my facebook account was hacked and all i got was this shitty flat
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i wish my name wass peckerfish the blood in my hand drain
Cramps the. It’s a 30 second game, wanna play? Windole and a small intravenous whole, Ethel my dearest. I’m untraceable that’s why I ate my cell phone. The public was burnt out and the termites had settled in for the night. 50 apple seeds in my cider, hardwiring the pharmacy, my mother lent me her false teeth. I struggle to be a nutritional foundation.
I sat on the sand cried because there were a hundred copies of me walking around. I couldn’t decide who I like more, the girl with the freckles or the girl with the backpack with the stolen laptop.
Listless this fire in a teacup. The sea is at war with itself. I had a dream, I fuckin hate dreams that I had to take a guitar test a guitar with 49 strings, sweating and remembering the sequence3 11.13.17. 41 fuck I’m losing my forehead.
I’m gonna start a fundraiser for AIDS. Projector girl on the wall, 3 scripts running along the eyelashes and not even batting for a six.
Somebody stop my luna tape.
Transvestites are dished out in tiny mini skirts, little lies and little lisps and lips are curled, my disinfectant makes me smell but I can still shine sunshine.
It must feel good to hold all the power doesn’t it brother? It must feel nice to grind and pierce a wobbling heart into the gravel – bruise and graze and stab the motherfucker let it bleed all over the chest expose the ribs break them snap them off, stick them in your ears and pretend you cant hear me, darn it must feel good. Not la la long in the misery or self pity pythons, running through the punctured veins crouching in the stomach, hiding out waiting to spring and choke the breath, they and your notes on my door this morning were just downright hurtful. Treasures were smiling round the corners at me last night, waiting to ensnare anyone who walks out of the line, this damn queue, the next step comes slowly for brain is now so damn dumbed out. Throw it away in the trash dear for this period at least, this late afternoon snooze, I don’t sleep during the day, I don’t sleep, I fear the night monsters stalking the rooms of my mind, they say a chill in the air is indicative of the spirits well my spirits do not live in this room, they’re in my skin, the ghosts are all inside and refuse to leave. I am giving them one last chance them BANG BOOM, colt 45 city central.
I write right to left.
Fly over one Sunday stay on the slanted path. Forgive the genies in their bottles, they won’t come out just because the joys of white snow, blue juice and brown powder are all evidence in the trial. Have a bit of faith you monkey. Their graffiti spilled on the walls of my room, their tempers enraged their figures swollen with pus and drink, abscessed arms, hardened elbows, dirty fingers and pinned eyes, wonder this mess, our place in time, my legs are filled with fleas and romeo wants to go home again.
We left, we sat back seated arguing silently, staring out of the windows, vacant and pretty and though he has left me now I miss his curls, his shame, his body shape, his fucked up sense of direction and speed, proportion, contortion, distortion.
I align myself to the sanity of locked bathroom stalls. That is when I’m not thinking of poisoning her dog
This is today
Blood splattered dirty hobo ballet dancer dances around the empty lot then stops when she realizes that the camera is watching here. She looks around. And then drunkenly walks up to the lens.
- hey what you people doing here
- this is private property
- no its not
she thinks a while
- why do you have blood all over you?
- Because my boyfriend Jackie told me not to wash for 3 months, he thinks its sexy.
He made the whites whiter.
Sitting and now writing almost in form with wild animals beyond my contol. I’m pissed and immobile – paralysis, down the garden gate I wish to be led but no one offers this time, no wine no well fine, no time no phone no home
Body bloated as dead mind blank and fools shushed the occupants have joined the fray and here I sit yet fa fa away
Theres a party round the corner, won’t you please please come
Bring your own cup and saucer and your own chewing gum and what is your best friends name?
We were the outcasts we were, the lost banditos of the scene and how I would pass out and do and dribble down bar stools, how I would be fed gin and whiskey and be made to speak up and then carried to the car door then to bed, then to wake in forgotten abandoned apartments. Those there the days my friends, we thought they’d never end. Good times, good fires, beachfront hotels, burnt fingers, those bleached white walls dirtied and tarnished with cracked fumes stolen sony playstations, songs from garage bands in Knysna, lost and belittled, tagged and stoked with good and b ad fortune. Yes we played we faired like fairies, live in the lovely present, live right now, don’t think stupid child, hush about the disease of tomorrow for it sits not well in this form. Fear saturation, never fear the best that works in the middle east, never. My dearest poppish fiend, her sweet silent waters lap all too closely on this barren shore. The bard and last living stand no chance, stoned and dethroned, the maker of this day wired inspired, feeling that begets the violence of the past that satiates the foreign devils that coat the voice that brittle discord that keeps the tamed sniper from the firing the last shot, the shot to kill shoot to get well, shoot or get ill, shoot the bastard the sinister slip of four seconds in the middle of the bursting of the head in the middle of the day in the middle of the night.
What a wicked wicked week of bad spells and uptight rushes of ill luck, i’ve been interested in codeine extraction for a couple of months trying various means of dissolving it from mostly paracetemol or asprin. Its a strange buzz that keeps you awake and sleep walking bestif you can’t get anything better, totally functional but left. Tourniquets are my Daphne in spite and calamity, three times my teeth have fallen ou tand twice i remedied the situation, alas today the little bugger is nowhere to find and i am rushin around like a pike, listening to loud music, no internet connection, shooting on upwards and forgetting the point and the film erupted in my head about an hour ago, i got the link i needed like a 1960’s tableau, frame, the girl in the car the girl that wants to be a star
my right arm is fuckin killing me, absent and lame yet still the inner gets hardened and harder to break, pointing weapons of mass destruction at my body like some extremist,i’m a soldier packin
what worse after coming out of a hospice shop 900 rands poorer without spending a cent, the philospophical approach is that someone needed it more than me, what bull, i need my passage and i need it funded. The shoot secret is about to come out and i’m stuck with a pink mixture in the fridge,no more weed, a looming music column, lost pearlies,no connection to the outside world, a stolen diary, 5 less friends on the run and sick need to commisserate. Come my friends and countrymen lets dance the last dance of the night, creep from the dawn and make pretend everythings all right
there is snothing i fear more than water especially water under the bridge, it comes from a place where old animosities and senses that wrong from right curdle and grow with incessant force in order to pacify those whose extreme moments are seen as extraction and jolly nevermind the small detail that we are in the grip of a war. I choose sides as i choose my drinks and visitors from afar eithe exhalt or humiliate me into a fever i know no respite from cept for angry moods, irritational opposition and the small malady of sitting with whiskeyed tea praising the mediocre. Give me something or someone in this world who can ally themselves with me completely. Religeon, profit profiteering politics my left hand have all become hindrances where they should be leftists. For gods fuckin sake, we no longer think. Have you my readers ever felt that you are alone in your thoughts for me i am screaming. And those classics i love and those writers and retainers and those years that pour from the pages when you read the foreword or biographies only make sense when you;re living it and it s not fun and its not only the longely and its not comforting but a reminder that njo matter the generation we are aligned and maybe someday somewhere we will be abject from these defintions divided thankfully and ultimately fuck it i don’t know what to say anymore. I m disgusted and i;m rewarded by all this is ours right now. Who the fuck knows what were on about. This civilisation is dead and gladly i or we to gallows go. Enough enough, my fucked right hand and my fucked left brain walks gladly an dsadly into this night
look how misty its got
Been long and starched hasn’t it
Riding solo, stuck with a right claw hand unable to flick a cigarette, cut a tomato or start the ignition, but you never ask questions when gods on your side do ya? I’ve been thinking i’ve been feeling that i’ve lost empathy, two baby pigeons kamikazied onto our back yard with black betty and charlie hanging around and i let them die – a deer got his horns stuck in the fence but i couldn’t give a fuck, i sat and listened to its squeals and fear and quietly alone with a cigarette and a quartz enjoyed the struggle and i’ve been scared scared scared that i’m losing my soul and slipping slipping into a vast space i cant decipher can’t yet yeti the path but i need to have to want to go, with all my suspicions . conscience, curiosity lax and love and smidgeonof being stillyoung too to do just to do it cause the light and the laughter and the reflection is too good to miss out on, more weed and a bottle of beer a sub and a an em[pty packet on the floor to ignite dont burn the carpet or the duvet, or the sheets or the towels or the fuck, theres blood all over the place, rogue thoughts check mated and are on contemplation happy
i am now unfortunately, quietly living with the decision or choice, though rather a sick one, that i can either regain feeling of my right.write hand or carry on carrying on. I can write againm,] ty;pe yeah again, start ignitions again or do that again, its your alternativethe doctor said, i know which direction i’d take. And i wished away on sunday and it was great and the world softened and then well god fuck it my toothbrush tumbled down down
i just realise so many things in seconds then push them all away, get them down do it on the down low, the things i love and the things i must begin to loath or lose my other, hes coming with fire and brimstone and i just wish i coul dquench it could be an interesting 2010. . I think this is the year that will wish away beneath the sunny skies. The winds that have blown trees over onto my path have left me today, crumbled, singed, shining with sweat – have thought better have enjoyed a lonely night of deep sleep helped by the leaves from the boys next door, v and c and dreaming of dealers, rocks stars and sweet kisses..cell phone off dont disturb i’m thinking
deeply
So much to do and not one drip of effort, no feeling in legs, hair curled and the mirror image is of a dead man and the swallow.
God why has it become so difficult to write what i hear in my head, why are the thoughts hanging on the edge, fixing the nerves to the veins of boredom, oh yeah, of course, that, rubbish my son rubbish
and it will be ok they say, ok to drift, ok to wallow but only for a while. I went out with claire from kent and she told me so, she told me to wait, don’t two step yourself
everything i talk about think about is that, everything i want to write about, do about, live about is that
shut u[p you clawed all i want for xmas is my one front tooth drunken spawn
[nescit vox missareverti {that a word once uttered is irrevocable)
i take it all back
i don't want no sparks varks
Sitting in the shade and recess, forty thousand hills to climb, five thousand people to burn and a couple of months ahead whose twisted ways are sure to twist. The memory is someone who does not want to be found.i find myself staring directly into the air watching the wretched particles for some clue of what has transpired over the past couple of years but ah memory, the little bitch won’t snitch. I’m escaping every few days running from the comforts and dirt of the urban to the bees and melancholy of the forests and as wild flowers refuse to be vased the frustrated heart denies advice. I’ve sat wit hthe elephant man in wise discussions, i’ve made resolutions, plans for london, cleanliness and the crushing of pills but the vice is effervescent and the sky is blue whenever i want it. Glory on the horizon lass, rip van winkle and the church couldn’t stop me but the but the but the boot that needs to kick is scuffed and the walls are still fill of blood and i fall asleep at the most inopportune times. Really. A night walking the streets of the suburbs, gay white men in volvos trying to pick me up, ‘are you ok?, yeah i’m fine fucker, i’m just waiting for my mom. Tried to break into’s b’s place and then realised i was in the wrong road, don’t do drugs alone they say, beer at zacks listening to a duo playing dire straits, fitting really for their singing and my mood, the grafitti on the wall at the top of the wall is running off and i gave all my smokes to the homeless guy that sleeps at the flower shop. The rain hit my head and my heart lay there for dead but no one was willing to give a loan. I painted three pictures early in the morning and watched jan sleep, so curled and comforted with the tv blaring loudly as usual and as usual i felt sad. Back from the dead in a couple of hours and i’ve burnt 5 holes in my bed with the dozing head to wake up with a start and a cat in my lap and my film book on fire. I take chances and promises living here i tell you. The city stank in jhb, my fingernails got torn and th elorry was late and i forgot that guy who i kissed last time i was here though i sat right next to him at a bar, scribbling for nothing and drinking tequila. And the photos and lights and the questions made me squirm and i lied but i tried but it was all rather wrong and right and i just couldn’t wait for my dosh and head to the corner to collect my piece of paradise. So many slang names and so little time to mold them all into being mine, without the meds, the future looks dead and that sunday at the beach is just another false memory in my head. And the parade is travelling past willing me to join their merry dance but boy am i just looking forward to a toke and a taking of someone else’s making
i want to be very very ugly if not today then always
I am a pitifully wild eyed…hopelessly hapless, which is why i crawl in desperation back inside this illusion. Put myself through the degradation, the sick humour, the back turned, ogre that fights away at the keyboard, that growls louder, that kills deeper. I am desperate for love, for hugs, for congratulations, for some recognition that i exist, but your eyes never meet mine, your voice travels sideways and your drool is reserved for my soul. Some peoples blood boils when they get angry or violently sad, mine freezes. The scenery just melts away and the world is harsh, its sharp and unfair and the people who live in this lying house are even worse. And i’ve wondered for years why i’ve indulged so much why i’ve taken narrow paths and laid back in some divine umbra that not only rips all those tears all that ire into pretty tears or brave words and worlds but it took today, this grey afternoon, and how symbolic it was. How revealing, from burning sun to clouds and crystal winds so the revelations followed as fast as the fickle sky changed her moods. And so i cried out and shred the bible and kicked the barbed wire and ran barefoot into the evening, face scrunched in pain, heart dead with blackness because then i knew i knew why….. but as dusk turns to night, the revelation she came again….escape….get away from…divorce yourself from ogre….don’t come back….don’t let this happen again….and then i remembered every time i do, i fall into that warm lake that shrinks my spirit and lets me bury the hurt again….this time i will not run i will not. Phone calls break and people are sitting in the best position, reluctantly realigning in the best seat possible. What do they know, with their proposals and those fine limbs lying slumped on their laps, hair parting with the best part of the wind, lets me not digress here, let me not change their lives too much. The man at the bar looks at me gently, then the other guy decides that I that this is not the way it should be. She must stay awake to hear the hearing. She must eat her food, drink her wine, stay balanced on those heels, depend on the older man sitting near the balcony the one with the long hair, the kind eyes, the one who forgets as quickly as he forgives the one who knows the golden ratio. I see him tomorrow for hours to while away to lie and linger in his presence then back to the hell hole i call home. Back to the morbid dogs, the junkies, the dirty kitchen with needles in the soap dish, ritalin in the cereal box and a couch in the lounge that stinks of cats and piss. Broken glasses under foot, foul washing in the bath, shit and hair and pills and stares. I hate that place as much as i hate this sterile hypocrisy i find myself in now.
its so good to have katy got my back again
I don’t feel like commitming to anything at present, i sit still like a chesire cat in the garden of contentment with pledges falling like duck fat from my lips, i promised you the world and all i gaveyou was a taste, it don’t matter anyway, the slumber, the deep mumble, the war worned and wounded congregate around and fill me with secrets of the battle, i am an accomplice weary of the beaten path, i get the melodrama, i get the futility of it all but i still want it, desperately i feel as the life between these episodes are hardly real enough to write about, they’re just ways of taking up the time, of filling in the gaps inbetween the intervals. Oh thank you, you whoever you are for the gift of the written word, when nothing else suffices, you prevail. You fill the wool in the head with magnificent ideas, higher forms and constant rhetoric. I find burnt spoons and dirty needles under the bed, and then i make for the nearest doorway. I hate the remembrance of the midsummer nights but how i do love living them. I must sort this displacement out this restlessness, oh send me beer, wine and good spirits the silence of the wind is killing me and all you who fill your days up with great works with little numbers on screens and appointments and meetings at will, just make me jealous. My time is my own but my time is more daring than i’d like. I have come to accept the malady of my bearings, the basic disruption that takes place every second every hour of the day, where i sit and stumble over words, tasks and responsibilities. God how i hate that word. To just exist in the umbra of nought would be the accepted peace. But no, must get up, must shake thy stiff bones to waken, must perform, must make excuses, must get high, must get creative, must must must but then again, my bed is slaggin and kills my back for slumbering too long. My new friend is on a similar plane as i. She sheds her moods faster than her skin and her dulled eyes perform only on the ritalin. And here i change drinks as fast as i change metaphors and though the future looks bright she is still shaky. And those missed phone calls and those late nights of abhorrence and these mid days made of mud, slip and stumble directed solely at peace but finding netherworlds of obstructions. And the spirit of her childrens children lives on. Yeah the end won’t be long but its getting there thats the hard part. A dog is dying on my doorstep and there is nought i can do. And today is frightened horse and tomorrow is a dark course and i am reaching for the sun that dares shine in my eye and there is only one way, one way to say goodbye,….by forgetting
hare hare krishna krishna
Oh how wondrously irresponsible we are. We traipse through the lounge ignoring the boy, forgetting the date, dusting at whim and browning with vim. I love it here in my little boho palace of misconduct, even the sweaty nights and gloom interludes cannot spoil. The buzz of the little dream that has manifested inside this hat, this heart, god its good to be back in the city. Be back in my spell, whilst the construction trucks and the taxis and the mad dealers and the even madder friends stop over and beckon my reckless nature with their sweet sweet scent of innocence, no mind how short the poison the present is always worth it. And who dare says that i am wrong. For i make my choices out of free will and the wind she bloweth and my longing closes, krishna rings and scarves still wet from the broken machine and a maid and a cat and a dog with herpes, and a robot and a trainer thats gnawed and a kitchen cupboard full of medicine and an ivory box filled with delights and a car and a bus and feeling of trust and the teepee in the garden was put up by me and the irreverent singing from the bedroom is some poor lost boy who found his way here last night but me and my friend we start drinking irish coffees early in th emorn and finish up late late into the night, passed out in the thrill of the catch and as long as the cash lasts i’ll be here in th e morrow
rant on the water first aid dressing in the sky
Keep the handle on hold, celebrate the middle chapter
voice concern take chances offered; remain vigilant a fast reactor
i know i have disillusioned a few of you, some of my life so far favorites i know i know, its been a deplorable prison term i’ve locked myself in, in the interior of trying to escape, in the courtyard in those few hours that gives to stretch the legs, unravel the wrists, walk up the walls, click the cervical vertebrae , i’ve relapsed into the nightmare the delectable incubus, fuck those lucky bastards who get to make films, songs, albums, novels, paintings and the like, i’m jealous as hell, i’m preposterously smitten with the idea of being outrageously famous for what i know what i love doing, but when the sun is down and the electricity is on strike, the aggravation is too incessant to ignore, the boredom must be satiated, she must be taught a lesson no matter how sickly my repayment for my glimpse of relief is…. i knew what i was doing i thought it would be different but its worse a chiliad times worse. All i am asking for is assistance, if there is an inch to spare in what form or the other, please send it, from the bottom of my black little heart if you have but one answer, share, for i don’t know how long i can keep this pen scribbling, this keyboard clicking or this syringe empty.
