Word

the lyrics of song

It was the music that drew me in
to clubbing, then raves.
And then dancing I would dance

Until dawn, or we left
that particular venue
that special event

and I would wait, fomo setting in
for it all to begin again  

I became, in my delimited space,
beneath the twirling discoball
immersed in the acidstrobe

A good dancer. And I think people saw that saw what I was doing
what we were all looking to achieve in this constructed abandon–

We were searching for release.

I came to understand that anything to do with music was now my
path to enlightenment, to self-redemption.

All the pain, the confusion, the doubt, would completely dissolve
within these moments of afforded clarity

The physicality of the dance

the emotional uprising the symbiosis between awkward body and
Seeking spirit, absolutely everything would resolve on dancefloors

And I would pit myself against them. Almost in an abject fury. And
The better I became at letting myself go
letting all this accumulating music in the

More I believed that I could now
or would soon, uncover the true

And real, unassisted, unabridged meaning of my life lead to these
Places by my friends, who became my influencers, my instigators
the carriers of this great and unexpected gift
this knowing of the human, mapped out in beats and left hanging

like bittersweet fruit
in the moments the
gaps in the lyrics of

song.     

•     

the drugs that we took

And we took an enormous amount of drugs, to get there to reach this place
that was unfolding while we were mapping it – each step, impression on the

Dancefloor a key, that opened out, to the next beat
the next lyric the next intersection of ourselves
and this new world but it was always ahead always

Beckoning. And there was nothing unintended or obtuse about it.
It was pure. In many ways it was religious.

Some people speak of gateways when looking to define what they view as
a degeneracy but I came to understand these moments as doorways,
doorways into a world that will always exist, somewhere between all things
relative and quantum.

And if you look closely enough, stride through confidently enough, expunged
of both ego and fear, you can begin to see the turning of things, the swirling
motion of it all that keeps us alive and wanting, having been regurgitated
our forms of animal offering grossly incomplete and divergent, in this physical

realm that holds us all enmeshed and in
Chains.

in keeping to popular consensus, marijuana was the ‘gateway’ I encountered
shortly after becoming drenched in alcohol during my Standard 9, and Matric
years

where I was able to begin reimagining who I was and where I was and where
all of this was taking me.

The first time I smoked marijuana I’m talking
about not seriously stoned, but the first time
I smoked marijuana

was at jamie’s house one afternoon we all got together and there
was a party, I can no longer remember what for, as if we needed

A reason.

And there was music and there were movies, and Jamie had a penchant for
metal, and david lynch and robert smith from the cure not the standard stuff
the truly eclectic pieces that otherwise would

never have crossed my path, and it was how
I discovered bands as wide ranging as
ministry and brujeria
and that afternoon we smoked pot whichever
way we could put it into our bodies the final take an improvised

Apple, which one of the girls offered around, and it was wet and soggy and
not at all effective. None of it was.

That evening riding home on my alpina, back from mouton street
to mindalore all I received for my efforts was a piercing headache

so visceral, so searing I could hardly pedal.
Not the best beginning in other words, but

I vowed I would try again. And I smoked everytime after that whenever it was
and I was beginning to think that I was in some way immune to the stuff until

That night of the first general elections in the arcade at Horison View s/c and
I was playing windjammers and I hit the flying disc up, deflecting a vicious

Throw from mike most likely who could play any game as if born in front of it

And it hit me quite literally, the flying disc, or the 8bit videoed perception of it
and I laughed like a loon and time was all gone or bent in on itself

I couldn’t finish that game but it was OK because everyone knew
I was (finally) stoned as a coot – in the parlance of our times.

It became simpler and more regulated following that evening:
receive joint smoke joint get stoned, sometimes almost immediately, or after
the first few drags.

And there was always dope around when we got together
from 94 at 904 or whereever – ryan would like lighting up in the opel kadett
he had christened belfry with balthazar the bat

hanging from the rearview mirror as if keeping
a close watch over us
both where we were going as well as where we had been

twitching and turning and bopping about on his worn leather leash

mike would smoke from the confines of 904 in the arms
of his lazyboy which was both his perch and his throne

dispensing wisdom like some longhaired
guru from the 60s
although decked out in an adidas tee and tracksuit pants

chris and I would smoke at rau sometimes all hours before or after
challenging everyone who’d a mind, to backgammon   
or on those occasions we hit the clubs together most
often wednesday and thursday nights at le club the student nights

me on my student loan chris sponsoring freely from his winnings from the
petshop, westgate pet hyper, where he often and quite simply never rang

up cash sales.

