Beyond

Beyond this wood, music is a blur.

Time clouds the sky quietly,

Undertones and translations from messenger drummers

Thump for sobriety dancing away.

The airing of subtle flames begins,

Idle paws in my dreams clawing

A suicidal monkey floating adrift my blank page -

A letter of collision with my youth dripping from my finger.

A broken steed, tender hair and a burnt trap

Found me a stranger's spiritualized heart;

Walls of time and mystery of souls erased -

Guided me into this mesh, with a steady pace of an old mind.

What porter of this night's spell wavers extinct songs into my spilling mind?

What night comes on the backward path dressed in rags and words of winter's light?

What corridor could reason give for escaping the unknowable breaths of ghosts?

Where are the magic outlands, for the beast to roam?

If These Walls Could Speak Part 2

I am not certain about the history of the invention of walls, but I think it safe to assume that walls have proven to a permanent and effective deterrent, a functional structural form that is perhaps a psychological extension of its creators’ long-lasting yearning for loneliness. Take for instance the walls of a lavatory; the isolation and purported privacy they inspire are as welcome as blindness or a blockage of that which is unknown, untrusted and therefore threatening to personal ideas of intimacy. The wall’s existence becomes an extension of inner walls of a mind, by blocking the eye; walls can therefore place a premium on inter-personal relations.

Often than not, the widening gulf between neighbors, family members and individuals who find themselves on opposite sides of an arbitrary border in the form of walls of an enclosure is directly linked to the construction of walls and their psychological impact on others. A form of ‘Othering’ is inferred by the mere existence of the wall, even though in an ontological sense the wall itself is the truer ‘other’. Over and above the vulgar thoughts and caricatures penned on walls, here might exist monologues that can only be told to the deafness of walls, a mute recorder that will preserve the identity of innumerable secrets. 
 

Would it not be fair to grant walls their tongues that would be deciphered in the language of thought in solitude? Would not a telepathic conversation with caked buttocks and soiled fingertips of previous lavatory occupants be best told in this sordid verbatim brewed from a privy self-regurgitation of excreta and piss?

The images posted below, peeling paint and scratch-marks, portray a voyeuristic conversation with lavatory walls, and as opposed to the common blasphemy and usual ablution-scribbles smeared on public urinals, I focused on what can be called “ the aging of the wall” and its stories told through decay. Similarly, the premise was the same with images captured from rusted zinc surfaces, and this time around the investigation is focused on the depletion of a painted surface, listening to volumes of whispers, tears and confession that this wall has endured.

Staff Rider - March 1979

Courtesy of Sifiso Khanyile