchemical concoction black folks are crowned infamously for, or actually my incapacity to rise above my present financial predicaments. I am broke, a woman is taking care of me… pays for food and the lodging in place of such serenity I would have thought it sign for prosperities to come. I think of Epiphany’s mother, my first love and the son she borne me. I think of The Bogus Goddess and her daughter of nine who thought my soul to be an angel’s (because I always had answers for every question) and how both bore scares beside those of my infliction. Now here was this error I had committed to my queen… unforgivable even by her heart which I judged to have endured much scars, survived even when wrecked by balls of fire.

I recall one day in Norwood, her friend had visited. Incidentally, it was the same friend who shared our first night at the new abode. Wow. I had written what I saw while listening to Monk on that day, and if I remember it went something like…

Succinctly the alchemy of their wombs went trailing past my sight.

I was dumbstruck by this other woman telling secrets of our union.

I was the dead… perhaps she said, but nonetheless,

I hear melodies of satisfaction bind me, from the gut…

Some dearth of emberish coals sizzling in me.

She asks if I am working and,

Some tear burns innards and,

A forlorn waltz of mind says:

She might be the sanctuary for dying womb circles.

The terror of the unknowing methods of love drying

When all days art one…

Sentiments gone in baby chatter… what was this dream?

There are ways of dying with dreams I know and would never share… somehow when they decide to call another anomaly of a friend, I sully that they are innocently debauched, hedonisius syndrome going to their peril’s wedding. Changing minds to terrains beyond creamy finds, we say bring the brew of children young as nine months among the living.

There is a sorority ear-ring cult going on in the midst of the clique,

I over-hear…

What? I ask with

Query guilt wrought and somberly crouched on fetal pose.

Silence, then giggles and some brushed off remark at my naivety.

I figure my mad rigmaroles too cumbersome for their minds…

And the child cries in sleep negation… perhaps

The terror of dreams… music calmly deadening my aloofness to thrill…

Would the monk’s melody bend with these whistled winds of my breath?

A new house member wades in with crowds of self,

And elderly man enters carrying the best cosmetic luggage in the world…

Demure, mature, jazzed up fellow of a child to be bound to poles.

I am starved for pizza they ordered minion ago… this old man’s foot tap on tiles is unnerving…

What should I ask… I ponder. Maybe I should ask him if he needs help.

Maybe he’d ask: Do you need any help with your methods of dying?

In Carletonville, a loud hailing man screams for the last one headed for Fochville and I concede to the open invitation. We go past mines and their dumps, sloppy hills and other looking like artificial mounds. Once in town, another loud hailed call is seeking a single commuter to fill the vehicle for a trip. I follow suite. And the shack dwelling of my neighborhood loom before my eyes once more, more depressant and proclaiming what a tombstone the places of black growth had become in this age of democracy and equality.

I arrive at home and find the three first-wives of the Sekoli clan sitting timidly under a peach tree behind the toilet. My sisters are cleaning the house after a perhaps night of laughter and other jovialities of a reunion of women. Mother hugs me warmly and sobs… I begin to cry and it was when Second Wife of Dead Son says: Se tshele ngwana ka dikhapha… MmaKhahliso.

I am home and I love the face here… I am loved. I sit calmly with them and light a cigarette, ask my youngest sisters to go buy me beer… and a smile rides my teary face.

I was at loves enclave, and the stories of death and losses seemed a necessary method for unnerving my senses towards the real that is abound me outside of love.

It rained a marvel that evening, the patter of hail on a tin room hushing my dense thought towards dreams. I believe that dreams are true spaces for exorcism and the hypnotic summoning by a thunderous nature unto their lands art a gift humanity should eternally cherish.

Third Day

The ghost township awakes early on Sundays, and bed-wetter children whistle with boiling kettles readied for dawn baths. It is Sunday and piety is looming within the din of naiveties bred by religiosity, many conned souls hoping for reprieve in the clustered abode of the held high. I watch Rory sweep the yard in song, early-bird nephew screaming in my ear invitations to play. Mother seems intent on sleeping the day away; and outside a golden disk ascends over the moistened soil, shacks drying tears and dogs soaking up the rising heat. I get up intent on giving for my calm a morning glory, only Uncle would have herbs suited the opening of dreams of the night descended. Coffee is wry on plagued tongue and teeth, Mother asking if I can eat last supper’s leftovers. It is going to be a scotching day, and other friends turned shebeen marabouts will make their calls at barred windows for their quenching potions.

The First Wife of Dead Son has left, and the morning is freshly clad in a sweet draft. Wet grass, after last night’s hail storm carry pebbles on blades and bird chirp with vigor at a spectacle of unearthed worms. Uterine chores continue with a collective hum of hymns I have forgotten; how cleanliness is seen to be close to godliness. The smell of cobra floor polish rousing memories of my life’s journey through the streets of this conurbation. I grew up here, and the louts pacing over muddy puddles are my peers towards scepters of maturity. Rory’s singing is angelic yet tormented by what I could imagine as true supplication bred by poverty. She told me later that she tried to commit suicide. I bled; and blamed myself for letting her down. Oh, our birth’s last through mother – how we need her.