And of course
there were sacred places that we frequented to get
seriously goofed together:

The Tunnels
The UFO and the Stormtrooper
The stairwell in honeydew heights where mike and I watched
the ant confederation (mike’s term) with people coming back

from work, from their boring and tedious, and entirely incomprehensible
nine to fives, as we sat there, in the evening light watching them
exit the two cranky glassfronted shindlers lifts, all the way up and down
from the first floor to the tenth, the lifts ryan once put his foot through

In accident or rage and cutting himself
so cleanly and severely that he required micronervesurgery on his ankle
and almost fucking bled out and died on the way to the hospital

And then, for sure and for serious there was 904 – the two bedroom flat
on the corner of the 9^th floor closest to the lifts that mike and ryan
shared at first on their own and then with arthur who also worked

At boston bbq in westgate and who slept on a mattress by the front
door against the rippled glasswindow so you could see him there
in mixed relief when you came to visit and he would open for me and

Say mike is here or ryan is here or they have gone out
to get drinks or spliff who’s real name was mark whose second name
was arthur which mike called him having him somewhat under thumb

And we only realised this when 904 disbanded in 98 after ryan’s rage
or accident which ever came first and mike saw his chance against
ryan’s karate for the first time and beat the crap out of him on crutches

and ryan moved out and into my small cottage, on my parent’s property
and we all kind of drifted apart after that
and the brotherhood disbanded and we

Went our separate ways. We smoked a fuckton of pot in 904 everything
everywhere was coated in it, the sticky resin the roaches in ashtrays the
holes in the cranberries couch that saw so much late-night action if any
of the stories were meant to be believed

And I came over there often, to smoke and to chat and before and after
clubs and raves
But even from the first joint and the apple, to the very first high, and the
brotherhood, and the communion of our

Shared experience what I really wanted was
to get some dope and smoke on my own and write just write but it was
difficult at first because I never knew how or where to buy this stuff and
at first had to ask ryan for a small matchbox

Of weed when he dropped me off and he obliged and I got stoned and
wrote on my own and this is when I realised that smoking pot was a

doorway and that I would probably spend the rest of my creative life
looking for these or similar doorways which
I would go through willingly unwittingly, and
explore.

The first time I took LSD
I didn’t have to wait
for anything barring
the first hour, while it took hold.

And it completely and irreversibly changed my fucking life. Just like that.
one minute I was fox the next minute I was fox-but-not-fox-but-definitely

and-effortlessly-fox
and I loved every drawn out collapsing rippling pulsing, techno flavoured
heartbeating flowering of it.

After that first trip which was at a rave an industrial rave the first rave we
went to, and I was the guinea pig honestly I had heard of LSD obviously
and sort of knew what it was
and what to expect and everyone at boston bbq had been talking about
it and taking it the resident thug and low life criminal mastermind
become local dealer

raymond who worked at sweets from heaven
prices from hell was doling it out quite literally
like candy

mostly red and black dragon microdots but also papers
these things called purple ohms and at this first rave we

went to I didn’t know I was going to be tested on I just wanted to dance
it sounded really hard and clear and clashing at the same time
what I came to learn was a form of techno called industrial techno
similar to the industrial music they were beginning to play

at tchaikovsky and subzero and of course I didn’t get any dancing done
that night I spent most of the evening sitting
on the side of the road
outside the venue my mates all gathered worried geese mothers asking
what the hell what’s going on what are you feeling
while I sat there rocking and keening
and watching the road under the streetlights consume itself in
wave after blossoming wave of disco-bobulating, ever repeating purple.

I fell in love with the visuals
on my first trip

And I never turned back. Even after I had three bad-trips in a row
across four days a situation that rectified itself thankfully
at rustlers valley when I climbed the mountain
on half a double-dipped
california sunshine

with the cars and the tents and the people arranged down below
on the semicircular-stepped camping areas, elements that
magically reasserted themselves in direct juxtaposition, to sit ever
more perfectly within the flowing whorls of the fractal
pattern I had become to associate with the presence
of the chemical passing synthetically
through my veins and up and down my spine,
the openvalve-hearted breathing of that CD coloured
swirl that drove my soul beautifully insane.

I’ve tried to calculate realistically not egotistically how much acid I took
over the years which were 95 to around 01 and then a few times in 02
irregularly after

And I think I must have taken acid around 80 or 100 times, and a total
dosage equalling about 150 to 180 doses these taken
singularly or collectively
in single sittings.

These figures are hard to calibrate because towards the end there
aroundabout the millennium, when things went seriously pie to the nth
power-shaped for me, we were doing liquid LSD
which natasha and matt were preparing and sharing
from matt’s parents house who had tragically died in
a car crash and left the house to him and all he did
besides working as a waiter was take and deal and this liquid LSD

Was hard to measure out broken-down in a whiskey
tincture and then dapped with an eyedropper on the
back of your hand where I developed this weird rash

or at times directly by mouth with natasha the matriarch of the billowing
and often incongruous commune feeding the stuff in
a trickle onto your tongue and down the back of
your throat

and you would wait for the taste of metallic purple
that lets you know your trip is about to begin, and
you’re on it for 6 – 10 hours. Like it or not.

