New Poems

I have, at last, successfully completed the ten week Poetry module at the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education. I was an exciting and demanding programme.Long, long nights reciting iambic pentameters and pondering words and their relationships. The tutor is Kathryn Simmonds who received several awards for her first collection of poems: Sunday at the Skin Laundrette.

Here are some of the new poems...

 

family album

Splayed on a table lies

monochrome moments

vying for attention

not forgotten, but life goes on

        regardless

I pull the glossy photograph

from it’s silent resting place

the radiance of the surface

becomes a hand-mirror that reflects

         fragments

of my room , the ceiling rose

and the top of the sequoia

in the sighing garden

beyond my window

          reflecting

I take a look at the image

It is a picture of my mother

in the corner of her garden

amongst the bearded  irises

         iridescent

She look directly into the camera

dark smudges cradle her eyes

she smiles, holds onto my arm

as if she wants to keep the moment back

         and she does

The moment is reborn

into a dimension

not yet known to me

memory and desire

bleed to the surface

         pentimenti

Iridaceae

Six times inflorescent fans

summon up the inky sap

naughty nectar dribbles

from a mossy perianth

The scurrilous secretion

makes you come

from Arcadia

to my bartered barren bed

Three falls. Three petals

tent the hidden treasure:

sweet candy

white amber

                  From the Styx she draws a beaker river water

with this she puts to sleep those who forswore a daughter

window box

You stand

wired

before me

mount

of Venus

baying with lust

       delphinium exaltatum


I stand

inched

before you

mount

Olympus

retching rocks

       kniphofia hirsuta


We stand

wrought

before them

mount

Golgotha

shameless in love

       passiflora incarnata

three of us

Under the shadow of braided straw

you hold my hand in absentia.

There is a bucket, but where’s my spade?

She bends to buckle my sandal,

I smell starch and the sorrow –

the apron, a flag of escape or surrender.

Lighthouses beam in code.

a train coils through the sugared field,

black mamba snakes the night.

Violet iris hangs it’s scented crown-

like this drifting memory I convoke to keep

pinned to my black perambulator.

Stormy weather

They bring him broken from the mountain,

 light descending. She ran to meet the

darkened load with whimpers and a wail-

As the sky turns black and answers back,

they download a frightening chorus:

tears & rain and thunder & lightning

cracking and cursing–blowing and blubbering

Until a voiceless night fixes it all in a stutter.

A silence more final than death’s last word

comes to brood over the pooling puddles.

la notche oscura

A long time ago. When

I was a breakable child

a pop-up book offered

me twenty seven bridges

                    that span the river Seine

Twelve handsome cardboard arches

became the glossy bridge- Pont Neuf

It was  a  dazzling limestone stage

for acrobats and music makers

                    in a world of make belief

On a night of darkened soul

I was there again for real

at the edge of stone and hope

pondering the existential leap

                      to a place of ending silence

Now I often go to stand

on this bastion by the river

beneath a domed cerulean sky

A tie

                    between dark and day

     

New draft poems...

Porphyrophobia

The iris in spring, unfurls

it’s scented beard.

From a roaming rhizome

seeps the iridescent stain:

purple, blue and fixed magenta

pulse to inflorescent clusters,

it’s the colour

that is the rainbow’s keeper.

Iridaceae

Six times inflorescence fans

orating inky sap

and naughty nectar

from mossy damp perianth

Three falls and three petals

tent a hidden treasure:

cold clover

galbanum

sweet candy  

white amber

From a dirt-caked rhizomatous

ooze the sacred sauce

of the Tuscan orrisroot

From the Styx she draws a beaker river water

with this she puts to sleep those who forswore their daughter

prose into poem/work in progress

Holy Night

The city was inflamed with flickering decorations and the streets spicy with the scent of  freshly felled pine trees. I am unhinged. Women with fox collars floated by, probably hauled from dark armoires against winter’s early bite. I am frozen. Children clustered before fairy-tale windows, tiny hands groping in woollen mittens. I am discarded.

It was snowing while the knell of the angelus reverberated from the damp cathedral. I sat beneath a large rose-window, which splashed purple glazes of light over me- like aquarelle benedictions, refracting through stained glass into the stony chill. I tried not to cry. My coat pulled tightly around my bent body. I could smell waxy candles spluttering in the giant candelabra, chasing phantom figures over the faded fresco walls. My hands lay rejected, like amputees, in my lap. I stared at the thin white line on my finger were our wedding band used to be.

Jupiter winter

Chilled city bearing lights

Winter coats- floating knights

Streets spiced with freshly felled pine

Tiny hands groping at the shepherds sign

Bells holler from the holy shrine

I fix at the the skin’s white line

where a wedding band used to be

My hands, rejected on my knee

where will you go, where will you go, where will you go?

troubled heart, troubled heart, here with all

Uit my digbundel, Tempermes...

Winterballade

’n hooglied

Ek soek na jou tussen winterboomskelette daar waar kuifreiers roep
Waar het my alombeminde heengegaan die hoeksteen van my hart?

Ek sien jou skim in koue kuile water wat glas maak in die wintermaan
Ek sing vir jou ’n roeplied uit ’n boek met asbloublaaie

My sielsbeminde het by my poort verbygeloop na ’n koue wintertuin
op soek na die eerste bloedpruimbotsels, verslete maankalfjas oor sy skouers

Om die helder hoof hang ’n mirtekrans, bekroon met balroosblomme wat jubel in die westewind
Daar sing ’n koor van mossie, vink en tortel

Jy is my spuwende fontein vol sagte wateranemone, ’n grag van lewende water wat uit ’n doopvont vloei
Jou lippe is die lotusblom wat oopskulp in gesang

In my gekweste hande roer my bidsnoer stil wyl ek bedelsmeek om groot genade,
dat jy terugkom uit die donker wintertuin

Draai terug o beminde, dan berei ek vir jou festyn van liefdesvreugde
’n Tafel vol silwer skottels sedersade, viskuite uit die weskusdieptes en ’n raapkoek uit die toringstad

As jy my hart teen sterlig hou sal jy die watermerke sien,
jou naam staan daar duidelik in nege goudbladletters opgeskryf

My geliefde is ’n ysterhek wat deur ’n duisend hamerhale op die aambeeld uitgetemper is
Die kuras wat die hart behoed is in patrone ryk versilwer en met ’n toorwoord uitgraveer

In jou hande word ek ’n trompie wat vir jou vingers ghommaliedjies speel
Jou voete wil ek lawe met koel kalbasmelk en die gegeurde olie van ’n bokbaaivygie

Jou oë is topaas salmanders wat kamma koggel in die skemer,
jou mond is ’n purper gulpvy wat oopbars net vir my

pages/blaaie

My nuwe blogblad gaan woel met woorde en gelaai word met dinge wat my na aan die kunstenaarshart lê. Stories, verhale en gedigte  gaan verskyn en hopelik 'n paar heerlikhede deur gasskrywers. Kom kyk saam rond in my studio by La Creuzette. 

On these pages I shall take you with me through my literary endeavors and share some of my projects that I am currently  doing for a module of a Creative Writing course at Oxford University Continued Education Department - and show you what I am up to in my studio at La Creuzette.