the garden in the morning looks as stupefying as a baudelaire’s couplets, the grass a sparkle the winter gone teal mystified by its own augustness, cacophonous desires, a lie and a reality, songs of swans the early eagle takes a trip through my house, she watches as the insects still sleep, only my midnight voices lurk, my scarred middle arms, my sheets full of blood keep that rapscallion, miss malicious miscreant at bay, the shadows peek and the light fractures. Smoke inhaled the day has begun, i’m lost and lonely a void perplexed. Settle for less settle for more, take the view further, take the view further take the cue from the herd her, she is an animal they know that sun becomes rise, becomes clouds becomes rain becomes grown grow snow…I do and don’t realise we’re trapped by her design we do and don’t flounder the gift we use, waste, deliberate, the gift we call time. so move not in circles nor travel up nor down i just impatiently await in the midriff for the desuetude to come around. I tell myself to move forwards forget the pain of the past but the pain came with the gain the restless mole the sarcastic laugh. Now what a to do with no clear path in front i just swindle i just fluster no longer stronger a mere runt, i am, i detest, a chagrin of my own reconstruction. Is this punishment or prestige the calm before a storm or is this me like forever never finding my form. It is me it is i waiting in the corner for the you for the we for the coroner of my former
self
less
i’m sorry
send aid the winds a blowing a change
Hey i was waiting for a nice evening out there, i thought we were where it was at, we were hanging, enjoying the larva, submerging ourselves in the what the fuck, we could’nt care less, we had no finish mark, we were leap frogging on the wind, enjoying the breeze, lounging in the afterglow oblivious to timetables, deadlines and despots, desiring nought, disc space durban defunct glen anil, queensburgh, hammarsdale, glenwood, pinetown, umbilo, port shepstone, bothas hill, morningside, glen ashlely, bluff, seaview, wentworth, shallcross, umlazi, estcourt, kw dubeka, it doesn’t matter my friend held his dead premature baby in his hand then threw it into the ocean he was never meant to be a father he was never mneant to be anything, its so close to home it makes me cry, the soil is dry but the heart is a barren pot so much reliance on the computer. So much to say so much to ignore. I cant take the pill that will quell the voice, the brain that overthinks, won’t stop working so what to do after the shuttle the onslaught of cher knowall she won’t stop talking even when the name of the face is naked the torso is covered with scars, i will never live that night down, it was so hot, i had to join the fray of the bacchi, of course we had to work together of course i was reduced to live out in the countryside i submitted to the rights writing wrong i was never embarrassed as he was, the good old days no matter how many pieces of paper are lefr around the fringe and then he got an office job. Scott this is for you i couldn’t bare to spoon you but it wasn’t your fault. I cant commit to human contact. I cant’ commit to the dragon claws of the early morning. The fishing rod is limp and the sea is dry. Its a red red sea and my view is ultraviolet. The rite of passage is a bitch the rights of passage is a snitch. We think we find ourselves so self righteous beat a brother when he’s down in the name of good taste, in the name of the almighty, the registry is all messed up and no one can fix it, what a position to be in, what a sister to have, my brother is super humiliated to have such a retrobate as a sister. When one sibling outshines the rest its a difficult equilibrium to restore. Forgive the sinner welcome the prodigal daughter home again, theres no bible story for my sinning parents to latch onto. Theres not one. Its always sons. Its always wayward christian soldiers. But what to do with the girl. In zulu culture marriage is negotiated between the men. Its tradition. Who cares about the girl. Excuse me the woman. I bet most girls who are getting married getting anything feel like women. How do you know you’re a woman in my prolonged adolescence i can’t imagine the feeling….. Is it being a certain age, oh ok i’m 26 now i’m a woman, i’m 16 now i’m a woman, i got fucked now i’m a woman. Like you’re allowed to order your own take away. What gives. I’m still a girl i’ve lived by myself, travelled by myself, got engaged, got married, got divorced, got a have, got a film, got a flat, got a car, got an obsessision, got rich, got bankrupt, got tangled up, got a guilty complex, got a about helping, got a free train ride, got a reputation, got a bad reputation, got back a good one, got drunk, got sobre, got a fix, got a girlfriends, got a boyfriends, all by myslef, without becoming or being a woman, what a hangover from the apartheid years is my generation living in. wer’re stuck, we’re angry, our parents have the most duplicitous ideas of ideas. Some are romanticised ex hippies that fought the scrouge of racial secregartion in their spare time, some claim, they were ignorant and indulged in the midst of the post 50’s umbra of father knows best and ladies shouldn’t really watch or read or listen to the news and just follow sniffing at the heels of the head of the household whilst others were totally liberal, voting for the dp, let me not even go there, i already feel nauseated this afternoon. and then there there was us, our generation, the disgeneration, no I don’t feel very womanlike, i’m not a woman, i’m a curse just waiting for a bag and a hearse, got a line?, give me a line and i’ll show you how cool i really am, no you don’t have to like me, i don’t like myself much, but give me a break, a small space to remember this time, my second name is angel, what a laugh, but no apologies i make think, destruct, product, produce or you become the marquis’s buttgirl who does boys like they’re girls i mean woman
Everyone had left. This fucking place felt like an abandoned aircraft after a turbulent landing. The silence of routine was a stench that got up my nose, up my legs into my blood. It scared me that I was living off this shit. That this was my life-force – this banality – emptiness – hard crack resilient shell – and had I tried. Had I pushed and poked and broke. Had I broken? Neville was complaining and agreeing. I couldn’t understand a fucking word he was saying. He shrunk of piss. The road stunk of piss. A long building – another inconsequential structure. Some imbeciles in a car. Black like spilt oil were laughing. I was trying to look at something – anything. There is nothing to look at here. There is constant banging and drilling. And only one that is good. They are installing lights to ruin my shadow, my lost friends.
Is it so hard to even minimize the building blocks I had swallowed and given back to you? Would it take an apology – a confession or just dismissal of reason – where it’s not reticent or ridicule? But a plain and simple point of view. Is your unaware a mystery or another carbon copy sheet – when I prophesize do you fantasize – is there any feeling in your head.
Let’s strip away these mannerisms. I was walking slowly I thought. I had been thinking far too long. Or not thinking. It’s a ménage a trios. Lets have a manage a trios. I was not walking, I was battling. Walk was a by-product. It was the mechanical action stemmed by this mental pace. It was lyrical. I am not lyrical. I am shining. Let’s just be shining. Come on lets.
He was not talking. A condition of commitment. I can’t seem to arise out of this bubble. This superficial carnage. My last sentence is slurry. It’s a self-dismissal mess. I saw your ears turn red as you never missed what I said. Why are these girls dancing on the table? What planet are they from. A gay bar is mentioned. We leave. There’s a cab. Twenty thousand photographs are constantly recorded. He is tired – he said. i just knew we were going to go to bed
solon gold friend of mine
Another strange night, joined some old friends, from the Westville side, westville always reminds me of laural canyon for some reason but with no music producers or sexy Mexican guitarists, we headed up north. Another bar, another bar, a walk along the shoreline, someone produced kat which I haven’t seen in Durban for months but then some have visited the cape of good hope and we all need hope, hope springs a kernel, danny chrane. Then minutes became strange shadows, the north turned into the south coast and we were at a live music venue where I remember lush puppy playing, when I used to manage them, the barman knows me, he knows what I drink, I think, I drink what I think. Then black, woke up sometime this afternnon in umdloti, pristine flat, white, neat, clean. Sharp lines like an old hash flashback remembering I had a court appearance. Ray drives me downtown in a matter of minutes. My lawyer is hot and young. He lives up in summerfield and is my age with a built in spoilt girlfriend who refuses to work, for some – suntanning is enough to settle the conscience. He was pissed off I was late, smelt sweaty and had pupils the size of atoms. I felt atomic. The Durban court house is a drab establishment, I felt shitty, shifty, seedy and white amongst the old mommas with multiple babies tied to their backs and middle aged farmers with numerous documents tucked under their arms and dead fire in their eyes, I murder flies. The coffee here is shit, I’m scribbling in my diary, which I haven’t used for the specifics this entire year. Looking back its been one of the worst of my life, or laziest, or most fucked up or chilled depending on the chemicals, the day and the weather. Yeah I’m a loser baby so why do you thrill me. Anthony is rustling through the papers, we apparently have a good chance, he smells of hugo boss, if I knew what hugo boss looked like ant could be his younger brother or an I.T guy. These three Indian dudes are staring at me from the corner, maybe they’re rapist, my rapitst, the bus bastards, who knows, serendipidity doo dah, we are all connected. The police are here, I ‘lend’ a smoke off the guy who arrested me, Anthony is pissed off with me, I tell him its cool. I go smoke the smoke with the pig. He tells me he’s really sorry, they weren’t out to do a drug bust, it was a drunk and driving charge, I wasn’t driving. We were stationary, we were at hime in bed, weren’t we? How the hell am I going to get out of this when I thought they bust the house not the car, god damn, this is getting confusing. The judge who is overseeing our little soiree has taken ill, we get a woman judge, who then walks out of the court with a big sigh. What the fuck. Anthony is telling me to stop writing. I stop. We’re cool. There’s technicalities, a new s.african judge who happens to mention to the police that they’re ‘wasting the courts time’, I kid you not, I could have told them that a week ago, dismisses the case. Still the 5 g’s in lawyers fees but fuck it beats being physically locked up. I manage to get a lift back to the forest. My james beckett painting has fallen off the wall, I snort 3 8mg subutex tablets and drink 3 beers whilst reading valley of the dolls. I’m feeling angry today, uncomfortable. I want to go forward but I doubt I can even buy xmas presents this year. On the way back we stopped to buy booze and when I asked the car guard how she was doing she responded ‘can’t complain’. I think I’m going to become a car guard.
neegle
Traveling home in a car with friends. Seemed to know driver but don’t remember him properly. I know he was very drunk, coming back from town, driving without headlights on. Turned in large wide road straight into a roadblock. Driver slammed on breaks. Cops all around the car, me in the back seat. Notice that there is another car like a minivan, large bakkie with canopy on back (white). All cars stopped in the middle of the road. Cops pulled me out, all of us in the car, seemingly at once. Can hear and feel the situation is fucking dangerous. Cops seem more pissed off with us for being there than anything else. Very rough handling – the one cop drags me out then flings me down quickly on the side of another police vehicle and falls on top me, shooting. As a wave of bullets start being fired at us. I can feel his bullet proof vest digging into me. As a wave of bullets start being fired at us, I can feel his bullet proof vest digging into me. Only then do I realize there is a sophisticated and violent gang fight going on that had been intercepted just before our cars arrived. I lie scared out of my fucking mind, praying to anyone that I don’t die.
After the shooting I start screaming at the drunk driver of our car. I argued, protecting myself, with the police and eventually get them to give me a ride home to my flat (new and on the beachfront, residence, my dreamapartment)apart mental.
Saturday night was a bore, movies and videos, theatre on Sunday, drinks with another. People dancing silently in their heads across the backdrop of spitting lies, draining common sense and troubadour conclusions. Today I do not feel like talking.
Guitar Amps, stands, cables, snares, drum stools, cymbals and a kick pedal lay stranded in the dust. The lights had not been switched off yet so the smell was still visible. A comforting horror surrounded the impertinent youngsters. Destined for greatness and trashed for success. They lounged comfortably in clichés and cardigans, ripped at the elbows. Co-ordinating local performances and trying my damndest to stay behind the scenes was getting me down. I could feel patience and virtue slipping into all too familiar categories. A period of post-photo shoots had dawned for my ego and me. W e had been over exposed and under appreciated. Sophistication of primary colours were no not sought after. A real deal in conjunctions of interventions.
Stark grey is like inhaling the carcass of a dead pig. His actions were the cold room in butchery. I t stinks of crystal vomit chrystal meths and unchanged underwear. We were standing next to the stairs leading up to faint light wafting greasily in from a Bauhaus window high up on the wall, where no man could reach to escape, even by forming a human stepladder. The door in front of my eyes was a lifts door. Large and cumbersome, old stainless steel with a pane of glass. I was standing naked with blue toes and fingers, isolated and indifferent.
Lusting over the sweat excreting out of pores on the pavement, ina semi-confidant mood, dope smudged and half a gram of cocaine next to the syringe and needle bought at a Muslim pharmacy. I crossed the city hall. Protestors scattered like discarded Checkers packets littered the view in my mind, which was swimming a lazy backstroke in the back of a pick-up truck. Sanity with style lingered in the umbra of no arguments and bitches like spears failed to pierce this mood. Word on the street smelt of Sunlight soap washed middle class. It reeked of the pesty nastiness of black ambition, digging their dirty grey fingernails into the back of white westerners. Mirroring trends, which were passé before the French word had even been invented. A great sense of pity came over me and I lit a Camel cigarette to kill the edge of discontent.
There is a man who walks alongside the park – his face is all messed up and he doesn’t have a chin.
After leaving the park a snatch of my memory awakens to leave me with the awful regrets of remembrance. False sprawl from the nozzle of a spray paint can switch trendy anarchic blah-blahs across the wall of the technikon. Students with Nike packpacks and cell phones eating doughnuts made me feel sick again. I could imagine them going home to their stupid communes filled with even stupider consummates, smoking dope and making pasta.
This is the design war. The second coming, the holy war. What will Jesus be wearing for Apocalypse 2000? When you strip away the floorboards you find mini dust balls and greying fluff from toenails. Like sand in my bed amidst the sheets, I blow to see it stay and continually make me uncomfortable. Fashion is the plaque on my teeth.
I had a talk with my best friend the other day on the bus where I sit. I lunge my friend into the window and smile pleasantly at her whilst she eats her fingers. Diabolical we are and very interested in each other.
You are late again.
A row of voodoo masks lies scattered on the burnt grass. Ranging in size, grotesque grimaces greet the squinting eyes of the flea marketers. A beautiful black ebony with Ivory Coast smile explains prices to customers. Ranging from R150 rands to R800 for dis one. Dis one is a very special mask, originated from Ioa, won of de spirits of de monkey gods. It is used to create wealth and how you say um success. These bloody foreigners with their crap.
Meals on wheels, homes for the aged, meals on wheels, homes for the aged…
Trancelike the passers by ignore the weathered skin of an old women on the steps nearby, with a S.A peak cap, cardigan and slippers.
There is an African man approximately 30 yrs of age who skates around the city with his arms, his legs are fucked. He falls in love with a female white car guard, who buys him a loose cigarette now and again. She kills him one night and then commits suicide by jumping off a small insurance firms fifth floor. Skateboarders from all over the province pledge their allegiance to help the physically disable not fall in love with any one wearing a luminous orange vest with dirty fingernails and no bank account.
Couch room at the Blue Waters hotel, overlooking a rather rainy Battery Beach. It feels as if someone turned the tone down on the computer screen. A turquoise and white striped Asian bus arrives on the scene. The sea is unbelievably calm like it just had a good shit and busy dwelling in its post good shit feeling. Lay abouts, walk abouts, arb abouts hang in the drizzle, near the paybox across the road, whilst people with large plastic drums filled with sea water enter the bus. A dull Afrikaans farmer conversation of chicken curry ensues in the background.
Sitting at the pools behind Tekweni and Animal farm – black and Indian kids splashing in the pool, 1000’s of them. I think I crawled into a moles hole and came across a Sol Kerzner underground microscope of Africa’s last forgotten voodoo playground.
You’re dead, last night, slipped again. Like you said, we just drift, we flow in by the way, of course.
Tonight I saw a dead Lebanese guy with short bleached hair, still shaking his foot under the table, whilst his 4 yr old yawned and longed for bed.
Thursday evening back at Battery Beach. Blessed in diluted sewerage, they stumbled across the sand swells, screeching over the windswept grains, their private praise served only a private bliss; I could not begin to understand. Hands held in long stained dresses wet, vacuum packed. A small circle on a dirty beach, one was white. Their children slept peacefully on their backs. What insignificant pleasures calmed scathing eyes? And slow to depart with plastic bags and wary limbs, softening the taste of irony………………………………………………………………………
Then the telescopic view of the plasma within ditched it’s dirty head and dived into the disturbed rhinocersous fest of the ancients. Screeching and chanting driven to distortion is
Only scarce moments of clarity
now control this moment. I foolishly
rebuke and accept
wrong doings with regional emotional settings, turned up then down.
A man in black constantly walks
in with hard plastic cases delivering profit and exiting with none.
The void has prospered again. When these nights now fall, I scramble
to find a meaningful hour of passing time. Yet each night is over in a blink of an eye with the help of valium. it soothes the scratched throat and clawed mind. I only remember painfully. A memory of bliss is overshadowed with shame and contempt. All efforts of regaining a simplicity of knowledge, scar and ridicule balance. Signs are tilted and replayed at paces that rival their destination and once again the void wins. It is a tiring process, life. It battles galliantly on, rationalising every decision. When you’re a survivor you become a statistic. When you lose – you win. Rather die than face the tediousness of yet another cycle. So best not think yet that is thought itself so be no scared as fear is forever and tomorrow is gone.
ITS ALL NONSENSE REALLY. I MEAN HOW COULD THEY REALLY UNDERSTAND? JUST A BUNCH OF FUCKIN CLOWNS. BUILD A WALL, AND PULL IT DOWN. AND WE ARE NOT ALL JUST LITTLE GIRLS. BORED? COMPLETELY. Just too bored to do anything. They all want to be someone special, but then again. we are not.
Jackie and Clara are not well today, they’ve being busted 8 times this motnth. All 8 times they’ve done twice as much drugs after the bust to try and deal with the sorry state their lives as become. Carla is on the verge of suicide she ‘s kind of flipped. My name is Jackie and this is my story.
We were getting our drugs from Jacque. Jacwque didn’t even take drugs but he was a nice guy. He had cool tattoos of dragons and skulls on his arms but he still didn’t take drugs. I had asked him, ‘Jacque how can you have tattoos and not do drugs.’ and he said, ‘ I don’t need that shit, I got bigger problems.’ We used to think Jacque was a satanist’
This is Gaffer, he’s fuckin cool.
What’s up, girl.How you hanging
What are you doing?
Oh I was bored, so I was putting the baked beans in the puppet’s mouths
fucking idiot, that’s like the last food we have left till Friday
well its not my fault
Robert, what are you doing
um, nick said I must throw salt around the place, do um get the evilness out
don’t be stupid
can’t you just get it together? for once?
can’t you just not react? just slowly chew on your spit and swallow?
why do you always have to jump the gun?