Around 96 everybody I knew through the rave scene began getting
into ecstasy or MDMA and, to be perfectly honest
although I enjoyed certain moments especially the
physical moments around dancing ecstasy does this weird thing
with your body where it bleeds out colourfully in your sweat

When you move, and everything becomes beautiful and lovely and
smooth and the women are so beautiful on it and
so into you.

But for me often when I don’t move on MDMA when I just sit and try
enjoy the trip it becomes languid and just plain weird and heavy and

It is at these moments when I am not sweating this shit out
through my pores that it begins fucking with my eyes
and fucking with my mind

And my mind aside anything that fucks with my eyes is a nogo zone
they’re fucked enough as it is.

But everyone was doing it, to return to the gateway metaphor and
myself being so impressionable, so gleefully along for the ride and

Before long where raving in johannesburg was dominated by hard
techno and acidstrobe and LSD in the mid-90s
soon the music began mellowing, if we can call
it that, into these sustaining house rhythms and
while it mattered not I loved house and techno and trance
and I would dance on autopilot, counting out four to the floor beat
sequences almost begging for it to break
while simultaneously knowing precisely when the DJ would drop it

I never really got into ecstasy as some of my mates did, and there
was a shitton of MDMA going around so it would not have been a
farcry to say the opportunity was always there

Especially when chris’s uncle charlie came over from the UK, with
condoms of the stuff smuggled up his and sue’s buttcrack
and whereever else

but that, as they say is a story for another day.       

the times we survived

And that’s just it really. Everyone who was a part of the scene
the drinking and the drugging and the clubbing
made it out relatively unscathed as well as I know and barring

The one or two exceptions where someone or other
did just die
as can be the way of things sometimes

But not that I know of in any way directly related to what we were doing
as kids and then young adults looking to find

Our way in this messed up world. Perhaps we were built differently
the west rand in particular and johannesburg
in general and as the saying goes Africa is not meant for sissies and for

Sure we took plenty of risks some of us for reals could have died
on any number of separate occasions, doing

The often ridiculously stupid things that people do
to remove themselves from the gene pool

and perhaps again, it was because in many ways
we started out broken not in any definitive
way, like, I was broken because of this or that or some childhood
trauma

but that we entered these moments this coming of age ritual with
our eyes and our hearts, to some extent, open and yearning

Relying on the rituals and the rites in some way to defragment us
further or at least define the fragments that were already there

young men pushing greenshoots through the shells of their youth

Waiting acknowledgement by our kind, for being bold and brazen
and often absolutely stupid, but doing it right doing it with the

Best intentions. And trying. To be good human beings, accepting
of ourselves. And others.

Or some such bullshit. I’ll never know.

This was the time of my life, and I wanted to live it like this, doing
These things, with these people

And no matter the mischief we got up

to, the complete redundancy almost of growing up and accruing
experiences which you somehow believe to be uniquely

Your own, we went out, into these scenarios,
both presented to us and formulated by our own free will

In as much as that can be said to be a decisive term and
dependable

As seekers firstly of truth and of beauty.

and if there was a fault inherent in what we were doing to
this effect it could be claimed that it was quite simply that
we were doing this

Almost to the exclusion of all else, as the means to justify
the ends the ends to which we had no formal conception
of, being truly in the moment

And of the moment and young and quite immune to criticism and
the overly prescribed sentiment of adults who were there
often it seemed

Only to say I told you so or watch yourself before you get yourself
in a real situation you won’t be able to get yourself out of, and I’m

Not bailing you out. But of course they did, or they would, and
perhaps, once more this is precisely why we did the things we

Did, with the confidence of heart that so often saw us through
these otherwise insane times knowing that we were good kids

And that somewhere, should the shit really hit hard, that there
was a safety net the same way we approached

as mostly unpolitical souls, the notion that the country around
us would be OK after everything had settled. That the real world

was mostly populated with good people looking to do the right
thing. Maybe we were sheltered and innocent and naïve

but maybe too we called it right, having seen and understood in
some intrinsic way precisely what was in front of us

which was quite simply life, undisguised, and inexorably present
and accounted for by those with the balls
and the gumption and

The wherewithal, to reach out and grab it.

The first time I got stoned I’m talking about
seriously stoned not the first time I smoked
marijuana

Was the night of the first “free and fair”
general elections

as if all of this had been up until now a friendly affair
between two groups of people who saw eye to eye
on most things

and were only now extending an olive branch like a
baton not running aside one another
arms pumping
like the action of guns.

That night which was a public holiday we
met at Horison View Shopping Centre
but ended up at the tunnels

mike and warren chris ryan and I
there were five of us, but warren couldn’t
stay he still stayed way out west near randfontein

And later on after we started clubbing together
ryan would have to drive warren all the way
out past krugersdorp along ontdekkers to drop
him off and I would come with as I was
always the last one to get dropped off either
that or I would walk home from 904

Late at night. There was never anyone around.