I always sought after a nature that allows one to recompense; all debt that I bellowed unto karma’s fabric to eventually provide a chasm for forgiveness. I believed fatally that the love I was bestowed was that chance to make amends for all others I have severed and scarred. I ask mother if I am a beast born not unto love’s calling? She says I love drastically.

‘Lerato lona, okebe oa le balehela Ngwana ka…’ she say, innocently acute,

‘…letshwana le masepa… hobane haa othswere… otla tshwanela ho nyela.’

I thought this to be quite a sagely prognosis of my paranoid retraction into a cocoon of loveless loneliness. So, as I sit wasting without love, I have to hang on to the idea that LOVE can still flow through these blackened veins.

Later I walk the blizzard heat of a rotted zinc town to visit aunts and relations by blood… and all marvel at my well-being. I kiss hordes of elders and grand old women who bear my history’s entirety; and for the future saint I am becoming I listen, eat and drink from their mugs. Shacks cling horrendously against cheap bricks behind sunken fences, and the metallic township sizzles under a searing sun. Old women trudging their bellies across faded lawns slow with the day; leaning on car wrecks making for junk-yard décor on their house fronts. I wonder about my nephew playing in this fatal heat – what about headaches? Sister to the sun says he’s had far too many.

Later, as night approaches I return from my sojourns with clouds gathered after they’d scurried under the ray’s blows… cotton like and soaked grey. It will rain soon, but I would be home by then… looking at the faces who love me unconditionally. Mother loves Afrikaans soap operas, so I will probably go through another grueling omnibus. Nephew is sold on wrestling; he knows all the weird names of the caricatures performing gladiator stunts in front of idolizing hordes. They are me and me them… under the thunder that announces a drench. And then thoughts drift towards HER, finally. I will sleep beside a pillow with not her soul to bid mine peace. No sobs from The Black One… or common cherubical giggles before sleep. I am torn and blotted out of pristine page in love’s dream novel, I feel… as I sit watching TV, glassy eyed and mildly sighing into the fabric of my blanket.

Day Four

In preparation for yet another curse of departure, and anxiety overwhelms me. Mother insists I wear the ‘new clothes’ she bought me. How her debts accompany mine – combined with histories that will require dignification. I know she lives under a tempestuous cloud of hatred family bred – aunts and uncles with beastly tempers proclaiming doom for any of her forward charges through life. Mother has prepared me some well-butter soft-porridge, a pearly bowl that would give me the essentials for a journey. She waits on a boiling kettle for a mug full of chicory and says she will need milk for her coffee. I rush to the corner spaza shop, only to return with a sour sachet having not checked the expiry date. I am chastised and reproached by mother, with The Second Wife of Dead Son meekly at my defense.

Sister to the Sun has long awoken for her bath – first her son, then followed by her aimless body waiting to charge towards servitude. I know her dreams as she knows mine, and together we will traverse this purgatory with strength. Afterwards a wreck full of pre-scholars comes to huddle Nephew up to places of lessons. I kiss him and prepare a bath for this person-cell ready for the city’s torpor. I am devastatingly damned by tears, attempting to hide them from mother’s probing gaze. I am strengthened by her embrace as I kiss her head chakra bald and slightly bristled. She told me about a story of how since her return from maternal homesteads, she’d never covered her head. And my aunts saw this as an abominable enfeebling of her maturity through the calling of birth. I mean four seeds’ bones had passed through her skin cloaking womb? So, in retaliation to her family wenches’ scorn, she dared to her coils unto the mercy of a razor blade. Daringly she called one of the progenitors from their wombs to secretly do the lobotomy of her hair; the libation and sacred rite of severance from their control. The Jackal shaved mother – at 56.

Insults came one morning when she was sweeping the yard, from the threesome wading their baggage to their varied chores for white folks. I mourn still the marrow mother spent in those charnel-houses – pallid walls and electrified panes of supremacist affluence of privileged whites. She has now faded into ailments of bones and lungs; and Sister to the Sun once surrendered to such domestication – she once told me. A devil’s cult of sold hands that cleansed dewomanized barbies’ abodes for pennies and the penance for abandoned offspring. I recall that we often held ill of mother routine departures to the masters’ houses – but we are now grown, stoical and mighty uupon her servile shoulders de-marrowed.

I soon hop a Taxi after a vigil with dust smitten shacks watching hordes of cyclist grandfathers flocking towards municipal charge houses. Children are abound – uniformed and thrusting aims unto a dying future of ghetto penitentiaries. Classes formed among the poor glare as with textures of faded shirts on faint shoulders – plastic bags sacking volumes of education’s trails. The vehicle arrives, and I find myself once again headed for the maw of Johannesburg…. That’s when it hit me again; the fact that I have nowhere to sleep once there.