They planned the afternoon with the shoreline. In mauve and calves that run up sand. Fickering light hit your locks where you could not look – as your back was turned from him. He was your average good looking man from a family who enjoyed braais on the weekend. He and his 21st spit, drank champagne with his mom and beers with his dad. He had a degree in commerce which heeded no use in his career path as a sales rep for a reputed computer software company. The gym where he had a family membership applauded his discipline and the receptionists shared Tupperware parties with his fiancé. he was happy as thoughts that question were foreign in his head. He agreed to obey life. He could only remember one occasion where he and his father had fallen out and he’d rather forget….
It all started 4 months ago. I moved to flat number 306, ———. I had a few things – a bed, a tv, a computer and some tables and chairs. it was the first time I had lived by myself except for the time when my ex-husband had left me although we had never been properly married. But then I had a serious drug problem, I was a heroin addict with a bit of crack on the side. A whole lot of drinking and the occasional every 10 minute hit of dope but that was in the past.
Now I had a future and it was in this flat.
At that moment I rejoiced that I was free of possessions, free of all ties, free of fear and envy and malice. I could have passed quietly from one dream to another, owning nothing, regretting nothing, wishing for nothing. I was never more certain that life and death are one and neither can be enjoyed or embraced if the other be absent.
I’m getting seriously bored,, talking about revolution, talking about stuff I don’t even know what I am talking about. Talking about night and talking about day. Talking about how things were, are, will be. Talking about the other day, my other friend, her brother and their cousins dog and stuff. Talking about getting trashed and talking about where its at, where it was and where its gonna be. Im getting seriously tired of talking about midnight and sunsets, mountains and mcdonalds, abattoirs, the difference between logic and reason, how I felt, who I am, what its all about. Talking about things which don’t count and things that do. Talking about food, music whose doing what and what the rain will look like tomorrow. Talking about smack, talking about rap, talking about taking the rap for the smack. I’m tired of talkig bout the direction of my head, my location and your ideas. I’m tired of talking about everything we have to talk about and would just prefer to keep quiet all the time.
goose stepped by the major
Nobody got given a single thought to slip in the conversation so over it’s ended. And we beat around the bush, I aint XXXXin with the reason to believing this question that keeps popping in the mouth like a pill. Statutory rape only happens for a few seconds, I thing, that’s what jhb has been like. It rips open your eyes, straps you down and makes you work your ass and then fucks off with a dumb grin on its face. The Muslims sing every evening. God knows what they sing about – kill the white men, fuck moffies, fuck – ballet dancers, then for a few sacred moments the sun reflects so brightly against your lashes that you feel stung and betrayed by your atheism. There are as usual many old people that live in my block. I seem to attract the over 60-age group. I was walking to the shop the other day orange umbrella hitting the discarded trees growing out of degraded schools when I saw an old fucked up statue in a garden. So I stole it and it now lives in mine, my sangoma. Only I would find religion in stone. Speaking of gardens I pulled many a weed out the other day, 3 packets to be exact, only to watch them multiply after the last weeks rain. I miss my fish. I nearly adopted a stray baby black kitten, which looked like an emaciated Gobolina. This old woman came knocking at the window and said her older cats had been jealous of it and would I kindly take responsibility for it otherwise the SPCA would assume duty but then Tax my flat mate I never see said he was allergic to the feline fraction. Two days ago I spoke to my landlady and enquired after the whereabouts of the kit. She told me the Friends of the Cat had come to fetch it. She told me she was glad I did not adopt it as the woman who was trying to get rid of it had told her in confidance that it was mentally damaged and would not stop pissing on her bed. Thank goodness I am not planning to get married anymore Mojitos and pancakes, lots of rum and cane in the mix. Oh bother oh bother what can be done about this damn white mountain I’m becoming unable to climb. Its the simple things that count, the simple ones that are so hard you break your milkteeth on em. The boys of Durban, all those boys, bless them. This is my last will and testament to a weekend that is becoming later and later, someone just told me its aids daze. You want some? I got some.
practising good conduct is a step on the noble 8fold path 2 nlightenment
Just got back, oh what a day what a day. This day of aids and they came from all corners first up my newest dahling along the road with his scraggy hair and forehead and laugh and fireflies to the wind, mongrel dogs, empty birdcages, rusting pumpkins and ceramic pipes. He read me my problem and my solution through his red Indian medicine cards, two birds came up the eagle and hawk, which says a lot since I constantly find myself three stories off the ground in any given situation especially these months. Focus, the goal is at hand, attack it, watch over it, circle it, mother it, lover it, forget about it. My lady friend and I found a strange shack where old drunks gather and we participated in some beer with the hardened sages, then back to the home of her infants and all hell was breaking lose and I find it difficult to connect with kids, though they seem to like me I can’t feel blessings for the young only pity even though the snakes are lethargic in their glass and my keys are missing. Our squat has failed, we all lied, cheated, got bust and got angry, we are dispersed once more merry wanderers trying to find a reason and a pillow to lay our heads. I thought I would die by forty I now sense it is sooner. Down in the city, sharpi was at least on time for once, a decent enough score, a bit dirty but the cooker in the bathroom did the trick and success on the first prick, that mellow gold and burgundy mixing in the measuring tube, and then floating in a mock warm bath, dropping the camera into the water, submerging myself with momentary bliss and a decision that I cannot make the white mountain. I am still an initiate, no more no less, I am unable to meet demands with a couple of rands in my pocket, I’ve lost everything I cared for and can’t get it back, can’t work, can’t focus, can’t love, can’t give, can’t receive, only the lead on the corner gives perspective, only one word from the likes of mr nwa himself who proposes to write a story about the black heart and myself for the weekender and mine hasn’t stopped, it is flowing into wednesdaze but in this state I can commit to paper the banal, embrace the space cadet and live up to my lot as little miss blackout kid. Adieu Papillion!
flying rants caught in the umbraella
Let’s get one thing straight about dealers and film making. The film maker has a certain level of responsibility too much perhaps placed on oneself, just as the writer. The temperature must be high, the emotion distorted and intuitive, the pen inking but the mind thinking and when this mind is wrapped up in thoughts, no good will come of it. I can read lenny bruce and laugh, pop dolls and sleep, drink beer and thirst, seek lower ground but sink. These catch twenty twos. Get out of the city, go back wander in to obscure downtown bars, tell my story, share another’s. The downtown hotel is my favorite joint, I am a regular the only white girl with a car that can pop in unannounced and be treated like royalty. My friend their, Jacob, lives in point. He’s been living there for years; he’s a pimp with 8 girls on his cards and a total honey. He buys me shots of Russian bear and we talk about malema, how to smuggle cocaine out of the country and my old acquaintance tiger. He’s seen her around, thought I haven’t made contact in years. I saw her wandering around Morningside one day but all I could give her was R200 and an apple, Im always broke, most think it’s from the narcotics but its more because of karma, you win some you lose some, I give away a lot and steal as much back. I am giving up making films and writing I see no more future in it and as my forty deadline draws closer I want to regress to safety of the unseen and inane but impossible for If I try to work behind a bar, sell energy saving light bulbs, apply for jobs at lovelife or plead for money from new foes its never enough. We are living on the breadline and I don’t have a home. Hell I’ve got ideas, hell yes I can write, type and even spike but my reputation is more than the menial jobs I crave, I don’t know how to explain my need for anonymity but I know it doesn’t work. If someone could just give me a gap, make my family happy and not stressed about rent and food, if I need to go back to those hotels where scenes from the film must replay then so be it but for now I have run out of choices. I expect a bit of cash from ponces who i am working hard for on what the kindness of others, the kindness of dealers. Producers and dealers are the same, they’re stingy until you’re ready to fuck them doggy style and then just maybe you might see a dime, i am assuming the gods and goddesses of the silver screen albeit behind that elusive wank fest rejoicing in their eloquence, eye and hipness for siding with raw talent such as myself, the little ranter, the one that has that special spark,t he one that is malnourished, i expect them to empathise with a situation bordering on self implosion for lack of recources, will and knotted stomaches. I cannot be offered a bar job in hades as compensation in the interim, there cannot be an interim for me, i am all or nothing. I am worth more, i can deliver but only if can look after my mother first. I can’t stand that knife at my throat when I hustle down the very street where my dad once owned a French restaurant which is now a notorious crack house. I can’t help the need for escape but I wish It was more lucrative this hidden admiration for me because i break horses, I am no rolemodel but the media exposure is coming in thick, if only they paid, if only I could live up to what I wanted to do, can one person change the world, silly thoughts, can one change inspire another, silly thoughts. I was in love only three times, I believe in love if it isn’t me – I want to play air guitar in the gutter and glaze my eyes so that those that think there Is talent can shirk away in humiliation for their mistake. I do not want to go forward, I want the magnifying glass, the limitless freedom of the beachfront, the girl I was ten years ago and a song that I can finally commit to. No hard blows just strong blow and thank the heavenly father for that temporary prick of sanity, he comes at a price but boy am I consumer
and have the brusies in the elbow to prove it.
You see many get me wrong, they think i am heartless, they think arrogance, precociousness alas it is the opposite. I carely deeply for those close to me especially those in need and would offer my own kidney for dinner, but my hands are tied, we are about to commit a family suicide soon, it has been discussed and there is no flare signalling a change only homelessness, poverty and shame to look forward to the next few months, how did this come about. Thats an easy one. It was greed that took it away, selfishness and excuses that perpetuated it and now only helplessness in trying to pull through. I can name drop people in the industry where films, music,art and literature are at my door, the ones that pledge allegiance, oh what a fucking joke, the only joke i ever remember. do you think they will lend even a thousand rand so my blood doesn’t lose home during xmas, do you think they will assist me in reclaiming my camera, laptop and videocamera. No no no. YOu’re a junkie, you must wait, you have no feelings or need for money except to cop. I’ve heard this before, i’m not responsible for your life, i’m doing my hardest, i have meeetings and get to eat at swanky restaurants and am flattered and full of the vains of the living because i know you, oh yes miss angelique i can lay claim to you, you little renegade. Well renegade this motherfuckers. It’s over. Claire Angelique is no longer swimming in your septic tank. I am leaving the building. Screw your celluloid, your magazines, your newspapers, your fucking elephants and your horror films. Give and you shall receive. I cannot give any longer i have no more gifts, see you on the corner, and don’t laugh or pity me, just chalk it up as one more lost soul you couldn’t crack this mirage and wills only disease, sanitoriums and death and destruction on what is left of this deathwish kid. kisses my grateful fans, i’m sure i make great dinner conversation but you don’t own me, you don’t know me, but you sure as well owe me for even allowing me to blink my sleepy eyes at you. I’d choose my dealer over my so called patrons any day. a shot in the arm is worth 5 of you beating around the bush
I AM NOT A DRUG ADDICT I AM ONLY IN DENIAL
letter from a bitch
You must be really proud of yourself, thank goodness gran is not around to see. So much for your film-making and all this other crap has certainly not done much for you.
You have a problem you are a
DRUG ADDICT…. Yes a DRUG ADDICT…
and most people have known this for a long time but you tend to think every one else is stupid. Who is the stupid one, YOU ARE. Wake up and smell the roses you little fool.
I will continue to pray for you but dont want to hear from you.
Gail.
There are a few faces and facsimiles that make this evening worthwhile. The ones that visit silently, steadily and with good intentions, the seraph whose fingers slip through the latch, prying these dark thoughts from the head and the heart and reassuring the drowning dopamine. I shan’t name names for fear of giving them inflated egos but I will allow you a glimpse of the position of this earth, this town and this little room over the past twenty four hours or was that five or ten or 20 minutes, it has eluded me. I call in at the rose king who gives me two bunches of petals, red like the stuff that clogs the needle, yellow like my father’s character and white like my teenage breasts. Zama stares at me enquiringly, she knows I only come here to drink his beer, but ma sister, its only 10 o clock, she gasps in disbelief, I just want the roses and a glass of wine dammit, zama, you call this a tea garden? What the fuck do you sell here tea? She seems confused. I’ve edged closer to the side of the road, dr dre is playing at full blast that bitches and hoes song and my mother is screaming at somebody to stop, is it me? Is it dr dre? She can’t possibly get him to stop, he’s rap superstar, who the fuck does she think she is. Hormonal middle aged anorexic with a chip of not traveling on her shoulder and a sincere distaste for the letter H that’s tattooed on my hand and the bruises she’s noticed on my arms, it’s the way I sleep mother dear I lie. But you never sleep she intervenes, I turn the music louder, snoop dogg is talking aobut pussy, I’m just feeling like one.
I grew up on the bluff, that grotty barren piece of majut that grows out the side of the harbor, here we sacrificed animals on the beachfront at night, picked mulberry leaves for silkworms that my brother tried to eat and got fingered at the caravan park. We’re here today because I had apparently promised to take her to my aunts birthday, the aunt I hate, who lost a child I loved and has taken to religion and calling a kaffir a kaffir a monkey a wop. Yeah, love those bluff types, this place smells like a dump, there’s a dump on my left and a bottle store around the corner, I ask to borrow R20 I need beer to get me through the next hour, she doesn’t have, typical , I find money in my pockets, one of the joys of wearing the same jeans for a week and grab 3 quartz, promising the dude behind the counter whose checking out my tits in a bikini that I’ll drop off the five bucks later, whatever. My eyes are rolling all over the place thanks to the stuff last night but no one is noticing cause I have my big scratched shades on and I hang by the pool for an hour steadily downing the beers in between toilet breaks for some starchy skag. Her toilet doesn’t flush properly typical, her house is spotless and potless and I resist the temptation to eat her food, I’m scared of being poisoned, I feel positively ill just being here. And then when I think I’ve just made it through it starts, ‘Scott went to Hollywood, Claire, you know he says it’s so seedy’. Yayayaya. Of course I know this, I watch TV, I read books, yes aunty dearest, it looks kind of like a you magazine but thicker, no no no, I don’t mean chicken soup for the soul I mean like real books by vagabonds and drunks, Voltaire, camus, wilde, you must a heard of them, I think they’ve had movies made about them. So I know about Hollywood, what you trying to say bitch? that I live in a bubble that my greatest dream is to crack that little golden statue and get a five picture deal with new line, lose 39kgs and present top billing for a season. ‘have you ever been to Hollywood’ she asks, ‘no’ I reply. ‘well then you don’t know what its like. Now scott, scott’s been, because scott is worldly at 21, married and been to Hollywood, I mean how the fuck can I compete. you live in a dream world deary, when you are going to make some money; you’re so full of airs and graces. you’re just full of yourself you know that? Why tannie gail, how perceptive of you. Yes, I love myself far too much, I fuck myself with my own effigy every night whilst straightening my hair and reading Leviticus. And then its time to leave. Mother is not understandably pissed the hell off with me. I look out the window, there’s a large cargo coming in the harbor, the train tracks remind me of London, the bridge over there is where we shot the chloe going mad scene in the film, but no one is interested in bridges anymore, except my memory and the libertines, can’t stand me now fills up the stereo to drown out the cries of go slower coming from someone who i’m ignoring, what can’t hear you. voices in my head. gesus christ i’m going crazy. Fuck that, I’m the night rider, I don’t slow down or go crazy for anyone especially not backseat drivers or passenger seat ghosts of christmas past. I pull a cider out my bag I managed to steal from my uncles little private reborn Christian stash under the sink to ease the passage back into the city. My mom will have to stay in the car whilst I meat my dealer at the spice emporium near killarney. Can’t have her fuckign up my deal, actually maybe I could sell her to Rich, that should score me at least two bombs, besides she menopausal and looking for affection. I ask to use the toilets at gorima’s taj mahal of tumeric, and do a bump, its ok, better than yesterday, its brown this time and when I’ve dusted the old perfume preferer I steal the dried flowers from the vase next to the washing basin and pop them in my bag, thinking innocently it will make a nice little ‘make up’ gift for the old lady, besides they look like dried up poppy bulbs and you know I love a good old poppy. I’m now in a semi confidant mood as I point out the crack dealers and hookers to my mom but she’s not impressed and I feel sorry for her that she can’t enjoy this scenery, so I pull out the dried flowers but still no smile. After we break down because I didn’t put petrol in, I meet a rather nice but tubby new southa frican business man who drives me to the petrol station, pays for the petrol whilst the old bag sits and sulks back in the car outside the phansi museum, murmering about hijackings and the loss of her ballet dancing daughter to drugs under her breath, oh what a life we lead when first we something something to deceive, well i’m not deceiving no one around here, no sirree, do you know petrol is green, its beautiful i could drink it, wear it, swim in it, make love to it and set myself alight with it. We exchange business cards and since I don’t have any I give him a fake number in his cell. On and away back to the home of heartache where as I walk in I am informed that I have to pack my bags and leave tomorrow immediately, don’t give a fuck where you go, just go, you deceiftful, lying, disgusting, ugly, ungrateful, piece of shit, my father slaps me across the face and throw me on the floor, mylip is bleeding. the police are here, I’m fingerprinted, there’s 114 syringes found in my bedroom and two empty crack pipes in my underwear drawer, that and my reborn again aunty has suddenly lost her camera, which points straight to me because you know as she so eloquently wrote me YOU ARE A DRUG ADDICT YOU LITTLE FOOL. I think she sounds jealous and spiteful, I think its time to leave only I have nowhere to go, except those few angels who speak to me late into the night and tell me not to pull the trigger of the gun that’s sitting on my lap. bang bang.