But on the night of the first free and fair
general elections
after the tunnels as we drove out to le club
in ryan’s opel kadett
after playing windjammers
which was when I realised I was really stoned
for the first time in my life

mike turned around, from where he sat in the front
passenger seat and looked at us and said
And Then There Were Four
and that is how it was and that is how it stayed
when mike said something it generally stayed said.  

But I want to tell you about Roodepoort Refridgeration
and how it felt to get really seriously stoned for the first
time and what it meant to be around friends who were
brothers and who shared everything like drugs but not
women women were a problem especially for me.

and I wanted to get the feeling absolutely right and not
just recall I want to be there I want to go back to when
I was nineteen, and everything was new and fresh and
clean, even the drugs that we did and the communion

mike rolled the slow boat in the front seat of the kadett
while we sat in the back watching him roll
and listening to him talk about the things he would talk
about.

I couldn’t roll joints yet
I would have to roll the rizla around a bic pen and then
seal it and remove the bic
and then scoop the dope
up into the little white tube, that I had made, by myself

And one evening back at 904 nicole was there and the
guys were fucking around in other parts of the flat, and
I had to roll a joint like that

in front of nicole and she was sweet about it
but I felt completely useless really

And later that night at the scarlet arms
we were all sitting around a table stoned and drinking draught
And nicole was sitting next to me she reached across and put

Her Hand on My Leg

and I left it there like that, and I didn’t respond and she got up
and left with gwen I didn’t know she was going home
I thought she was coming back and I was really excited about
her coming back, to sit down next to me again
and this time I would turn to her and smile and

When she didn’t I said to mike much later nicole reached over
and put her hand on my leg and Mike laughed

and said nicole will break you. But she never did.    

We listed to NME Singles of the Year 1993 while mike rolled
and spoke about new wave new wave and how far behind
the american scene actually was how the british ruled the
airwaves   

This is the tracklist of that album that from that night on was
in ryan’s kadett everytime we went to le club:

1        Arrested Development– Tennessee (4:09)

2        Belly– Gepetto (Remix) (3:27)

3        Senser– The Key (Radio Edit) (3:31)

4        Madder Rose– Madder Rose (2:51)

5        One Dove– White Love (Radio Mix) (4:40)

6        Tindersticks– Marbles (4:37)

7        Credit To The Nation– Call It What You Want (3:57)

8        Utah Saints–  Believe In Me (3:41)

9        Swervedriver– Duel (4:40)

10       Bjork– Venus As A Boy (Edit) (4:05)

11       Elastica– Stutter (2:23)

12       Spiritualized– Good Times (4:08)

13       Smashing Pumpkins– Cherub Rock (4:59)

14       Apache Indian– Movin’ On Special (3:59)

15       PJ Harvey– 50ft Queenie (2:24)

16       Sugar– Tilted (3:54)

17       Grant Lee Buffalo– America Snoring (3:40)

18       Leftfield / Lydon– Open Up (Vocal Edit) (3:50)

My favourite track on this disc quickly became America Snoring which is where I think I remember what mike was saying about the american and british scenes of course if you listen to this track which I still do you will see it really isn’t about divergent scenes after all and while I don’t think mike was deliberately obfuscating no matter that he was a gifted storyteller and I hung on his words often and quite literally he had the persona and the magnetism to pull these kinds of things off and we were all basically young and full of shit anyway.

It was such a hit with me that chris and nicki who became chris’s girl after the accident on my kawasaki kb250 in 97 where chris broke his leg and chris wasn’t wearing a helmet we were lucky always lucky and nicki became his wife bought me the Grant Lee Buffalo album Fuzzy that has this track on it and while I didn’t fully appreciate that at the time I still have this album and I listen to it often although mostly these days on spotify.

After mike had finished rolling the joint we climbed out of the kadett
and walked all the way down past where chris lived on sonop street
past ryan mother’s flat also on sonop that ryan had just moved out
of into 904

And down the grass embankment and towards the tunnels
which are basically these man-height open stormdrains  
where you can walk in and all the way up them warren said
this is something we should do so we were doing it.    

And after the first bend with ourselves only very slightly stooped
and in almost absolute darkness except for the lighter
we lit that spliff and warren started up the doop-doop
song after we started dragging on it and passing it around

And we were whooping and bopping to this song that held every
thing inside the way you held your breath for as long as you
could after taking a drag and we were coughing and laughing
and singing as we made it out the tunnels all over ourselves
in the sheer delight of all we were doing all that we were the
boys we still were the men we would one day become but not

right now and we were running as if we were free truly always
and forever free and fair unto each other and everyone and the
whole world was with us and we were with and of the world and

we clambered up the embankment at the edge of sonop street
and then someone saw it and one of us shouted out the words
painted on the side of the building across the street the words
roodepoort refridgeration spelled as wrong as they were it still

made sense everything made sense to our young beautiful selves
trapped in the light escaped in the night and lungful after lungful
expunged in that glorious warcry that placed us where we were
because we belonged where we found ourselves which was in

roodepoort roodepoort roodepoort re—fridge—ahh-rayyyshunn!

We walked back up sonop and we were breathless and alive for
the very first time in our lives and we said goodbye to warren
although we saw him again and so often after that
and then the four of us piled into ryan’s kadett and we made

Our way to le club with NME’s Singles of the Year 1993 blaring
out of the kadet’s old crappy speakers in 12 watts of distortion

Like a warcry that we now owned.

The Hillbrow I remember
is different from the one you remember
the one you know now

I had a job at the blood bank my mother worked
at the National Blood Transfusion Service
just off Pretoria Street opposite the BP garage

She was a technician in a department of two
her colleague was this cool chinese gay guy
called Stanley

They did tests on blood and stuff

And then she became a doctor
but before that I got a holiday job just out of matric
working upstairs I can’t recall the name

Of the department but we spent the whole day

Labelling test tubes and putting them in trays
taking them out of fridges
putting them back in fridges, pretty important

Some afternoons we would go down to the bar on Pretoria Street
the Arcade and drink there our boss Vivian was an alcoholic at
least that is what my mom said I worked with her son Ben
and we got drunk plenty

Some evenings particularly Friday evenings we would stay after work
and have these parties in the office on the fifth floor I think
anyway it was the top floor and Vivian used to drink vodka there was

Always vodka I remember dropping a beer over the balcony
it missed some guy on the sidewalk and we laughed

There was a girl called Christelle
who worked with us
she was our age she was cute she was afrikaans and she loved Ben

At one of these parties she got so drunk she threw up everywhere
and I took her to the bathroom she threw up all over me
and we were sitting there on the cold tiled floor, just inside the ladies
and she was crying and I was holding her my hands on her back  

And all she kept saying is I want Ben I want Ben but Ben
wasn’t there I was there but that is just the way of things sometimes

Before all of this I remember catching the bus into Hillbrow from Westridge
along ontdekkers we would go to the Pretoria Street Arcade Look $ Listen
and flip through the tons of cds, and listen, and walk the arcade the tattoo

artists, we would shop the second hand clothes outlets and there was this
one place that had this giant wooden tub filled with t-shirts

I bought a purple ripcurl and a billabong t-shirt
I can’t remember what colour it was but I wore it later that afternoon when
we got back to roodepoort on the bus playing tennis ball
soccer on the highschool sports field

It was a year later and I had flunked out of Wits, I think I was going to be a
physicist I don’t know what I was thinking
but I’m still into quantum when I told them in the admin office in some part
of the admin building that May that I wanted to be a writer

They showed me the curriculum but I couldn’t see anything really that was
going to help me my father was going to shoot the roof I was on a student
loan they just took my student card and cut it in two

That was a pretty shitty day to be honest

I stayed at home for the next few months listening to James
albums I borrowed from chris and smoking marijuana
and trying to write poetry until my mother
got me a full time job at the blood bank as a donor assistant

I was the only boy on the team of young and pretty girls and
women and some of them were so cute, and I was in love with all of them
our job was helping donors after the sisters
stuck the needles in

we would make them feel comfortable lying on these metal frame beds
with their blue and maroon plastic cushions and when the bags started
to get full we would pull the needles out put some cotton
wool on the wound pull the tube tight where a loose knot

Had already been tied and then snip the needle off into a
medical waste bucket I got needle stick injuries
three times in four months and had to go for HIV tests, every month for
six months even after I left but all I can remember and cared for
were those beautiful women and the fact
that I was the only boy                   

I wrote the lyrics for a counting crows song
I can’t remember which one for a girl on the back of a donor sheet
on the same day I walked down to small street mall, through the noord
street taxi rank to buy myself a new pair of 10 hole oxblood doctor
martins from moolas I thought of her the whole way   

It was years later that I made my way to Hillbrow again in the back
of russell’s beetle with chris we were so stoned we were looking
for blowjobs so a whore in other words

And I wasn’t even sure if we were serious, and even with the three
of us all in the car we were all obviously
just along for the ride but it got very serious very quickly

These fucking punks they pulled up outside a block
of flats tenement apartments
and there were these three mamas outside leaning against the low
wall leading up the short stairs to the door under a yellow lightbulb

They made me get out the back of the beetle through the
bent forward front passenger seat laughing all the while
and approach these ladies and they were silhouetted
against the light and I couldn’t see them

And I didn’t even know what to say

A halfhour later there was a crackwhore in the frontpassenger seat
and chris was in the back and russell was driving and she was
A young girl older than us, but old looking
very sharp and skinny all edges and bone

with a hard look and a harder talk, and there was just something
about her that didn’t look right to me I’m sorry that I have to say

That but I am not and she said if we could get her some crack she
would suck us all off and at first it was funny but then it was not