if you want it so much well then have it all
i see you
Last night was cold, dismal, dismantled, tried to talk but it seemed no one on the other side was listening. The strange thing was that they were only about 2 feet away from me, how can friends and family become strangers in seconds. I look into faces and see disease, sadness, madness, failure and contempt. I see confusion too. I feel confused too. I took a walk through the farm late at night. Wrapped up in an old second hand blue rain jacket I had bought in Cape Town many years ago. Cape Town is back in my mind, the trouble, oh Trouble, what a feeling, its one that is sewn into my dna – just like Fela Kuti’s real name, Anikulapo, meaning one who holds death in his pocket. I wonder if there is a connection. The farm is silent except for the old mushroom boiler, which is giving off a sweet smell like good tobacco, I see a shadow of a man in the distance, as he comes closer he tips his hat at me, I nod back. The hills are falling into each other drunkenly, god I need a beer. Move to the country and find not one country tavern, what a laugh. I hang out at a hotel on some nights at a deserted bar, struggling and slurring with conversation to visiting salesmen in town for some conference, they buy me a glass of red wine and I entertain them with my tales that stretch and warp and then fall pointlessly into my lap as I sigh and excuse myself to the toilet. Thank the dear lord for toilets. The ground is muddy and the rain comes down harder, I take my jacket off and stand momentarily in this shower, begging for retribution, salvation from this stupid curse. I will bury the bottle tomorrow, I will let the blood congeal and form hard spots in my veins, then they’ll see. They’ll see that it’s not the rush but the block that causes one to scribble these thoughts. I am scared. I am grateful. I pass Bongisiwe’s house. It’s a wooden two bedroom with chickens in the yard. Loud gospel music is swimming through the windows and a faint light seeps through. It makes me happy to think that her family is inside. Bundled up, her doing her homework, her mom feeding the baby, her father watching the news on TV. I want to go in. I want to ask them if they can change the colour of my eyes and make it all right again. But I don’t because I don’t want to make it right, I want to make it wrong and therefore I am wrong….. apparently. I sneak into one of the containers and watch the spores growing in the hay, soon they will be fungi and people will eat them. It feels magical. Tomorrow I will feel magical, tomorrow I will begin again. I will move, I will smile, I will tell Suzy and nick that I love them desperately and want them near. I will travel great continents to hold them close to me, let them feel this black heart bleat, let them know that I am in control; I am the maker, the marker, the mast and the helm. How do you begin again, which moment dictates the direction? I am standing now in the big green field next to the lake. The boat has been set free. I sit and listen to the night. I sit and wander what to think; now that I have destroyed all that I love and love all that I hate.
i love a good Tantrem
Sometimes there’s more good times than bad times
Dogs are bone crunching behind my back there’s no more smack there’s now just
Chills
I feel the wind and I leave the thrills
Behind
We spoke about cane and licking face
We spoke about a lot of that
How it was all just a disgrace
For our parents around the fireplace
THE SUN IS LIKE A BAD WIFE
She told me I had an international twang
I told her I was just hung up on the bang
She told me that my style is on the seedy side
I lied I told her I’m just a seedy side lined kind of guy
Stop worrying about me I’m fine
I promise
I’m waiting I’m just waiting for the next line
2 seconds to bust, break, jump out that fucking windoww not even able to spell wwindow just one floor below not even a floor ground floor ground zero ground art fuck face the facts figure it out and deal with it I thought you spat out all your food where did it go i thought you hated it i hated you everytime you opened your perfect mouth made me want to smoke another jay drink another beer hit another line shoot another river. bust this lonely business its full of bull its shite its unfucking romantic it doesn’t work i’m tired of being lonely tire d of being tired tired of tired wired dried and uninspired whats the deal lady bird, got a little bikini wax in your eye making you cry well cry on this brat smack my arm smack it real good keep it coming never stop don’t make the pictures stop stop step to the beat get out on the street and hitch to the city city girl hit the beach the burn keep those palm trees on the right and the concrete on the write on the concrete sell the laptop the camera the what else is there oh a little gold oh my god pinky ring is that all you got left you got left baby girl so shut it and buy it and bring it and hate it then crave it
its 3 months now more i guess stuck in the soliloquy how the hell did these letters get under fingers sticking to porous dumb dumb skin i am hearing the hearing the hearing the same song again so slow and beautiful and i miss that life so much so much can i even begin to foretell forete4ll foretell these adventures into the others that sit beside the dark consonant and back again and back again and want that again you were the dragon you are the dragging more like it sitting all coy in the corner waiting to burst ears and families and self extensions, yeah play it right at the back. this is me trying me on again, me putting the staples in the match sing it up the chorus was boras theres something in the shadow, in the splitter of that frame, missplelt it again that those eyes those deep etched eyes that penetrate so many dreams and are calling again and where are you and where are we to meet again and smoke and talk and look and not talk and know and know and know and that scarf around surrounds my neck as i knowingly eat that face and smile in my inner strength forever
the problem is you see i did it all already it created the just the pull that strong is so strong but it is a different time a different place a different way of moving on and i have to move on have to move on if i could do it all again i would if i could and i can and i will because i have to get into my cage again the one i create where i can create and not sit a vulture in that tree that i thought was a dark deep stature of the end which is here and never machine forever together again never again
so happy for music tonight i just might stick the gun in my ear again in my mouth sideway slowly chewing where did the sunshine go broken tiles understand the crooked smiles miles around to go to get back will sudan my man my inner voice my my mai tai white give in the vein give in the foot give in give in give in the sanctuary of clipped wings the vomitorium
the track plays twice,
its good to know what youre about its good to know its good being able to write its good to be under the about below it too freezing to go
i caper the horizontal packed up and left with breasts of steel me mi mo si go the last one is better to know
mothers asleep in hr bed dreaming of a world full of pride
daughters increasing the state
blowing signals blowing kisses goodnight
i remember hen i watched you the smoke the misguided directions of the men with cards around their neck protecting me here there in the hereafter but the press on my back my front my iris instigating that forgotten offer of something to toke to share something something where have all my something’s gone slowly evaporating with the cancer ……….. ;. when i write to you i write with my eyes closed
and time reveals the shivers on my legs and arms waiting for that moment that prick these bad words this dumb discontent this obvious this is the hem still in intact oh
and time reveals the shivers on my legs and arms waiting for that moment that prick these bad words this dumb discontent this obvious this is the hem still in intact oh
Someone can sew it up but she’s not good well then i will just do the job myself write it off write it off
As another the beginning again did we hit pause i must have missed that one did i do it tonight just now oh sorry i’m pretty out of it didn’t mean to disturb just disrupt and abduct myself kill myself kill the shelf and justify myself
And where are you
the animals are lying on their sides i own them and they own me and happy we shall be happy we shall flee defected you deflected me
its so sad to look into those eyes, those eyes that made me, those eyes that gave me, those eyes that can never save me, my mother always thought something good was about to come around and she was right
I miss you
How did we play those numbers you were good amongst the long necks sucked in sucked into the give me wine give me intravenous vine give me the black in the bars in the scars trust in you trust in the wheel against this chair and my stare in the reflection
tonight i think i might die again, god please let me die please let me disease this state cut a deal with the devil the disruption the itched skin gave me a scar on my spine
let thy be forever no more. this tunnel i will commence. Excuse me for my deviation there. It comes and goes. Normally in this sheath i am forgotten from all the times before and after. Shielded held and consumed the umbra i role played it when i was younger in dirty digs squats Mexican guitars kitchens falling in i must go back back back to the start what a journey ahead of me
where’s the voice gone
they pacified me for 10 seconds. held the broken wrist against sharpened canine, felt sick, misunderstood, dried and thrown apart and no focus but so much clearer and where where where do we meet again, give me the time, i can feel its rights now, and its me staring at you and you you you knowing we are together
and the sadness, and no good better stronger words and no language and no remembrance and so much of it, and i cannot write anymore for now i don’t think i can ever type again, i don’t think i will ever be able to feel again, and i don’t want to believe again, and i and i and you know me, you told me in the song song song i was only consuming the you know what i mean because we do and i miss you and lets get together and smile
i want to smile what does smile like I’ll give it a mike and we’ll be all right
‘i always wanted to eat glass with you again but i never knew how to toy without was tripping on the eels. Venus they make or break you under the violent sky with defensive beaks but you try to escape through my eyes i was afraid through an ice pick of ashes looking in
everyone looks the same everyone turned away used to the noose they obey
and whoever said that they would scatter separating the mother from child she can bear a broken eyelid claiming maggots from the sty and traces that she weaves she can skin you all alive
all the children go grounding their jaws your sweet smell of your toothless come kazaar
and the river will break make an ocean from this lake as they siphon off all of life’ tmv
uuurghh, what would i do without you, fcuk, you know the ripping skin feeling, i got it bad, bad, this week, the displacement, the knowledge, the dissertation, intercession, uncannyness, its all their in the background, i would show you an angle but i’m scared, a veracious account into london dirt, i manage to twine the Elysium round my neck with improbable incantation. Synthetic mutterings in my dreams, 8 guys standing on the stairs leading to the basement lacerate their throats with aphorism and proverb. there seems to be nobody left to talk to. it’s as if the perspicuous have gone to the earth – we are left with dexter symbols on these pages which will glow only when we will. have they taken all the ears?
facetoface
And the beat goes on as they say, and I awake to a grey day, feint rain, faint brain, twenty dollars to my name, a brief to obey, friends to dismay, thoughts to array, a thousand lives to repay. I’m slowly coming out of the Durban blackout, wet streets, bloodied sheets, running out of Pep stores with stolen sunglasses, haggling with whores and pimps at the court houses. There is a car, they say, a golden sedan, with four aerials, that intends to catch out little gang, they have our digits the lucky pigs, now my cell lies on old digital tapes on my shelf, sans battery, sans a care in the world. Cannot be contacted, will not be obliterated. I took a red doll like a red pill and lost it on the dancefloor, penance penance, a pennyfor your thoughts dearest, don’t be mad with me, its all accidental.
Day one and the broken shadows on the wall give way to nothing cept mindless dwitherings flashbacks rock stars rehab hash smack passout black out yellow submarine a love in a wanting to change the world a not feeling enough of that deep deep pressure that manipulates at will that curdles the heart from within that makes the spirit want to castrate the very sad marrow of our disenchanted eyes the ones who made me of a born into this deviance the one whose sorrow bites intricately soothing when necessary flytingly forward when at will. And why were they all here to see me with fake love and care and concern and in order to hear the next chapter the next episode the next fantastic tale of ruin and regret and how am i going to get any more drugs and where is my doctor and payday and thewhite car that turn surreptitiously up the avenue on demand after a brief promise and lie and prostitution.
All i know is that i want to get out.get out of here,not as in yesterday when my only way of out was to lie spasmodic like a broken egg curled up in tasteless saliva crying like a broken donkey calf, alone in the madness and the dreaming. But doctor does not know best she does not know the cracked neck she does not know the yearning, she asks about bi polarism she asks about wanting necessity she asks but she doesn’t hear as they all do. I could sit in my own shit for 8 hours without anyone knowing. They would just placately call my name on the register to stand in line for little pills that i haven’t been allowed enough of. And where did my energy go. And where are my friends this all a trajic love song and i’m the one left wounded.
I guess its allright for a while to spas out and not think think too hard, think too much. It’s all right for a while to drop dead and forget and have a gass and a laugh at all the rest of them all running around turning upside down making a living loving and forgiving. I like to take a little holiday from it all, climb up the walls, black out in a question, try hard to fake a mention of those important details that keep the world a go go, that keep’s life on it’s habitual yo yo. Yeah i would like to get out of it now, if you’ll allow me too. Will you allow? Do i need your permission. Admission only granted you’re cured.
My hands are turning grey my brain is turning grey my toes are grey grey is the day that the lord hath made. There’s shit dripping in the bowl, my bowels are a mess, there is little regress, brendon says i am sounding better today whatever that means. He says i asked him to slip me a half jack. A half jack of what i bellow, a half jack would do me in somethin nice and mellow, ease the stress a little bit, get me better i say, take this nervous anxious exotically redundant pain away today.
But no one gives in not the lords at the inn not the people we trust in nor the people we don’t. And for one little drop and for one little pill and for a little bit of powder i;d give my last flower. Pushing up daisies like right madam i’ve got special for you, two pennies and a pound for a gram and a straw and you’ll be right up that merry go round will never want to come down everagain my little lady friend.
I guess every writer needs the intrigue the highs and the lows the psych wards the bastards the bitches the ill mouthed snitches. Every writer needs to know when to say yes and when to say no, when to apologise and when to appeal when to get out and when to feel ill, every writer has to have the time to put words to paper to put paper down and pick up the jury hurl abuse at the crowds stay that way forever or be one of the unfound.
I’d like to think i’m different i’d like to think profound i’d like that diamond on the wall to be real, i;d like to be found dead drunk and underground. Icare not for the lving i care not for sacred ground i care not for their medication i care not for their which way is way round. I care only for me the way i see things i care only for what’s in my mind i care only for the next high the next very big one where there world revoves diluted where the worlds problems and preciousness is absoluted in a self swilled blitz and a fit of nevermore the angel nevermore the sitter nevermore thepeace broker breaker. Oh no she’s at it agin the wrong imagery always wins out doesn’t it my friend just doesnt it but that imagery in its liquid form is so delerious so precocious so very very seductive that to escape the price is not too have lived at all. By far and large the people perspective perception predominates the circular circumanstances that are appearing overground and for what and for why is this waiting and for whom am i waiting for old woman like neptunes tendrils gathered in the neck sees me at will without care or concern for the dying for now i am like the dying i am like thepassing i am the passing for nothing can stop this spiral nothing can shield the bridge from th eocean thats just ahead that wants to be fed the great deciever they call it i call it the my only believer.
I’ve done it again got cooped up with damn hen can’t handle the stuff and just wanting it so much i will try and will break i will at will and at fake but there’s no stopping this now once will all it will take
I will continue tomorrow……………..
facetoface
i put a voodoo curse on you
Squalidness and squalidness in the city of Durban, police everywhere, trying to make a quick buck, the kids don’t mind, it aint gonna stop them going out. Short hair, short tempers, short drinks, skirts and short on attitude, the suburbs, the burden of holidays, the Winston was closed by 10pm as we drove up, gangstas on the corner and a feint light in the car in front of us, a prostitute and some old guy making out. Bump this shit. It all happened last week Thursday. I was worried about the Pillar, seriously worried, I had received this call, it was a brash, rushed call along the lines of, ‘somebody’s ratted me out, they’re on to me’. What the fuck, who’s on to you? What you on boy, where you been boy? The line went dead, I phoned around, all the kids on the block that might have had dealings…… but nothing, I was pretty blacked out by now, sitting in lexes flat, bleeding out my arm, an old 80’s movie on the tv, Nigerian voodoo masks on the wall, a buzzing in the passageway. Don’t ask me why I was so worried. I’mean fuck you know these types of guys, paranoid about every private number. But there was an edge to the voice that made me weary. I left the flat and decided to head down to the pub, it was round midnight now, I did a couple of snakes of blow, but left the stash under the couch cushion, camera in hand, appreciating the deep dark cool of the night. It was there I saw four police cars forming a kind of laager around that jack rabbits place, you know the one that shows rugby and serves finger baskets, these white cops were beatingup on these young dreadlocked dudes, banging them into the back of the van, mass hysteria, veins bulging out their forehead kind of stuff, me standing on the corner zooming in and out, not believing the lens view, when thwack, down on the tar goes my body, mouth filled with blood, cop dragging me up by my hair, stealing my camera, throwing me in a van, cop station, holding cells, film deleted, tooth missing, a long walk home.
But I got their names, they’re police reservists, they’re going down, motherfuckers.
Migraine. Wrinkled space……….. and black. Constipation vomits out my mouth and nose and ears. There are Earthworms crawling inside of me. There are eruptive ugly ejections in these marbled eyes. Staring at the mirror and pimples erupt onto the glass. One impersonator challenges the silence in an over over-zealous dance unsticking the broken platforms rusted discontent, melodrama and I feel this is a nightmare and I’m stepping out. Transfixed by these information codes. Music disintegration reflects old hands holding onto lightning.
I wander through the thick orange curtaining and get lost in the darkness. I get swallowed by some kind of poison. A shape and then I rise and scream, my ribs break open slowly. This shakiness propels me. It is driven and annoying. My stomach is upset. It is sliding. Hollow, I looked in your eyes this morning. They are not from this planet. I’ve asked you – where is it that you put away the keys. The remote for this gate. Heaven the second it opened – cracked deliverance of a maladjusted donkey king. Now heaven stands so visible. I see it there – it is in recall. The breeze is calling me a junkie. I am smudged. You just sat there. It was as if you couldn’t understand it – this moment. Bars of aluminum and black sliding across this homicidal monologue. This motion. My tears are burning me. – my whole life is expanding into a syringe. This landmine will not detonate. It is silent. It is a present for me. I am a present. I am. . . This landmine and I will detonate. And with explosion your eyes will be residue.
Oh yeah just a note, there is a rather unfortunately arrogant lady whose name rhymes with jail, a reborn christain type, totally self satisfied spreading vicious lies about your dear lady of the rant, don’t believe everything that you read nor that you hear breathed out of her presumptious manipulative mouth. Do as Jesus would and turn the other cheek.
Kisses/goodnight
must we burn?
Twisted mister, hows a few pennies for the sister? She’s alone now behind those white bars, staring oh no, not at what you might think, mr wilde, not at the stars, not at the sheets, not at the wood, the gash, the hollowed out browned out, retribution of 15 seconds since the last hit, the last miss, she’s staring at you, miss, hows to give her a prick, you prick.
Yesterday was beautiful, dragon man came over and we played in the river, in the dam, in the murky water, pipes and bottles, the mud trying to sink me down amidst the reeds, the weeds, him swimming way out into the middle of that warm water, god I would love to be deep in that warm water, the middle of the birth, the defect, the long walk back up, the camera that was faulty and showed 3 sides to me, the me that wouldn’t stop talking and staring at those blue eyes, the ones behind the shades, the ones that understand then disrupt and put it together all again.
I’ve said farewell to the city for the day, I will not venture down there for a good few daze, its all good, I’m learning the craft, the fingers wrapped around the talent, that’s been neglected, sucked into the bottom of another bottle, blue and twinkling. .
I have to write a best of 08 and I can’t stand the thought of declaring – deciphering the past 12 months, was it 12, what month is it, what was best, please tell me, I cannot contest, I am not at my best, you’re right, its all a contest. I’m not playing, I’m taking a rest.. I’m aching to be on the grass again, running through it feeling the spiders in my veins, but the energy is all fixated on the centre of my forehead, somewhere right in the back, where my brain tries to decipher those washed out morse codes that don’t seem to belong and all those songs, oh god, don’t I sing them all day long. Just buy me a book about myself and I’ll shut the hell up, ok, but without someone to hold me, its all ranting and revamping the cranium in the heart in the head in my bed he told me he loved me for my brain and breasts, well at least that old boy’s honest, an honest prick. The valley of the black pig.
Sentimental mood I’m in today, maybe because someone told me its xmas next week. Next week, how strange, I’ve had enough next weeks, to be frank, how about a last week, like to remember one of those. Speed fasting, spacing out, spiking in and hats are enchanted dancers on my head, to contain the tremor. Did I tell you about this little boy who once stuck his fingers in the electrical socket to prove he loved me? Well he was 8 and had freckles and silver in his mouth. I never loved him, I never will, I will never have my black heart locket ate.. I heard a band from Mozambique they were oblique and I sat sideways on the couch and looked at my dragon friend and wandered how it all might end and if it didn’t would I die before my mother and would I cry for any other.