We had stopped by some guys she knew, and somehow she had
the crack but now she needed a pipe and we had started arguing
and I didn’t like the look of her and I couldn’t imagine those lips
around my cock and I was still a virgin for fucksakes

And none of this was serious anyway I was shouting at her to get
out the fucking car and we had circled Hillbrow like three times
and came to the BP garage again I think someone actually threw

a crackpipe that bounced off a closing window and then said the
cops are behind you and I yelled what cops the fucking cops

Are after you motherfucker but the cops were behind and we
finally got her out of the car at the top of Hillbrow by the park
There it was about 2am and she took the crack with her and

The cops stopped us just after we left Hillbrow they were special
branch they were in an unmarked vehicle I remember the next
part very clearly

They had pulled in front of us after passing us and waving their
torches at us and chris was in the front looking back at me
shouting get rid of the dope get rid of the dope, we had brought

the whole bucket with us there were two full jiffy bags of swazi
from Paulas in Vrededorp the way they used to pack it full and
staple the tops of the plastic bags closed and I was

I can’t even remember I was

reaching for the bags I had one bag I was trying
to stuff one bag down my woolen hiking socks, the only thing
I could think the only place I could think

And there’s this coloured guy this big fucking coloured guy
he’s got a gun up and pointing through the windshield and
he’s shouting your hands your hands your hands

The guy in the back and I say the only words
that come into my mouth Im tying my docs, Im tying my docs
!

two guys had come around the side of the car and russell the
driver is out the car and against the door and the other guy is
reaching to chris and I think the conversation

is then that we just surrender and give them everything we got there are even
weapons in the car

a baseball bat with fucking swastikas gouged into the wood, along the crown
this was fucking ryan and all other kinds of karate shit
the cosh russell keeps from the time
boneheads ran us off the road after we swore at them
coming back from cresta         

If you can believe this those cops were actually pretty
chill after they had taken a good look at us and found

The tin the large biscuit tin of ‘marijuanaparaphenalia’
the one bag of marijuana and the bullshit arsenal of assorted boyhood dream

the big coloured who was the team leader by behaviour was showing us how
to properly use the bat with a shortarm swing for maximum affectiveness they
were looking for crack cocaine and they didn’t find any

and they fucking laughed but they told us fucking straight stay out of Hillbrow

Before they left Russell approached them and asked if
he could have his one dope pipe back as it had sentimental value
and they looked at him as if he was fucking crazy
but it was ballsy and it worked

and before they got back in their car I was in the backseat the whole time the
big coloured guy took a look back at me and said tying your fucking doc
tying your fucking doc you crazy fucking fuck and then they were gone and

we looked at each other and we laughed a crazy fucking laugh that you’ll
only ever know if you’ve laughed it, plus we had the one bag of marijuana

still and russell’s pipe that had sentimental value we laughed all the way
back to roodepoort I don’t think I went to hillbrow again after that

but I remember Hillbrow
although not perhaps
in the way you know it now
or remember it.

He sits in an Easy Chair
although which one
and does it really matter

These are the conversations he has with his landlord
when he walks in
off the street   

As if he were a customer. Come to dole out royalties  
Not expletives

Although that doesn’t matter either
His landlord is very understanding

Of the harsh trading and meta-economic Conditions

He says: we have known each other for a very
long time and we respect each other I feel
we can talk openly about these

things and you are always honest with me.

He says: I sometimes look up at these

Wonderfully attended beams. These high overheads
I think about swinging    

He says, walking in off the street,
on a quiet day
which affords them these long uninterrupted periods

to have these engaging conversations    
That build trust. That engender
A sameseeking rapport their heads together as they

Look out onto the street as if looking for solutions
Together seeking answers in the sweeping of leaves

Along the sometimes quiet, often busy well-laid and
maintained pavement system
which should be feeding him feet   

But which does not he says I no longer feel relevant
here, in this conversation that we are having

Two men at ease with each other, leaning casually over and across
countertops that should be seeing the brush and sweep of coin

But which do not. Nor in this setting that allows him

The time to sit here, and write out these conversations he has with
His landlord, uninterrupted.

Look, he says, his hands splayed out wide as if in benediction and
not stipulation, his smile returned, but not without investment

but still smiling both smiling
we always we the royal we,

without royalty, without royalties

Have always given you plenty of
rope. It is because we believe in  

He says: we are a caricature enactment of this empty street that is
become so bustled with audiences unattending, a play in a foreign

Language. Where the players remain on stage, and mount up their
Lines even when the audience understands not a single word, and

Misses all the morals. Every punchline unaddressed into the
darkness. And the curtains never close. And in walks the Landlord

Would you look at this street he says. All the changes being made.

These are the conversations he should be having with his landlord
How

The two of them here, with their heads together. Calm and smiling
addressing the problem,
the lack of coins brushing palms, held wide, and open and smiling

Golden silver
copper hand
shakes   

He says: we are the ongoing expression of concern for the way
Things change. People change. Times come and go

And we’ve seen so much water, wash under this bridge
That time when we gave you free parking
when all the planes were delayed and the tourists never

Came. Back.

He says: together we have marched to this tune for so long can
we help it that the pavements are maintained

The brush of feet up against doors we have had to close again
and again. Your door is always open for me. And I respect that

These are the conversations he should be having with his landlord
Now

That the seasons that have changed
have also come to pass

The birds have flown, this way and that, but always return
And when they don’t he says: I am not responsible for the

Wind. And he nods. Knowingly.
Those birds with notes in their
mouths.

Or bills in their beaks whichever
arrive first on the
first of the month
on the wind that he makes anyway in the absence of wind

Thank you, I would appreciate that. He says you know we
Have always looked out for you, he says

as he looks out, as they both look out
avoiding, in the unbroken comfortable

silences that exist between the conversations
he has with his landlord

The coins the birds leave as they tumble from
Jaws held open
and maw.         

For those who don’t believe
the mantis and the spider
can live in harmony

Plant and grow a dope tree.

Once the seed germinates
the cotyledons unfurl
the first true leaves appear

you’ll have to wait a week or
two for the mantis to arrive

but it will. It will be the tiniest
Thing, one of nature’s most precious, most vicious predators

But cute as fuck (until she bites your head off)

But this poem is not about that – this poem is
about the mantis and the spider.

Every dope bush gets one mantis. I think this is Jah’s decree
I have never grown a dope bush that does not come without
its own mantis.

Gratis.

As if Instilled there by magic and by beauty
All rolled into one.

Of course there can be more than one mantis, more than one spider
though I generally find the first mantis appears three to four weeks
into propagation

once the plant has developed sufficiently through its apical meristem
And then one morning you wake up, and after brewing your first cup
of brew, you’ll be standing there and you’ll go, oh look!

the tiniest most precious little thing.

Barring misadventure this mantis will stay with the dope bush, grow
with the dope bush until harvest
symbiotically getting goofed and catching bugs and getting fuck-off

High until it matures, has babies
and dies.

That’s nature for you. In your garden.
Let him who has eyes see.   

The spider will arrive once the dope bush is seriously flowering
And there are bugs galore.

This spider will be of the jumping variety
and also start off seriously

Cute AF.

A little black guy we usually call ‘Norton’
After Norton Antivirus and Norton will stand there, his little legs
balancing on the leaves in the breeze and with his little eyes all

Arranged, will follow you around as you
move always facing you head on

never letting you out of his sight
and I don’t know about you
but that comforts me somehow.

And I have never not once seen
The mantis and the spider fight.

I guess there are bugs enough in this world for everyone,
should we choose to love that way, in harmony
in the garden.      

The television will tell you
had you owned one
in 1975
when it came out
that being born white
in africa was quite simply
marvellous

heeltemal ongelooflik.  

but then we had the run of the place
of course

the only constant is change
change is what you make it

I’ve been voting for the wrong party ever since
and still can’t find the keys to my car in the dark
parkinglot

or any change for the dude
In his yellow bib vest, and blue ribbed overalls

who is digging trenches in the heat
for my fibreoptic cables

who is reading my smart meter
that is not very clever

whose kids are in the public schools
learning about chatgpt

who makes nightly rendezvous on the closed
circuit television cameras

I have positioned all along the outskirts of my property
that is bordered by electric fencing  

And an alarm system that is monitored
by a security service provider

his ghostly face quite white and clear in highdef HDMI
the very next morning while I

check the footage while drinking freshground fairtrade
coffee from ethiopia

Tapping out the story getting all the details down
the time what he was wearing the way his features

Almost shone, on my neighbourly whatsapp group
and wait for consolation, that free easy feeling

Of community. Of correctness. Of whiteness.     

Yes, we went to the polls with everyone
singing the songs of freedom
eventhough we did not know

The words – it was good for business, there are some
good ones in amongst the bad apples that are always

Shipped straight from Ceres to the americas
while we get the second rate rot from
shopritecheckers
sixty60.   

There was talk of reconciliation
and never any pogroms

In the highstake boardrooms owned by multinational
conglomerates of course

all the government parastatals
went to shit immediately, and we left in our droves

those that could
those of us who

had the unfortunate circumstance
of being born white in africa with

our british and european passports
hidden under our mattrasses like cold currency.

I switched allegiances many times
scoffing at the notion that I would naturally vote

DA. But who I was really voting for was not anc

That was the trick to remaining strategically optimistic
and radiantly newage to having black friends

Who would also braai on Saturday afternoons
and watch the Springboks win the rugby.

That was essential because the cricket was too white
still lying under the shroud of hansie how could he

Like the pot calling the kettle beset on all sides

The ossewaens outstaged at the river running
muddy and brown.

Back in the city, not the parts that are
overrun the metro police are stopping

Taxi drivers and letting the madams in
their SUVs go.