I hated working in that office, confined to a space, in the corner with all of the city bursting out of my fingertips. Dealers calling collect from reception, so much attention, I’d duck to the toilet 10 times a bloody day in order to come back and make sense of the tabloids. I try not to lie, but when I’m caged like that the lies pour out as thick as artery fluid, as thick as I can lay it on as long as I’m on then I don’t give a song. I can argue a lot, boy can I argue. Boy can I scare you. I scare myself, stuck in the back room, writing whilst the arguing grows louder, the boys alive, he’s a real live one this one, can’t stop me now, don’t even try, I’ll suffocate you with kindness with my darkness, with my exhaustion, my confusion, I’ll tie you up with my keyboards strings, I’ll make you come, I’ll make you sing. Lonely lonely, sitting around, sitting and contemplating, working berating. I walked through the heat this morning, it was a long walk, I heard Lindsay had a heart attack, he had a poker under his arm and a cigarette in his lips, he told me that whilst I sat on his lap. the straw is smoking and tomorrow will be a new day, tomorrow will be just the same, tomorrow is today.
I can’t control these simplistic moods, they will not stop, its me dying, its me flying, its me on the roof. Its me fucked again. I can see, you can see me, so lets just look, look like crazy, look like there’s nowhere else to look but here, but safe, but tame for just a few days. Yeats wrote ‘for certain minutes at the least that crafty demon and that loud beast that plague me day and night ran out of my sight’.
But I can see him, I can smell him, right? Can you? did anyone misspell yeats with yeast? By the way.
To be honest I’m worried about my friend, she’s fired and retired and messing up and she’s not me, she is my friend I will tell you again, she’s banging over the speed limit and I’m afraid she’ll regret it and I’m afraid I’ll ignore it and then remember it when it’s too damn late. Thnking about that time when I was happy when it came together, when the frames were made in heavan and the past was all forgiven.
I’ve had people ringing my door, begging me for just a little bit more, a little more pain, a little more shame, oh dearest Claire, won’t you come out and play the game again. I will try and hold this up, not give a fuck, not give in or out, sit in this cauldron, roll that heat sideways, flip it around, stick it in, come up with what needs to be told again, just for you, just for me, lets make it through, this strange weekend. .
- blacks em hearts
i want it all
Twas a lonely road from last week to this day, sketchy, broken by silences, catty comments, lots of windows, a path that led to and from the city where police lights, destructive thoughts and hilltops fought aimlessly trying to secure their place in my intentions. I had sworn off the city’s blockades, the washing hanging over the balconies, the sullen stares of the young girls holding photographs of hairstyles. The bus rides, the taxi lifts, the tarred roads, the tarred lungs, the friends, the foes, the music, the clink of drinks, the smell of smoke, the presence of lines stretched along the cisterns. I spend my life in toilets. He was glad to hear my voice again, I could tell. This meant I wouldn’t have to wait long for the delivery. No he was sharp, fast, to the point, greeting me with a faint kiss just slightly off from my right cheek. They have to keep their distance, do you understand? They must allow just a little might from the respite of tainting their thick African lips against my sallow sweaty skin. I jumped out the car and headed back up to my vodka. The adventures which ultimately start in the suburbs, those suburbs that are tinged with red clay, green walls and petrol stations on every corner, and end here. I met pillar near the park, chefboy joining us later to catch up on news and reviews. P was out of luck, been thrown out of his own home, which are always temporary and fast won to find a new abode. I keep the thought of us living together again in tight memory but reality always provides me with adventures that fling me far away from his claws, thank god for angelic misencounters. I store scars in drawers.
Its every young lass’s right to fight with all their day long sight to keep the darkness under the bed, to keep the madness fed up and misled, to sing only when your favorite song is around, to tell those that care that their love is unfound.
A rush.
Rushing around the shopping centres, I walk with a slow lethargic pace, I lose packets and presents, i run into an old friend, ‘she says’ I don’t recognize you. I tell her I don’t care.
There’s so many rough versions of us around, aint there? We show a side to ourselves depending on the weather, the side of the bed, the promise of cash and of a better tomorrow. I show a side to myself dependent on…. To be honest I just got sick of it all. I got sick of the dress up, the prance around, the fake commentary, the greeting card, the image in the mirror, the pace, the race, the getting up and going to bed. I got sick of it all. I was in the mood for reinvention. Sick of my friends, sick of the newspapers, sick of the slow long line from here to nowhere. I was scared of somewhere. I retreated into myself, into sedatives, into those moments of subtle clarity and forced whispers. So what if I feel asleep in the middle of your conversation, it was boring me anyway. Too many bills to pay, to many laments to drown, too many wives to fondle and words to articulate. I just thought I’d drown myself in wine and powders. But I didn’t drown, I am still standing up, though tentatively holding on the side table. Too many books at my disposal, too many love letters scattered across the floor, too many problems with the country, too many faces to paint on with blood and sweat and pills and telephone calls. Disconnect those damn calls. Who the fuck keeps hounding me all the time. Leave me alone, let it alone, carry the corpse over the bridge and dump it at the bottom of the lake, where only the bloated remains will serve purpose for poetic endings.
I’m obsessed with those that are living in a similar vein. Those that hurt as much, those that will do anything for a few minutes of spontaneity for the deep severed price of pain. I spent 3 days awake running around the city, visiting ghosts, young couples came over to the coup, if I had a guitar I would have strummed it. The kitchen was severely gross. It had built up the disgusting grease and grime of weeks of visitors, the floor was so slimy I had to stand on newspaper to reach the pot, to boil the water for a cup of tea. Pillar just slept, his vulgar shape between dirty sheets and feint sunlight through the blinds. How long had we been carrying on like this, I do not know. There were small packets discarded everywhere, bits of baccy, old filters, R100 rand notes rolled up and a flooded bathroom. I had to leave and never come back.
The last day of the year and it’s a pity mess I find myself in. Unable to sculpt out thoughts on the script, unable to write these few words as I sit with a glass of red wine, 6 tranquillisers in a tin box, a substitute for the one gift I am try to run away from and looming deadlines fighting demons in the few hours of sleep I try to steal. I can’t remember the last time I really smiled. I remember being happy once, but it has been torn from me by greedy thoughts, by greedy poetry, by greedy ambition, by greedy desires. Dying to run is not an option. Dying maybe is. The rest seem to be full of smiles, things like parties and drinks to look forward to I’d rather burn my tongue with an iron. It’s a strange sensation getting old, all that energy resting on chance has been so rudely used and squandered that to start again requires the might of a mule and a box of 16 year old hearts eaten an hour before waking. Someone has promised me routine and rhythm tomorrow, I am going to try it. Goodnight bilo, don’t hurt yourself too hard. .
i won't look in
I was a try hard, try harding, starling, darling little boy with the fringe in the dirty pool with red worms under his fingernails. And I know I loved yesterday but I’ve forgotten it already and the sun is in my lashes and tresses. And I’ve just retired to the bathroom and turned all the taps on to drown out the sound that surrounds me. Water is a strange substance I tell you, it can cleanse, it can change, it can vibrate next to bare skin and cause shivers. It alienates, it moves. Its funny I tellyou. More should have been written about water. Last night I couldn’t get my fingers to type. All strange sparrows were falling from the nails. Misspelt words like the misspelt sentences that had spewed from this tongue earlier on. I vaguely remember. Something something. I lost money at the shops, I lied to the pharmacist, I produced tears, I tried to correct the wrongs but that badness inside stopped the action. have i mentioned that i am a bad bad man. a bad girl that deserves centuries of damnation, hell and brimstone, show me fire. I spoke to dragonman’s best beloved, I heard from Caterpillar. I tried to forget the fake stones I had stolen, that had been left all magical like in a packet next to the drive. I tried to get to bed, but the duvet was soiled, the pillows under my feet and the light of the mushroom farm in my retina. I am a retina. I am the all believing, seething nightmare I’m running from. For twenty minutes peace I would sell my mother to the wolves, I would cut a straight line on my forehead, let the thoughts pour out. I was in the city briefly yesterday, just in time for a couple of lines, a talk by the bar, a very important meeting with the foreign nationals, not the ones that were thrown from the window. These are west Africans I am dreaming about. Then back to the meadows, the hills, my little pocket of insanity. Wondering around the night like an insomniatic beast, roaming the outside of your window, I won’t look in. no I won’t no matter how hard the sorrow the seether the stretcher, the men in white coats, and those in green that cut the grass before the snakes can find you, no matter how hard the pace, the last breath, the times of monsters and miracles tries to strangle me, no I won’t look in.
Did I tell you I fell in love. Summer romance with a sweetheart, yes a sweet heart. One of those untainted undoctored lads, that see the chaos and hold, mould then betray it. I don’t know what he wants with me, must only be trouble. I cannot think of another way for us to carry on. Ay my pirates, we shall see where that penny lane changes. but to you my love, think of me often and pretend that i can look after you. pretend that i am the one, the two the shade and the glade. i will stop this ranting, i will stop the longing the wanting. its a phase they say, my phase has lasted days and days, but i will try once again for you, if you promise to remain black and blue.
I am snorting white lines on an unreleased tracks of the velvet underground cd, do you feel the irony, snorting some sense of serenity, some stench of brevity. Mr lou reed start talking to the media, I’ll find you on the purple mountain, castrate you and drink the juice of the time. I wish I lived in a time. What a time I would have. I told you I spend my life in toilets. And the orange of the light, and the sheer oppression of this heat makes the boogie man creep out in the early morning. I must sleep, i must gain a sense of perspective, I must tell that boy that I love him and I only wanted a kiss once he had gone.
- I’M IN DEBASEMENT YOU’RE IN THE SKY
It was one of those all encompassing heat waves that take out the brain, the finer workings of the back of the head, the skin crawling, desperate for simple respite, as if taking liberties with the fine sprays of the sprinkler was some kind of traitorship. I knew i had to rid the body of its poison and there was no other way to do it but through the sheath that keeps everything in its place. But god was i tired. Approximately one and a half years now of getting totally wasted, up the bracket, under the covers, bouncing off the planetary plan, overstepping the mark, begging, borrowing, slandering, being slandered, passing out in the black, in the light on the chair at that place on the corner. Didn’t matter where we went in the city, it was all the same as long as we had gear we were happy. I could chat to gamblers, nurses, one of the most interesting ones was some middle aged blonde haired bird who regulated your air temperature. Fuck i wish i had a personal one of those especially in the days you relent to the come down, when the skin’s scratchy, weak, the legs tired, the braindead, the ache in the neck, the eyes watering, the nose running, the blanket on then off, the pain of kurt cobain in the middle of the sneezes the dull dull head. The Winston became a new home. Its loud metal music pulsing through our ears, the screams, the pool playing, the oh no not another metal band, the run to the toilets, the oh shit, i dropped my gear down the toilets, the guy at the bar i found amusing, the cat getting a call and then fast as sparrows out of there. Back in the back seat, i would laze into that deprived heroin sleep be woken up by roadblocks. Going to fast,no licence sorry officer here’s a couple of hundred hows to let it go. No more money for gear. No worries, hit the road once again, drop off all over town, no we’re never coming down. A house party filled with kids in the pool. I spend 45 minutes in the bathroom trying to find a vein. A knock on the door, we’re running again. Don’t forget to be the way you are. Back rooms filled with backs and low dirty mattresses, broken computers playing the same song over again. More crack arrives at the back. A couple of rocks a couple of hits of sunshine. Need more. Jump on a taxi hit the inner city streets swop a phone a loan a packet for more racket ball. Telephone a friend, go for a 9am beer, its only the third day i’ve been stellar.The everlasting sunday. My face is starting to change, my minders are hassling again. A sleep over at home, found on the floor next to the bed, couldn’t make it all the way up there. Burnt curtains, tv on, music off the stereo drowning the quiet of the neighbours dreams. Run the bath water loud till it breaks the edge, still no vein still no damn try another needle,this one is thinner, this one goes in, thank god i’m hanging with the feeling again. This constant trip, guy taking my car home. The guy in the bed that is dead that died because i was off my head. We can’t make it stop its the pull of the race, some think its childish, some think its insane. I know that is i know it leads to the grave but for one little taste i’d do it all again…no i wont…i will i’ll prove them wrong, i’ll believe his songs, i’ll manipulate their calls, i’ll push on through the walls. Another blank night, the sun up again, the sweat, the legs like lead and the snort just to get out of bed. We’re scamps of our city. We’re in opposition to their change, we’re running our own little world where we argue, lash out at ourselves, lash out at the grim man on his way to work, that doesn’t want to catch eyes in case he realises those eyes are spies. Intoxicated like alien spawn, wondering around together and alone he calls every day, i got credit you see, i no longer write, i can no longer breathe. Don’t want to bath, bath is as bad as bad breath, two teeth now are missing, they couldn’t stand the lack of hygeine. Why would i care, whats in my head is much more obscene. Too many weeks, months, its 8 year with the smack, i love it i hate it i need it its wack. I can’t remember what things were like. Have i always been a fiend, did my brain work without poison, aah its a sweet poison, its a prison, its a.prism, its my own little paradigm, its the boys that come over, its the girls that never leave, its poetry, its not practical its the only thought i believe.
I never loved you anyway. You’re the lover that slams down the phone, you’re the partner that leaves me alone, you’re the bitch and the thief, the too many eggs in a basket case of a broken pace, your face on the other side of the phone sounded like hatred and despise, like my kisses, my eyes, my friendly demise.
Yes the race. But have i spoken to you about the initiation. I know i have i know i’ve forgot often sometimes maybe all the times baby. The initiation is the pinnacle for the young judas graduate. The chances are always how long you’ll last. I’ll last a life time, a life line, what a sordid squalid, swallowed little scene we have.
The air is biting my shoulders, its a rash piercing sensation. it runs up the back of the spine. I’m looking backwards into tomorrow but all i can think about is tonight.
the evening air is soft. beautifully soft, it delicately whispers on the cheeks, it’s so utterly divine that the eyelashes would willingly commit suicide if it would freeze the moment committing it to the archives eternally, the feeling of complete contentment, the mirage of the mirage. why do i feel this way, i feel this way because of four black packets holding the nectar of poppies, the dried, sorted seed, the genesis of what humans try so hard to attain that of placidity, the final stage of mohammed, jesus, buddha, siddhartha,
up the sky
What is the point of managers, agents, all of them. Why do they call when they shouldnt and shutit when they should. yeah, i’m supposed to be on call on call. I am, the bastard. I DID, I AM , i write that extremely large because it is an action, yes active as in moving, be it ahead, behind, side to side i am still moving regardless of all the bad decisions, i have grown up …slightly…. i have put work into these words, that formed thoughts in this head, that caused volcanoes to erupt that told my limboed caretaker to go get fucked. He just lay on the bed, a swollen little boy trapped in middle age, make that later middle age, for middle age implies the middle of a life, a life that has been passed by like he floated passed the dividing mark unless he lives to be a hundred and sixteen which aint going to happen, well not today. It must be a nice life where one can lie down when one feels like it, talk when one feels like it, destroy a pleasant atmosphere stabbing steel spikes in it – oh stay within close distance the assertive foghorn, protect your dear little lass from interrogation, from the menacing letters of others from writing in the blackout from the sunlight. Did I tell you I was in the middle of salvation when the stop button got pushed, where what was next door now no longer lies in store and alas they do not call me anymore. For there are babies to be fed, there are others scripts to be read. You best get back in line, oh fuck it lets just have another line. Daydream with a gegenschein, fumble though the nights seeing the remnants of moonshine. I woke up thrice in 5 hours. Once at the friends unaware, then on the floor next to my bed, them talking in the next room not cared if i was misunderood or dead, third was the same as the the last but everyone was asleep and i lay in bed overdosed and undressed Shhhhhh, whilst we sleep in this dark bed They cannot see what they remember and that’s okay if my face could look at yours to day Shhhh we are sleeping in this dark bed the kids are supposed to be bad they say, its you with the problem, its me with the problem, funny problem to have. friends deliver their deeds at the greenest of times. When the buds are about to open, when the police commit crimes, Its a double entendre – its a wit thats not smite its the far beyond yonder Its the bark without bite I wonder if these friends of mine take time to figure it out or do they just pretend my lines are sublime, my manner a whisper disguised as a shout where are all the good time girls they say? fucked off and fucked in the night of yesterday
its my wife and its my life
writing another script, the scripts keep coming like a horny old man watching ktv. i sat at the cocoon last night watching comedy, drinking vodca, the city in the distance, all bizaare lights whilst back home trauma, tears, tarantulas and a ticking clock fought each other for space. i don’t remember driving, diving. i was thinking about the boy again..This boy with the soft smile, with those features that you could write about for days, the boy with the pearly eyes, the shy laugh, the feminine build. His touch changed everything. I spoke at length about the past 8 years, the trials, the highs, the journey of the wounded soldier holding a limp flag with a portrait of my face. He listened and nodded, his attention spellbound then broken, i wondered what he was thinking. Did he see through it all, did he remember me before the city lights had swallowed me up, before the long drives, the breakdowns, the rehabs, then the glory, then the reputation, then the Aids, then the rape, then the awards, then the travels, then the fall, the stagger into the bedroom which only has space for one disciple. Could he feel the inititation that was upon him if he decided to hold my hand again. And if he did was that why he knew he must run. Run back to Soho, Kings Road, Brick Lane, the tubes, the rain, the gigs, the palace where all can be bought but only your love can be sold. Did he leave me behind because he knew it was over, it was all in memory, it was all still wrapped up in that bed where we met in the sky, swopped stars, gazed into the abyss. I can’t feel love i can only remember it. Maybe thats enough. Maybe its ok to only breathe out.
dear i fear we're facing a problem
you’re right its all wrong, its not, but it is, i’m the far scorching sun, you’re the one that i miss
pocket change
So its been a while since I’ve been able to commit words to paper or whatever this strange format is that sees me typing onto a screen, but the real live journal is always updated and one day it shall see itself in a format of old, called a book, where one can lie in bed at night, restless for the obscure visions that appear in the darkness of eyes that are resting. It’s been 10 days of sadness. What’s new? The truth is is that I am not a just like the sadf at a DA ‘rally’. anyhoooo a sad person no, I am not… Something happened thing jus happin along the way though. The great gloom seeped in. I got tired My mother collapsed in the bathroom about 3 weeks ago. I found her thank god, yes you you cunt, me i did thanking you thankingme ; I had decided to make my ed up self back to my parent’s house that night. That night I was at the cocoons with cat, watching comedy and snorting whatever we could hustle. And we’re damn good at the hustle. But by midnight some strange compelling thrust made me leave that dirty chair, climb in my brother’s car and make the journey into the hills. My father was asleep. He doesn’t drink, not a sinner, but had had one glass of red wine which caused a deep slumber and my mom in her selfless manner had crept to the guest bathroom to expel whatever was aching her without waking him. It was here where I found her. A shriveled up 45 kg woman, the woman who I would take my own life for, the woman who knows my secrets, the woman who can’t understand my self hatred, the woman who love me as if I was god herself, and maybe kids i am, who fuckin knowsor gives a fuc when i could be lakshmi in disuise/disgust. skmshed her to the hospital that night, Westville hospital, a ridiculously priced establishment that doesn’t offer you a cuppa tea, without slitting your throat. We had no money to pay the 2500 a day charge, but dear, dear friends of mine, came to our aid, but the pain in her stomach grew more intense. our little family is having a hard time as are many i guess, my father can’t sell his wares; my mom has had no choice but to look on the bright side, as is her nature which gnerally pays for nothin Me, well I have films to make and books to write. i problems. So we finally find out that my mom’s problem is cancer. That word, though most of you reading this will have heard it before in your family. Its part of our bodies, its life, we grow it, we tend it, and then we spend a fortune trying to rid ourselves of it. My mom found herself at greys hospital in pietermaritzburg, a provincial hospital where the toilets stink of piss, and even as I cut my lines of smack on the cistern cover was stuck in the rather bizarre situation of trying to block my nose from the rank and snorting in my relief at the same time. The point other than the demise of my goddess, my beautiful, liberal, kind, generous, and no I am not exaggerating, for my mother, for all who really know her, who are few, as she suffers from reclusive ness, an infliction I think I share myself which is why I participate so fondly with the narcs, in order to ingratiate myself with . Nodding off at my mom’s hospital bed, being escorted out of her room, having my dad take photos of me whilst I’m slurring my way thorough another boring fucking story I’m telling him about frogs under my bed, whilst he’s driving, finding me passed out on the stairs outside their house, with a cigarette burning on my throat, but too fucked to notice. Pawning my video camera and laptop, ok admittedly the money was to help with my mom’s hospital bills, but I did wrangle R700 to get me through the next day. It’s all so bleak. Today I woke up and thought fuck it, I’m going to the doctor I have no money, but he’ll just have to wait till till the end of the month, like my accountant and all the rest of the Samaritans that have helped, and I’m going to get a prescription for subutex, and I’m going to sell what ever else I can and I’m going to buy this outlandishly expensive cure for my even more outrageous habit and I’m going to try and get clean again. Because believe me my friends, when your own parents are begging you, especially your sick mom In her government hospital bed saying’ please Claire, I hate seeing you like this, I’m going to be fine, don’t do this to yourself. I want the Claire I know back.’ It breaks your fucking black heart, whatever I have left of it. And what happens, I get to my doctor and they’re closed for renovations until next week. With the new rulings in s.a because of the abuse of subutex, if you give a fuck you can read about it on the internet how for instance in France its becoming on of the most abused drugs and being sold on the ‘black’ market) anyway chemists are being incredibly vigilant in their dispensing there of, especially when you have new c=scripts from other gp’s) I don’t quite know why I am offloading all this and I’m sure by now you’re pretty bored, frustrated and angry with me, thinking why can’t she just get it together. The thing is I can. I’ve always been pro- choice when it comes to drugs. I hate the way a person’s drug use is used very conveniently when it comes to funding, support or whatever the situation is where someone is basically trying to fuck you over. I think I just want to state for my own personal record, the messed up events in shorted form least I forget, if I live past next week. Because to surmise, 1. I need a script to get subutex so I don’t have to go through withdrawals and I can finally stop this preposterous (how upper crust) cycle I find myself back in. 2. I need R20 000.00 to get this next short film off the page and onto the screen, script etc all is done, and the response from the locals has been overwhelming, there are obviously a lot of people in this town that want to see Durban as it really is from a certain cretinous level, this ensures, kids working on the project get paid and so do the drug dealers in order to use their territory (only for this reason promise) 3. please, even though I have lost any faith in a god of any form, shape or ideal, I ask you to ask your guy/gal to look after my beloved mother and 4. what good is a blog if you can’t be honest? I open myself and my stories to you in the hope that someone out there feels the same and that knowledge makes pulling the trigger, overloading the syringe or jumping out of the roma that much less a feasible option. Peace / power/ Claire angelique
my mom came back home this morning, my emaciated kimono drgaon, i’m glad she’s home, i’m glad if found the coolest book shop in the world, i’ m glad i’ m about to go to sleep i guess i i’m just glad, what a fleeting feeling
debacle of the covers
i’ve been up all night but feeling AAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLRight, though left wing stub in hurting bakc, thrwoing the dice back into his eyes must have put a right rank smile on his face. the morning is beautiful, the scar on the stomache gold and the mind feels fresh, feels bold. i’m going into the city today, got lots to do, lots to do little girl, get those wares sold, go sale those wares, for all your former i don’t cares; big story expected in the weekender on this little pop tart scented heart. little beet scared about it to tell ya the truth, i read it very late at night, cleared and crafted, written by the might pen of mr worsdale, but presss on motherfucker, press on gogo girl. i had no smokes last night but helped a scarab roll over his little body puffing as he gained breath back into those black winged beasts that fly around the outside light. 2 days clean but robbery is on the cards tonight, the criminal mind and artists are alike? no, yes my dear, i read it this m orning after no sleep just sweat, i’m an obdurated old bastard i tell you. man to land are on at burn, so taking a taxi down that side of the durban city, meet the boys, light up a couple, swing back a few, ya know ya know what i’m sayijng? so if i don’t harakiri myself before the end of the weekend these long weekends of mine, i tell you about it on the morrows, ethics and aesthetics are inddeed not the same, out ta hear
where are the vicious when we need them, not hiding under the door, on the other end of the line, the lack of sunshine in their eyes, their memories resume only after a couple of days. we’re like that aren’t we, us locals from lands scattered, lands seared, crisped burnt by their crap, our crap, an incessant need for greed. this bitterness perhaps its only available in rain. perchance in mist, but better in the one dimensional, this passage of writings this dreary, afternoon, shower, the way you can see behind the trees, behind the sleaze. oh m death shall come from my companions. i don’t know how long a human can last without food, but i know with drink, its pretty short. maybe a couple of hours. i’m sitting by the window, wrapped up in wool, whilst those demonic gnomes wait. wait to create a breath of reality. its boring here, yes, i’ll be honest. got back, left, came back. the city was madness this weekend, between lines of ecstcacy, coke, speed, just no smack. not htis weekend. i promised myself, she must come right, when the mothers wound is healed all is allowed and it was headed and the angels smiled and i was steered a little further away from complete present wound. now the most perplexing, the agreement, the tacit, longing, rather than you should be angry, i say to myself, hold yourself as accountable as possible, prating with the world, against this sacrificial oxymoron of sense. i delight in sparing him, her, and they. whitle lights effect, my own success, the mattress, the chill outside there, neither i ate nor slept less, in my youth, in my virtue, now alas agone, i fear, the pursuit. i see them all around me on this one. pursuing out of boredom, out of guilt, out of filling up the time, the only reason, i guess i understand. i can’t stand the rain, i wish i ccould tear pages out of this journal, i wish i could tear the passion, make it unavailable, make it cease. you saw her turn your back on you. yeah, don’t they all at some point, even your closest. its hard to hold your most dear. its hard that fear, i repeat. trust to memory, strange influence, strange bar, strange is perhaps not as delightful as previously thought. i amn not well, oh well thats if anyone gives a fuck is quote from byron, so simple, just like the problem but never the solution, yes? no never my friends
ace hag kiddo
they tried to make me go to rehab and i had to go, go go, i have had a strange two weeks, on killer killers, running the streets, the squats, the dirty rooms down town, behind the backs of the back handed, the deals,the breakdowns, the smack, oh that fucking smack, in the bath on the floor, its hyper reality, its all going down till you’re down and they don’t want to see your pale face your frail frame, your pins, your choke, your drool, your voice ever again. i had to run, and run i have to where and what, i don’t know, its throttle its wrap is so searingly sad seductive, my sweet prince, he lets me go then comes back again. one more try, just one more attempt at the cleansing, god willing it will all go well, if not, well just let me burn slowly smiling in hell
demian
Sore backs on the break, 7 days on the take. Restless sleep, restless feet. I was sitting on the edge, struck with a sensation I had not felt for many a night. It was one of indifference, no satisfaction, no way of looking forward or back. Just sitting stone like, staring into 6 mirrors mirroring their target, me, the ego, the selfish serenade being played at the window, the knocks in the back of the head, the breath insufficient, the taste sour and scalous, I slipped away and wouldn’t come back. The first 3 days is all about voice, vice and reason. I rowed a boat across the lake killing plants and energy, blue boots on, reeds in my hair, Ophelia knocking at the helm. I walk and walk through the forests here, up the pathways, around the farm, I stare for hours at the shifting lilies, the deep orange, the birds the rock, how can this mean anything to me. I move again, this time to write, write write write, its all that’s left, its all that wills, there is nothing else to do. I think I’m receiving the tableau of what the scenario means, its frozen, drawing me into its macabre needs and the foretelling might have begun again. He contacted me and yet I could not tell him the truth. He contacted me and I hung my head in a noose. Repetitive sounds , slick offences, moods, brusque, effervescent, avuncular, I’m the heroine, chasing the sunlight around the to the back door, the two halves, the golden calf, Golgotha and then nevermore. Experiment with the evil they tell you, take a chance, steep your imagination in the colours, dream a little dream, remove reality, express the debauchery, make it all right, just not tonight….
fin de siecle
Just walk two paces to the left, you there, got it get it good. Oh well it’s 2am madam, I’m a crazy mother crook, no peace, no sleep, the black horse escaped through the fence again and the dogs are going crazy, as if they were Olympians, damn pack of hounds, pack a pound of brown, sneezing baby stare, upside the head, mourning and dread, I feel a change in there. the kettle’s boiling but the milk is off, the shelves are packing dusty grime, fat pigs stare down, fat feathers fair, fat lip fat face face fat frown. I heard from Mickey and from mike they’re not the same if I’m not there, I nearly escaped back into prison yesterday, so close, so near so unfair to hitting the highway back home, back to the streets, back to the city back to the gritty get back my pretty.
She always knows whats best you know. That sun rising up over the bridge, the chatter on the lip, the lips achatter. Boxed and scarred, mental pilgrimage, I always think about it, that other side, but I can think about it without physically going there to hide// the marquis indeed is dead in me, the watermark has taken hold, the colors true and bold, the flying fellas upon my lash, I kiss him twice then take it back. Tremble little legs all the way down, the valid sequel awaits, 3 sentences ago, I looked up and realized I wasn’t in my skin, I had moved, I was rushing hovering above the chair, and no matter where I looked Faust was there. I’m a blade runner, a grave digger, a tool and a newt, I’m a junkie, a puppet a puritan suit. I thought about love, and I thought about them, I thought about girls and I thought about men, I thought I saw some malice creep back into my mouth but really it was Alice sleeper leper girl and lout. Too many thoughts too early can make you mad but too few thought too far late can also get you stabbed. I decided to paint the animals the jugular the lock, I sent, I saw, I smell, I snore, I set fire to the burning bush
silicone face
Walking on water, real time, gelatine and dark horizon, initiation and baptism, the trees shuddered and the night held off. Wakened by reason, when junkies desert you, tell you you’re looking better today than last night, then let you run out of a bar with a beer and get nailed by some slimy manager. I’m still battling to see in the early hours the point of sleep. I sleep yeah, I walk on water, I wake, I dribble the dreams, switch on the light and merely switch it off as it was on. The rooms are filled with wreck and ruin, cameras on the floor, bits of pieces of thoughts on paper, elephants, bubblegum balls, cowboys and hats. I felt the feeling yesterday again, its middle stomach, born out of fear I think, that nauseating nervousness, too many people are looking at me, pull the head down further, shades and a giddy step. The first words that come out are mumbled. The video is a foreign nationals flat and I can’t get it out. Muslim ladies screaming at me across a confused hall, I’m studying the mole on her cheek, tie my shoelace and begin again. Then the girls school and ghosts of clippity clap shoes, gurgles, giggles, wide eyed, hands on my tattoos, I slide across the floor and try to explain. 7 seconds and I’m stuck reading the Zimbabwean in a coffee shop, head even lower, coffee cup filled with gin, run back to the hills, light the weeds and wipe my face from the mirror. Things are getting better. Thanks for the support.
in the garden of the stones
I woke up to a morning that made me forget the past night. How simple things seem, bring money and due carrier brings me lenses, hand money over, obtain a small white bag, wait 7 minutes realize the lens is not returning and then head as fast as I can to the highway, how ambiguous. Arrive alive they tell you, I just want to arrive. Steeped to the brim with volatile juice, picking fruit, pictures in the fields, hot plates in the microwave, gravy is his adolescent self, snapping pics, laughing at my misdemeanous, all the photos I take are blurred, will I ever get the hang of it. Ive been thanked thrice times thrice this morning for my endeavours but how far is the conclusion I seek, the needle was present yesterday and I fell fast fell asleep on the toilet, a nurse helping me to bed, oh where be thee ibogaine. Full throttle and full life but asleep, a few steps higher than the elite. I ponder the return of the dragon man, the sun shines in my eye, the roses lilt their seductive scent up my nose where other murky chemicals and nirvana sit. Things are going well I’m told, I’m a centerfold I’m told. So many little girls are looking up and I in my sorry state lie and lie and lie again, not for me, not for self again but to make sure they never know the pain. And why is this so, dear rant, why separate the scorpions and ants. Because the ants they thrive, my old life must die and addiction must pull up its pants. Can I be a speaker for those dear souls who know but don’t know. Can I? Can I be a leader with a gold heart and forsake the black and the crack. But powder and dust, my will and my must, is fleeting and flighting untamed.
There’s a wedding here at my hospital on Friday, I must film and I must write love poems for those who can fold paper, fall in love and handle life in the adult lane. For your enjoyment I will print these to you dear readers, only out of self doubt, Helen Steiner rice eat your non tainted heart out darling, I am more lonely with you and more hysterical for writing this slosh
The last time I thought
About love
A butterfly closed my eyes
I woke on slopes green
I remembered what love means
A promise, a life with
My husband, my wife
The say new love grows on trees
But they’re wrong, love grows on thee
I see your reflextion
Your and my direction
And I feel like the birds and the bees
I used to think love would never
Hit me
An obstacle, a roadblock is love is she
Then the heavens they broke
And my heart duly stroked
Loves timely devotion
To thee
When I m not like you
You’re so like me
We’re forever, the horizon, eternity
When you smile mines a smile
But upside down
When you frown, I’m the
Frown the other way round
We’re weird and different
But how this glue binds
Two renegade hearts by her
Love defined
I know you’re my keeper, my
Believer, my life
I’m you’re seeker, you’re my fever
My husband, my wife
pussinboots
I don’t know what to do about my mother. Along with the chemo pills I’m losing her to lunacy. she is the worst version of herself and I am battling to love her. Well of course I love her but I’m ../. I did an interview on this Islamic station for an hour yesterday in sheer agony, god the sins of the body and all that, funny that the show was called Fools Paradise as fool I was but paradise it is not. Cruddy night of no sleep, tossin and a turning, like my mom and eye duckin and divin the cops yesterday on the numerous road marks scattered through town.went on a proper date last night, with this unruly impish angel, he gave me an ivory trincket oh the damn fine glorious art of conversation. I’m much indebted by his graciousness seeing I was like an old lady hunched at the bar, smoking a fag and trying not to throw up. All things considered I’d like to think I’m doing quite well at the moment, did I mention all things considered. Now if I could just get me mum to turn that frown upside down, keep my warped and disturbed addiction in check, write some damn cheque,s learn to fall in love and remember to wash all is well with the world. salut
i feel as anne frank
Oh oi there dear god I lie, today was the most confusing and destructive, mangled, two timed dive of a day, thoughts flashing through the eyes, hands a tremble, the dragons claws on my spine. Mixed messages, friends phoning demanding that I help them because they’re staying in shelters, driving to Dr Jeewa’s this evening for relief from the shakes, my father is totally pissed off and mad at me all over again. I’m being labeled a dirty, fucked up shameful disappointment and the tears just run dryly down my face, hat down girl and keep on walking. What a to do…to die today a minute or two to two. Selective readings, no concentration, 3 books, 23 pages, I’m bored, ramble down to the nursery, walk through the fir trees and slam down a beer, so much zuma news, politics, heretics to consume, but its all drifting on by, I’m uncomfortable, people are staring at me. I try to jolly up, chin up but to no avail, the vultures are closing in, the sun relentless—back home on the bed, on the grass an awkward conversation, I’m out of here, can’t sit still cant think still, up the road to the dreary little hotel, and just now thankful to be the only patron of the entire place, slide another few down, and make the decision. I need drugs to get off the drugs that I am taking to get off the drugs that I was taking and now am still. You get? Heard of ibogaine? I came across it a few years ago, a natural detox from Cameroon, I think. Its um, an hallucinogenic kind of voodoo plant guaranteed to as the doc would put it, ‘refresh and rewire the mind’. I’m poppin in on Wednesday to discuss it, god knows I’m trying to do the right thing then why am I meeting with such resistance from those you gave me life, I’ll take it away, I’m not afraid to die today
late afternoon rosicrucian dream state collapse
I’m becoming incredibly slack. Slack in thought, slack in appearance, slack in action. I’m a half blood, half breed with no video camera, vice, question or answer. Big thoughts spiral in the sequence of release, entrap, snare, let go, forget and relapse. The first lesson they tell you is also the last. Heavan and hell, 7 stages of reaching either depending on your type of party, happiness or sadness, the giant melancholy, the small divide. My crown falls off. So I have a few school gigs coming up, an interview or four, the looming medicinal plant interpolating with the cadaver of my will. I snap and smoulder the dead wood in my eye, looking for a drink, thinking about the sounds of smoke. Elephant man visited a couple of days ago bringing a couple of hours of relief we drank jagermeister cheering the gods, questions and writings and tales of white sangomas and long discussions of the sky. The night before me writhing in pain, the night before that me writhing in pain. It eludes me how he scalps so deftly the root,hangs it in front of my face and laughs, ‘ AAAAAAAAhhhhhhhh Claire, be good girl, be stronnnnnnng.’ Yeah strength interesting concept that, like dropping me in the middle of the sudan, as foreign as a foreigner reading the signs on the back of the door in a ladies toilet. Mind over the matter my dearest, but this is a material world, right. Those thoughts that preceded us have been crushed and shoved and made askew. There is no time there is no space there is no contemplation left for this common race. So we indulge in our juniors mooch them as leaders and serve them a meager meal. The gauntlet has been handed over. I am not just a piece of mercy. Yes sir no sir. I can speak long and hard of politics. There is a fire inside, the guests are sweaty with the fumes, we bump into each other on the stairs, you pass me a small piece of plastic and all I can do is smile. Concussion, the third best feeling in the entire world. I’m running into walls on purpose, such is the absurdity and smallness of my big life. The words I’m told are evil, so is the music, so are these bad thoughts. I’m a condition. I deserve more. Been playing with characters setting them up on the table and shooting them down. Fifty thousand scenarios to plot, plan and administrate. Toy soldiers are these little glimpses, these damn jinns that need genie or genius to unlock. I am intimate only with you dear digital, for now. Soon I will have to resort to the living and then there will be no hope left for this world. I’m my own penologist and your kind comments steer for minutes the wounded deer away from the headlights. The truth is boring and I am no Nazarite.
no nero
Head sore – saturated
From the bore dom dum
The kingdom cum the end
Of the line not this
Time my dear take
The pills the thrills that cheer
Reconstruct the bends
Navigate towards the pen
Write for tomorrow and
Think not of sin…again
Three little words was all it took, is all it takes. One body to believe, one mind to deceive
But sitting on the back of the van, feeling the warmth of the afternoon emanating from the man, gave silence the shoulder. I’m getting better, did you realize that? I’m taking the steps, shaky steps but steps nonetheless, am I to feel proud? Nervous? Brave? Totaled? Ah the senses they can’t shut up can they. Well I tell you what when I got home, I didn’t need the light. I wandered out into the woods, near the lake, under the stars, and I lay on that bridge smoking my smoke and smiled up to Allah and said three little words. I thank you.
I’m not partisan to silent moments, lonely yes, but silence no. the brain is chattering, the sentences marionette like from the mind dance out the teeth, and only a sip of the old lager makes for an ounce of laconicism. Is that even grammatically correct. Aye think it just might me. How fast can you type? How fast can you write? I’m looking forward to the hallucination that is about to nauseate this young fin de siecle, no I’m not, its looming, it’s a date of death, bonjour dante, I read that dante is responsible for the Italian language. I have dante on my left arm, drawn by blake. These old heroes, these old tattered books that crowd my life, in my bag, under the bed, on the shelves, they are presently confabulating, copulating, cohabitating coke freebasing. Is that grammatically correct? The eagles woke me this morning, pulling me from the sheets the beer cans, the rizlas the pills, the deep deep slumber I found myself in. oh wonderful sleep thanks for visiting. Today there is a screening at a boys high school, truth be told, im fucking nervous. Nervous always of finding no kindred chickens to scratch in the sand with however I am generally wrong. There is always someone, there is always everyone.
I AM PURE
I’m dressed to impress as they say, brown leather jacket, hat, a dry face, a chill in the bones. I’m on a merry mission today making close contacts and then some. Wined to death and bad back bad headrest are the charms mixed up by the early morning birds tweetering away in the roof and the spiders on my arms. I went back to the beginning and began reading the past desperate for that one fire that will depress the rest and slay the sleeper. Doesn’t it feel as if life is just passing you by. The elections tomorrow the fuel, the end feels very very far away. I’ve come to believe I’ve no personal philosophy, I formulate snatches of conversations, books, magazines, songs, poetry, deep thoughts and not such deep ones but all I keep coming up with is the alarming fact that nothing works. Have a cult? Send me an invite. The only possibility of pills and powder that navigate the week so beautifully pull me forward. The decadence is the decay but so is the decency of the déclassé. I’ve successfully,I think, distanced myself from a lot of friends and acquaintances, and ya know what that means, but the hunger is still in the extreme. Essays and esplanades, maraud the minutes I have to wait for brief relief from this snake in my spine. I can’t stretch myself wide enough. I need to find an adventure or will adventure find me I know I just can’t sit here awaiting the sequence, nostradamus and refreshment to lead.
Birds nesting in the rafters
The smell of lacquer and afternoon Coffee on the boil
the daily toil the dust the love the light
I sit with a white woolen Jackson glove On my left
The hangover 3 days unslept
Just brief pauses in the night The nerves the past the fight
I read that I might just be the loneliest girl in the world, I wonder if they’re right.
the self-subsisting, the eternal, no slumber nor sleep can seize him
Its been a week of the jehova witnesses at my door, spreading gossip, bad news, good news and total annihilation, up and around hills dissecting pagan people in 5 year old outfits flitting around the valley, smoking weed and bellydancing, whilst me stoned and dethroned off the brown in the toilet, asking questions and sharing answers, a boy with brown dreadlocks on my back, a lost look in the faraway eyes, not enough too drink and then too much, sore kidneys and long drives, Deepak chopra eat your heart out, i sit with islam on my mind and no direction in my soul, I tried to look through the black and landed in a fluorescent lit room with a psychologist, a bottle of rum in my bag and tears in the eyes. Sneaking out, missing gigs, shunning sunshine, I don’t want this sobriety, I don’t want this society. So many reasons to move on, they’re saying, you’re taking the right steps, your eyes are open but my heart is dead. Thinking of being useless without a penny in my pocket and slurred enunciation, and so many bright boys, their laughter killing me early in the morning as I lay on sweaty sheets, willing Allah to use me in heavan, doors opening and shutting, showers on, envious am i. a kiss on someone who doesn’t remember who he is. I’m 35, I’m 23, I have 3 children, I think I love you, I don’t know the words to the song but oh can I sing it all day long, pass the subutex someone shield me from the tedium, the long full stopt hat is my mind. An mo and naz and bux and shaz and abdoul and yusef,. Dear dear yusef, the child the pied piper would tempt with glee, the boy with the big eyes that sees through earth, that was a smack baby at birth. And those girls in the corner telling me they liked my style and the ladies praying whilst I awaited my trial. And the hospitality and the dread. And the evenings spent reading with naught in my head I have to pretend that its all coming right, that I have to write. That I have to promise to control the urge, to find the routine, the illusive thing that will dispel these strange circles I’m caught in. and the snake imagery is back all around me, I am a snake charmer, haven’t you heard. I’ll come to your back door and pacify the herd. Friday night the nightmare came. I’m running I’m running, he’s here the caterpillar, he’s creeping in the corner, the 4th world war,the rover the rouse, I’m stationary and in the back on the car, he hits the windscreen rolls off the back, he’s round he’s angry he’s coming back. GET DOWN I sit with the same excuses, the same distress, the same need to transcend, but but but. Dragon man has decided to wash his hands of me if I can find the solvent to evaporate the stain but he doesn’t know the succession or the disgust of the pain. And mr mantle is clawing at my back, scraping the skin, hungry for blood, hungry to reach out hungry to find a ccure for the black heart yet all has now gone wrong, the past cannot enter the future yet I know not what that future is, how it exists or why I resist
LISTEN UP YOU DONT' HAVE THE FUCKIN KEY
The rush of andrenaline of writing quickly, wickedness told me to write simply for the simple man, but aren’t all men simple? Late night thoughts are so clear it sometimes seems that the day is but a waste of light. Too much to report, smoked to the bone, cards to be read, heartbeat on speed, pain in the legs….the top of the desk melts and I fall through an abyss of parenthesis (fucked) so what to do with brain and feeling, study theology, take a course in semantics, cut off the fat, search for the worm and eat it, feed the louse. I don’t know what has brought on this hot flush of energy, downing water whilst the pressure looms, where to find the female god that will answer prayers fast, remove the gauche logic of the situation. I don’t need cures I just need drugs and fast. Watch dr house, pop some valium, vicodin, weed, wine and anti-inflammatories, am I really supposed to eat well, am I really supposed to embark on the exercise regime of the sick, the twisted, the last program I was on they made me walk on the beach and talk about serpents, they shone a torch in my face at 3am in the morning and then refused me company of my fellow users – scared I’d escape. They beg and bastardized the twelve steps into my mushy brain, they reminded me I had demons entwined to my nervous system. And yet I left there afresh, a new ready and forward hurtling marionette. I forgive them you know that. But I cannot forgive tomorrow. I cannot forgive the hard bump of being normal of finding a fresh approach, I cannot break from my mould, from my survival instinct that has kept me who I am and who I want to be. Dance with affirmations they say. Dance with the devil is say. I can clean the grime, block sunshine, rupture ridicule and shut the sepulchre of the great cave I am, but I cannot pretend to do what you say, I cannot pretend to live life just for today. There are certain friends who visit me no more and certain of these friends that I know now I abhor. But then there are the tingles of that shade my day and the imperious knowledge that only I can obey. Rewrite the torah, the bible the Koran, become the 4th coming, in sin be reborn, for only flirtation with others ideas can ruin the thinking man, only when we hear their equipollent sighs do we realize we’re the same.
good must ultimately prevail evil
Standing on the precipice and looking over the green, the night is ablaze with singing, chirping, rotten scoundrels. Breathing in the clear dust, the soft feeling of being a part of something smaller, something more complex and unintended gets my gut. I squirm in this strange globe beating my will against its dripping confines, old pictures are revealed in the sliding merge of colours, feelings drip into snares drip into melancholy drip into what was and what is and the possibility of escaping fate becomes deceived by the simple fact that we can. There is goodness in us. There is peace, breath, vision and patience. But there are also shadows. There are hateful mages, noise, pesticides and aversion. Is it possible to be one in the same. Is it possible to be both teams of the same game.
extremely concerned with mother nature
What a beautiful morning that I could just gather all eye see into my arms and squeeze till it melts. What a beautiful morning that I feel not even guilt for Durban’s grimy back streets which will never experience the feeling I felt. What a beautiful morning the shade and the greens. What a beautiful morning so still and serene. What a beautiful morning I could sit and just breathe. What a beautiful morning with no one left to deceive. What a beautiful morning the hills hear me sigh. What a beautiful morning between them and I. What a beautiful morning as made just for me. What a beautiful morning for the birds and the bees. What a beautiful morning my senses restored. What a beautiful morning so beautiful I’m bored.
FORGET THE
I’m sitting on the edge. My face is burning redder than it has ever before. That bitch slap of certainty that was levelled at me without fear or regret. How could she have known. She knew. She must have. They all must have. They must know the sacrificial hurt that lurks beneath the surface. They saw it didn’t they. They witnessed it. They saw the fall though i thought no one did. But i could feel it. Maybe even only in reflection, after time, after months of processing unsuccessfully what i am what i have done. But nonetheless the self destructive dance was on show. And i felt proud to be the dancer. No i didn’t i never realised, i knew but was never akin to it. It was always seperate. Isolated from the tasks at hand, performed with clarity but the person inhabiting the function was not of this world HOW could she be…. And half beaten into self submission does not want to be out there again. But now fears and celebrating it might be the only way. Fuck your god.
And no matter how good things might look it is how they act that delivers the final blow. Blow, its my final message, my final state of rebellion, my final chapter, my final vice. Didn’t they realise i was just trying to fit in. and now am out. Hated, persecuted by the rational by the natural dopamine brigade who find joy in washing a teacup, who find god in a wild fucking flower.
And when we get to the money part. Where do we all stand. Yes the world lives to owe then why the shame the desperation of making nice in order to continue any easy means of communicaiton. This money this desperate need for thickening of the skin, the waste of it all. The waste of the breath in this pursuit and the waste of the pursuit in these misadventures. And no more sacrosanct moments, no more irony no more falling through the roof into the lounge, into the conversation, into the meetings, onto the dancefloor, alive on the pavement and dying in the morning. I can’t feel anymore except for the bright switching light of indifference for any task laid and mislaid before me. I’m supposed to take it easy, i want to rid myself from the confines the sweet confines of medication but the inroads are too complicated the brain scans too far gone and the will at the point of zero and beyond. I just want to be left in silence. I don’t want to go out i don’t want to communicate, i don’t want to make peace with the inner sanctum i just want the escape plan and god i have not even the energy for the choice. A wasted life they say, yeah well fuck i’m wasting it, i’m wasting quite willingly away. Ok
new life
break away
tonight
i feel like more
the sifting feeling that we are not who we are and we’ll never get to where we are supposed to be is so unnerving, exhilarating and just plain sad. Confused, disfigured, tragic love songs sung in the studio written in the deep moist of the moment, played upon perhaps, forgotten about intermittantely, remembered by those who feel the stab definelty
protect me from what i want, dissect me on the cold metal font, thats all i can offer in this sentence.
I’min the mood to abdicate. Im in the mood to abscond. I’m in the mood to rival the violation i’m in the mood to kill my succession. Has it always been this good. Has it always been this good to know where you are. I’m so ugly i don’t have the right to exist. I’m so disgusted in the picture i want i need to i dammit i can’t find the words for the feeling. The temperature is high in my mind, my brain is scattered, the nightmares themselves reduce me to tears the bloodshed the guilt the damn mirror the fuck it fuck it fuck it fuck this passage. Let it ride, let it run, find something that will make you go to sleep…forever. I have a brain tumour, terminal. Poor me, give me some fucking pity, i have scabs on my wrist and lesions on my chest. I have a two sided rectangle thats mistaken for a heart and it no longer beats. The flies, the bees, the wasps the only irritants of company that prefer to hang out with me. But i am not a jealous person, i just can’t don’t want to believe i can change.
I’m not young enough to be stupid anymore. I’m just agitated. I’m stuck in this self spun cocoon, i’m stuck in the worst of the new. He made me feel special until i realised what i looked like, what i had become and the worst of it was that i i thought i was stupid before but now realise i’m just plain dumb but clever enough to stay away.
But i also feel that i don’t care anymore. Come get me. Rip the skin off, offal me alive. Remove the brain with surgical instruments and cause me as much as you can, pain.
I feel fleeting i feel there is no more damage to be done. I feel i can do nothing more to change events, recreate reconstruct, redevelop, all is lost and i am floating.
Plastered. They mean over the cracks yeah? I want to get plastered. I want the cracks to go away. I want medicaton. I want to get through today.
Let me be your passenger ….before i detonate.
no need for speed
I’m moving away, slipping away up the path and around the bend. I’ve been slipping away i say, looking forwards into the bright light’s ascent. I got sick of love twice, sick of the gnawing the pawing the strain. I got sick of the lonely thrice the boring, the clawing the taint. I’ve got a new plan and it involves no man, it involves a setting sun in the yard, the barren cement the smell of descent, the no look back, no more smack, just cigarettes, whiskey and beer. They say the written word is cathartic, i find it retarded, its form its perception its disdain. Then make it a basket weave it out of a carpet thats filled with burns and blood stains.
I visited Shongweni Dam settlement the other night with Gift my friend from Zim. The setting was brave and disturbingly beautiful. Soft orange sunlight, a river of veins, too many good wishes and patting on the backs. Good people, too good for me. I lost my cellphone again and drank 12 Castle quartz. Sat smoking weed in newspaper, discussing youth and folly, i leant backwards and fell into his arms. I got home at 3 in the morning.
I visited the hills the other morning with my mother. It was her first day out since the cancer started enjoying her stomach as a delicacy. Hard spiting light, a lake man made, a reservoir, a couple of arguments and flowers to pick. She’s a lioness, protecting her cub from bullies. I lost my patience and drank 12 Black Label quartz. Sat at my dad’s factory sipping coffee, watching the smell of hard work. I leant forwards and kicked Henry the chicken. I got home at 2 in the afternoon.
Some might think i have a lot of time to well, think but i don’t because i’ve been caught by the mob. I’m plotting my escape and it takes up all my days. I’ve been good, i’ve been worse, i got the keys to the hearse now i’m thinking of getting off the wagon again.
I tried it just once a couple of days back, it was disimiliar my old vice, my small treat. I cradled her amidst the subs, willing her to come back to me. Don’t leave i pleaded stay a while, have a cuppa, watch a movie, enjoy yourself. I’m your host, you’re my bug, my little bug eyed girl was staring back at me, but with no feeling behind the wet lashes, the star system is failing i’m afraid, the metaphors crept back. I owed them all money but couldn’t pay.
Busiwiwe was sick and now she’s better. Busiwiwe was sick but now she’s all better. Medicine. I’m trying to get organised. I edited, i wrote, i hung up the washing, i cleaned my bedroom, i reread a book, i attempted filing but just managed to make little piles on my desk. Little piles of files, little flies of my’s, little thoughts of new york and l.a. Best friends i can’t face and face’s i’ll never make friends with. I can’t find my place, i can’t find my phone. I guess i’ll just sit here, quietly, alone.
bigheartnhate
Can’t stop the fever can I rolling around the aids issue, wiping blood off tigers face at the south beach shelter, holding her hand, rolling my eyes, tryin to help the kid that survived the attack by the older boy who slapped his face because he thought he stole his t-shirt. We roamed around shongweni dam township trying to find gifts house. We roamed south beach and the killarney – me paying off drug dealers and role players for the break to film the sordidness, I walked the path off the grass, I got the packet with the habit and filmed the sun. I was thinking about all this, all this junk that I gotta intellectualise and come up with a plan come up with a plan to save the man’s plan. All I can think of is that this is the way it is. I see all the unbelievers. I see the haters, I see the wastage. Ngo’s my ass, too little funding too much. Too little discipline are we really supposed to care, am I going to be part of this, can I. turn the system upside its head. With a box of gimmicks, toys my boys, toys. You gonna believe me. Idon’t. I think it’s the way it is the way its meant to be. Isn’t it. I’m treading the bleached concrete crunk of the city centre. I’m looking up at the ceiling and jan’s waiting for me outside the muslim shop. She waits, I wait. We’re all waiting. Waiting for aid. Waiting for aids waiting for god and opportunity. Who wants to l ive forever wanna trade. I’ve lost all sense of remorse, responsibility and discretion. Yeah Karen smack this bitch up I can’t focus I cant’ humanize the doctrine .its hackneyed aint it? Aint it? How can you conceive of an idea if you cease. To feel . to feel the cease of the piece of my heart. Give me drugs I’ll give you feeling, life, lice and latitude. Out
And
Over
Fuck the police
Fuck the ngos
Fuck this stupid hamster wheel
Reincarnation is the only key that seals the deal
PALACE OF BONE
Give me hope and soul I ask you. I knocked down a stand of Smirnoff vodka last night at Lloyds store. 20 bottles came crashing down, 20 bottles of booze. I ignored it and took a verbal beating. I’m worried about the elephant. I’m worried he’s on his last thread. He screamed at me and threatened to leave when I told him his project was whack. They don’t’ pay artists no more. They just don’t pay. All work for free please bring back communism this democracy is getting me down. But how can I run away from what I have seen. How can I leave what I could fix. Why don’t I answer Anthony. Why don’t I wash away the drying soap, make this bin clean. Start up start afresh, dont unto others and such. I visited busiwiwe last night, smelling of cheap whiskey, counting the chickens plying her with clothes, text books and hugs. I ran with the wildebeest, staking the fence, warning them with a finger ‘I’m going this way’
But I didn’t
i need more bruises more tattoos more discipline. I have a new film project at my disposal – all it takes is will – all it takes is the written word if I can find it
I can make a difference. I can change, I can find the drive if I wanted to. The sun is setting the sun is swollen, the clouds are there and unspoken for. I look for seed, I look for feed
And how many interviews can one girl do, how many films can one man make. How much will count in the end. Hasn’t it all been done before, hasn’t it all been thrown against the wall. Why go forward when the room is heated, the stars are shining and the blood is thinned by the unconiving.
I wake up disturbed as ever in the middle of the morning, grasping desperately at memories, bad bad thoughts, bad bad hangover
Bad bad girl with a decision, a skull and no lover
you should be in my space you should be in my life
revived and slightly more on the determined side, back from the grahamstown festival. Its strange how you can lose the spark the beezlejuice and then miraculously from a small walk under some lonely winter trees, a cold wind in the retina and a new brown hat remember a part of you that was once so single minded in proving something, saying something. I feel like I’ve been sitting on the chair for years, watching the backroads change from shadows to shelters to hostiles to statues./ I think I became a statue. Its quite easy in a way, you just sit very still, not saying a word, not engaging in fights, not embracing, not telling or being told. I wandered down on Saturday and saw nikhil coming up the road, just he and I old friends bonded by magic and spider monkeys and the melancholy and it felt good, it felt good too after the screenings to talk to those who felt something from the film, it made me feel something again, something alien, something alchemic, something that needed me to make more, take out the dentures and euthanise the black rat up my back. Try harder, pull the shackles of complacency and disinterest away throw them back at the wolves, switch back on the phone, wash my fingernails. Eat my daily bread, say a little prayer for all the little angels with all the big black hearts. The main direction now is to get Anthony, lars, nina, somebody, kasper anybody to steal a copyo f the film on beta so we have a film that is screenable and then to tamper away at a film print behind the shotguns back. I know I can write again, I know I can refine again, I know I can get it together and make another mountain. I’ve been busy tinkering away at a film with high hopes that it will come together. It involves kids and drugs and sex and aids and shopping mall parking lots and teachers threats and tow truck drivers getting head. We await the funding we wait a little longer, I am patient, I am a patient that’s sick for her meds but I can wait, the potions are in motion and I have the special xhosa clay statues that are thrown where nobody dares to roam cept i. Actually I was very ill, and in retrospect it felt good, it felt good because it was a real ill, a real sickness, a natural Achilles heal ed from vitamin c and the damage was not as precious as I once thought. The sun is up burning my eyes and the folders lying on the desk full of surmise. I’m supposed to go to a screening of a really horrible film with local celebs and this guy from prison break in tonight but thems the choices I have to start making. To go and swindle and talk up a storm to potential financiers of potential projects or sit on the chair and take in the stream. Do you ever feel that there are cameras everywhere. Do you ever feel that you’d like them there? I do. Doobie doo I do. So just for this morning all is right, just for this morning my pen will write, the wrongs will be kept for later tonight
Hesiod couldn't say it better
I shivered through the night
A tangled bedsheet fight
I peeled across in dread
The crocodile that’s dead
We were knee deep in mud
Our faces flushed with blood
The traders were up late
when Helena met her final fate
don’t believe the spirits they’ll steer you wrong
don’t believe in sons of god they’ll just string you along
don’t believe the captives’ incessant screams
don’t believe in anything but in your dreams
I never had the guts
To heal my bleeding cuts
I would rather waste away
Than face up to what they say
We never figured out the plan
Of the levitating man
But his shadow followed us
Whilst we disobeyed their trust
Don’t believe the prostitutes who cry for sun
Don’t belive the desititute who lie for fun
Don’t believe my friends my foes my vanity my sympathy was strong
Don’t believe my empathy my disbelief is wrong
And in their burnt down lives
A disturbing realm survives
It threatens me awake
It warns me of Blake’s snake
Echoing green Eden’s past
And how this infant was miscast
Time is light but all in vain
For day she breaks but age remains
Don’t believe the shooting stars who promise love
Don’t believe in Romans, Jews or those above
Don’t believe the steeping steps, the metaphors, the devils whores are dead
Don’t believe their pleas, this world of theirs lives only in your head
-
unjust knife thrust
Im battling with the promises of a new hope, they told me it would come sooner or late they said you’ve just got to hold out, you’ve got ta have patience, lass, the neighbor always calls me lass, alas lass, been fighting with the closest company over trivialities, such as music too loud, lights too bright, face too sullen, work not done, money not earned, answers not given, dealers still phoning, smile gone awol, life no purpose. And is it so, I would say it is, no purpose to be exact, the skill and source for the word which I endear to follow has been lost, I’m bitching too much it is there, it will always be there, but not when I’m without meds, not when I’m without my brew, not when I’m in withdrawal, not when I’m stressed about the next minute, not when I’m trapped, not a lot I got, smartie pants. I’ve built a fair corner for myself, I’ve left friends, deciphered enemies, and ignored the arrogant, I’ve slept alone, kept abreast, and hidden from the bailiffs and now now let us witness what I will do.
So penniless and seeing no potential in the prospects I have been prone to thinking of a way out. The obvious is through my- that piece of paradise that afflicts my background thoughts, the needle and the damage done, the sigh the solit/ solicit ude, the noise of none. Then there is the gun, but no, its too violent and clumsy a vehicle, its too aggressive and just plain absurd. No I still think if my liver survives from early morning wine and late night concoctions that the smooth nectar of the evening flower shall do me in time for a last refreshing and resounding breath just fine. I feel disappointment on my part as most I assume do but you, my lass, my I, were unable to complete never mind begin the most simplest of tasks that could potentially lift your lazy ass out of their minky nightmare, say a proposal for a picture or a paragraph for rejection say a deposal for stricture or an astrograph for direction
i wanna score poppies
Dear antonym, i cannot slumber, …………; again, 4 days of the infection and the hallucinations I am anxious to admit have started once all over again. The child in the corner, the schoolgirl screaming in my head, and she is loud, so loud that all the beauty of the silent night is superseded by her instructions
last night I edited until about 2am and then spent the next 3 hours appraising Great Expectations, which one does tend to do when the night air is cool, the brain ineffective and the breath short yeah I doze and slither open the eyes, roll a ciggie, turn the beam on and off, I have a crooks radiometer near my bed and its faint buzz and symphonic glow eases the sting the dawns light shreds my curtains, the theatre is now closed, the show is over, the dancers have all gone home to soak their toes in methylated spirits and the violinist counts backwards from 3,
they’re dark but never dark sufficiently so though I am beginning to enjoy the light, the fowls, the hangman on the wall, the rabbit in the shrub, the dew, the frost the early mist, the dinosaur birds, the pigeon that flew into the gutter and left down and disease, i am alone and lonely in my space
There are many spiders here. But then there are many spiders all over the metropolis, yesterday I visited an old friend who informed me the cat was out the bag and working for the Christians, then Konnect from konnetikut told me he would offer gratis sallow sugar in exchange for information of this particular part of the ministry that had gone astray and a turf war is imminent, that I can assure you.
comical is how the city was maybe is today, blistering and clammy, black cardigans hanging out my window, then the battery died and a passing jeff gave me a shock that sent me on my means to the record label then to the high way then to the by ways then to the bottle store for quartz of quartz and then to the quarters and then to absolve work on the directors statement,
I astonish myself occasionally the way I formulate a word or three, something something about societal ethics and sweating the small stuff, and god do I not know what a motivational letter implies, I am at a loss of how to script it, but I tried thanks to the plazana the kwape the much needed powdery persuasion from the kind gentleman of Killarney who once stole my video camera and never gave it back but I guess that is what stealing means,
And then to the oven where food must be made and food must be eaten, but I have been unable to wolf for three days, just a few vinegar flings and a cashew nut. Then back to the script, then forward to the edit, but too tired and scared that hazy eyes create hazy metaphors so just a bout of blogging which is the most frivolous word too close to the toilet which Dickens and he must be writ in capitol, das kapitol, mentions often that first kate and then mrs nickleby took turns to do ‘their toilet’ which I guess means their washing not merely just washing out, and i don’t know why a novelist would write such a thing, sure, the book is 900 pages on thin trees but surely the embellisment may pause over these vices…
and yes I know it is from Nicholas nickleby but I have great expectations none the less and the point remains the same, I love a taste of the Victorian epoch but I love the 20’s and 40’s and 70’sin )that is so clever, equal measure, as good as adding ice to beer to increase the quench.
Do you know about the beat hotel in paris, there’s some fine-looking photos of the time lying around the net, black and white as they should be and how depressed I am of films of late, what has happened to the cinematic countryside where did it go, did it just vanish in spite of itself, was it bulldozed over, did they build a shopping mall on top of it, or perhaps a housing estate, low cost, government owned, or maybe a parking lot for Toyota, or better yet a theme park, a kind of never ever again land or a soccer stadium for 2010 yes I am assured of it , that was what occurred, we needed a new stadium to fit the fighting germans and the underpriviledged who were not or will not be there for the beautiful game but merely to sit in the beautiful stands, purse allowance, shelter or soccer money, wr’e a free country you decide you lazy mutt…
or was it evolution, that it was just eaten up and how long has it been since I stumbled upon something that really enthused, and how I hate these lamentations, but when did a sound or a scene got this bottom off the seat, the corpus collosum in a state..really now, I listened to enter shikari for the first time a month or so back and was quite impressed but no feelings still linger such as for instance finding artaud as a virgin enters the apple orchard or the volta or the secret history
Its all so so, so,
Alas, lass, there is a incomplete wooden statue at the back of the room of an elephant being eaten by a lion and it impels me to think aloud speaking of elephants I was with the elephant man yonder and received a right bashing, about being unable to got hold of, cell phones not being on, pixies turning into runts overnight (and I’ve never been one for the fantasiacal) and some slipped proposal of marriage, he looked old, and I looked bored, he looked despairing and I smoked another cigarette, I love him much but I know he lies to me they all eventually do and his earnestness comes at a price ….for him, not I, for I do not lie, I just dance on by
Not even a kiss, just like the other one, just like the last one, the older they are the harder the fall, the older they are the easier retreat, reclaim no thanks, do not collect on reprisal, do not bother for she’ll find another and you’re sure to survive her
I am in trouble with the law, I am in trouble with his claws, and the ladies at the side of the road would not sell me black beer for fear that he was a copper and I was just being as usually improper
Somebody mistook my words for someone else and I wonder If I should chancge sex again, possibly maybe we all think we are someone else and when compared to ourselves are shattered
I couldn’t face going back to my old office, my corner where I used to type away for a tuppence, no I couldn’t do it today, I just turned on the engine and then slipped away
LIVE THRU THIS
I forget what i might have said, what i wanted to what i know must grow from The conversant self that sits and thinks in The evening abstracted away, pissed aside, bring another one, theyre hiding the vodka but I found the comfort. Rodney Rodney, make it snappy then..he who dares rodney, he who dares.. come on wet your whistle. The revolted rumblings that on The inside shake and rupture and feel so much beat that The walls on these three tumblers do stronger build. Sans links, diligence answer call, collapse attack. The sun is hot but The wind she is cool. I’ve reedited The scene i’ve delved into the very essense of das capitol but still The pill dissolves slow, still The feeling flushes fever and still i sit and wait and register The big dream The one i smoked and snorted away in abandon, fuck them all. The one i must have The one Cathy lost in The cold cold night with only a pane of glass separating her from her heart’s desire. I walk in coma, i breathe in routine, i fall asleep by The light of The lamp and wake with The sense that all is just a picture waiting for The canvas to burn. On certain afternoons The taut chest coughs up The residue of all this anger, i spit it on couches, carpets, glasses and faces without regret, i laugh at rationality during these dark days hoping and waiting impatiently that soon The ring and The whisper will extrapolate Themselves and find home in this irrational madness. No man nor woman can exist on bread alone and i have no bread and only The lonely to entertain The ring is on The wrong hand and The baby has died. Legs twitter and trainers discarded on floor will keep The untidy tidy, awaiting The great miracle that has been promised. She sits on my left telling me so, she sits on my right laughing, mocking this folly of hope. But i know better. I have read The greats i have watched The greats i have been entangled in them, i have fucked them and kicked them and dived into their genius. I am not alone, i lie, i lie waiting for The company, she is coming and I, I am merely early Besides tomorrow I’m interviewing placebo, today its just bok van blerk
we wish to create worlds as real as, but other than the world that is
i saw the birds on the rocks this morning making me think of the time i was rather besotted by a green wooden birdcage in the Victorian fashion and how i wanted it, longed to have it by the window with a little love song sweetly whistled from its perch. But now i would find it cruel, cruel as talons around throat, cruel as the restless legs i suffer, cruel as being denied what i want right now but know that no good can come of it. Trapped in my own little cage of folly, i wonder what all the celebrating was about. Is that why we satyr like pranced upon the city, is that why we clamor together dancing, drinking and sharing pointless stories of even more pointless heroic misdemeanors. Is this the party, the celebration of life. I don’t celebrate it. I abhor it. I go out and want to get wrecked for fear of the fast word, the profiled glance, the boy at the pool table, the weary eye of the barman, the steps, the time, the dark driver the night. It must end fast and brutal, it must be severed decadence, me myself and i. So i sit here for breakfast 3 beers down, no more brown, no more subs, no more no more. But what the fuck am i getting myself into. This duplicity is killing me, the energetic amongst us see it as a new day, a few vitamin b shots, tata my chance, twinkle twinkle little star. I don’t. I can’t I wont I’ try remember how many hours are left in a day but the days are long and the nights longer, only visits at the back of the mind from past accomplices and the voice of my love mar the endless seconds. I hope i can remember who i am, i hope i can. 4 beers down, i confuse sleep with dreams with thoughts without seams the lines have gone dead, the plastic packets are burnt and reduced to trash, the powders don’t offer relief, the dead lie in the street and the fingers burn with desire. Trapped in the vaseline i believe that motivation comes from praise, without it there is no need to continue. So much beauty outside of this cage, so much money to spend, so many things to still mend. But i am proud, i have pride even if i lie in denial and the boards predict that it could take 8 weeks to 3years (burroughs) but i’m in it for a fast fix and if she don’t fix i’ll buy myself one. The end of the month looms and with it money and mania. So tell me once again what i should have changed, how i could have written a better song than this one. She asked me how i got this far. From giggling girl to hurling hell, i couldn’t answer her, i could only pretend that the end was the first step. They can shovel manure till they fall and I no i won’t care at all if you’d like to try a hand at my life you must be mentally ill. Fate is for those who find it hey, i spit in fates face. I’m a swallow, flapping furiously for a few seconds grace of flight, i spin through the heavens, a surrender to the lifeless cauterizing of infliction. Oh give me back my laudanum, my sweet sweet valley of the dolls. The light is out, it needs not the sun, it needs only the wasp, the sheep, the bye byes of yester friends and foreign objects to pacify their passions and give example to the priest. No deceipt only lies. My swollen joints that mirror the death of a sparrow on my grass. Yes these are my illusions of progress this 26th day of our lord, Lord a Numb. My brief digressions into this factory of the past may be written out of guilt, out of sorrow, out of shame, out of blame or out of fact and fiction. Whatever is necessary at this point is necessary, whatever kind word maybe on offer are always welcomed with judging eyes and ears.
ive been pricked by a rose
I’m getting pretty paranoid over everything. If its not the self obsessed pity party up north slamming the door in my face, stupid idea to even think they might share a bit of the dream its watchdogs on my back whenever i’m downtown. Im super scared of the camera on top of killarney, i see undercover spies in my rearview, the phone is tapped the other one mustnt be answered at all costs lest theire be insects from the other side waiting to crawl in. it might be the time that turns faster than a snitch with a panga aimed at his neck but i’ve been up 3 nights on the boil, opening and closing windows, writing songs that still don’t exist, smokin and spikin and on the fourth gently nodding off to to graceland on the toilet, up the chimney, everything seen backwards, lewis carrolled me to blank… I think theres too many mirrors in my room, too much reflection going on. Waiting for music, waiting for a sharp strike on the knuckles for my laissez faire approach to interviewing, waiting for godot. I stumble around the house, find myself in the midst of the forest looking for elephant tusks when all i am really looking for is reason. I don’t really remember the past 7 days, it involved bumping into a cop car, sorry officer, take deep breath darling and in the slammer till monday, it involved the blinding sun son in chatsworth, falling asleep whilst waiting for a prescription, the secretary knew i was under the tax but i couln’t care less, then writing writing writing why were there so many deadlines, this week dead being an appropriate description, if i didn’t have so much to write you know i wouldn’t indulge don’t you. You know its not my fault you know i can’t do it without mommas little helper
so i sit here, whats today again, thinking how i might have promised a blue angel burlesque show to isabelle, how i slept through andries’s elephant opening last night, that i have to have to have to complete golems effort today, that i need to feel the sun for a second, that bastard sun.
I have a friend who makes elephants instead of babies. I have friends who make excuses not to see me i have friends who make excuses to see me. I’ve come unstuck. I think i have three days left at the most then frampton comes alive. The bohemian dream is cracking, the money men are creeping in, they’re at the door with their pens and papers, they’re here to fix things, so they say, i’m here to destroy them
how many keepers can one man keep, how many leaders can one man lead. I tried to be funny in the column and failed miserably. The scare freezes me, but few understand. This film stuff is very complicated, i’m trying to find my musesolini in the midst of lies, treason and skin that so dry its dead.
They tell me its going to be easier than i think but its starting to sound like a clanger and i need more beer