And the outfitters are falling over them
selves to shelf new oversized hiphop t-shirts

That make our teens look like they’re about
to mob and rob the local convenience stores

And we’re ok with that, we bop our heads to these new sounds
that come pounding through their closed bedroom doors

thinking about the metal they would almost
certainly be listening to

if this were only 1990 and things were
like they were. Back then. When

You know.

I’ve been studiously avoiding the more
obvious analogies afraid of being cancelled

Or too marginalised to any more give a shit
having seen my rightful retirement age slip

From 65 down to 55 down to 45
to get shown the door and I’m sitting in a gathering

There are two of us left and the lady speaker
has things in her hair and her outfit is sharp

And traditional and she is saying
And everyone is applauding

how the transformation targets
have almost been met     

and I’m wondering about my son
and how we worship entrepreneurs  

and how the guys at the bowling club catch water
from the government tap in large plastic holdalls

and take it in a requisitioned woollies trolley
and sell it down the road for 50c a cup.  

How the guy at the robot has a sign that says
Smile

As if we’re all on candid camera and it’s 1975
all over again except this time we’re watching

The Test Signal waiting for Leon Schuster to come on
and show us how to wear a mask.

When the forest is ready to burn
it sends a prayer to the sky
and the summer thunder comes
crafted of dream and distemper.

When the forest is ready to burn
the forecast is clear
the air is calm but a
pressure builds behind the eyes.

When the forest is ready to burn
it burns. Everything
in the forest
burns nothing stands before

the wind except the flame.

and the flame
takes
its time the bloody red
teeth of a wolf

The scarred path into and out of
every clearing.

When the forest is ready to burn
it sends a prayer
and the gods are never careless
in their comfort.

When the Russians arrive the town is empty, the streets deserted
not a soul. The women and children have long since been relocated
and the men are hiding in the mountains.
The Russians make themselves at home. The way the Germans did,
the way all men do in the palaces of war.

Later that night it begins to rain and it continues to rain for days.
It rains so long and hard that eventually the men
in the mountains are forced to come down, are driven down
by the deluge into the arms of the Russians. This is how my
grandfather is caught in the Ukraine and sent to Siberia.

This is all I know. There’s the part about: Manchester –
the Night Owls Squadron and the steamboat to Cape
Town but the rest is hearsay.

Kocham Praga / I Love Praga – another mural. more graffiti.
The thing about Warsaw / Warszawa I noticed first
was the liberation of the public space
given over to vandals and art. Willingly. A healthy
spirit of rebellion. Forgive don’t forget. Legia. Miecho.

Legia. The Polish premier league sits on the steps of a renovated
building smoking woodbines as we pass. Praga hasn’t always
been this inviting. Miecho means Kebab, if kebab were the only
thing in the world. A kebab the size and shape
of Sts. Michael and Florian Cathedral.   

We walk towards the meeting point drinking our little monkeys
our malpecszi already noting how beautifully unrestored
some of the buildings are, how newly envisioned others,
when the bombs were dropped across vistula river the people
almost forced to go back to their chores bend their backs
ignore the screaming of planes

Almost. Everywhere the dashing P of the Warsaw Uprising
strikes defiant white paint against brick the Legia
personnel have been busy making up for the lost
time of their grandfathers. 

My Polish isn‎’t great. In fact it is nowhere and later in Bialystok
I will be shouted at by a lady cleaning the restrooms for
entering without paying my one zloty, and all my new polished
words lambasted will abscond and I will realise standing
mute in front of her indignation, in a poverty of language
never before experienced
that without words we are
naked but I really needed to take that piss
so I went back and paid the machine.

The guide at first not knowing speaks mostly over my head
as I look down at his laminated file at the pictures of how
Praga grew through many ages.

And I remark in english and he switches back and forth
as we stop at new buildings reimagined alongside the
stalwarts of a more violent time, so that a dapple effect
emerges overlapping the various intonations
of a Praga redefining itself in the cool trendy
values of a new generation of lovers.

My grandfather never spoke about crossing Siberia nor
what might drive a man to find his way home  
even when we were playing chess and his two bishops
alongside each other driving my seven year old
self so determined so anxious to win even then
to tears, and he would laugh but never give
an inch not once.

And those two fucking bishops even now where I can I
drive them forward toward my enemies
their influence spread out in crisscrossing waves there
were stories told after he died about a man
who loved cats catching and skinning
cats to survive. And the whiskey over
Wodka how perhaps starting a new life you
leave certain things behind.

But now, drinking nalewki along Zabkowska Str. in a small bar and
eatery Pyzy i Flaki the big fluffy dumplings and stew
crammed in no more chairs patrons standing out
in the thin autumn sun, somewhat thicker wind
and sausage and pierogi in jars, more nalewki
white horse whiskey aside there is so much time
I need to somehow find.

And between the russians and the germans there are spaces
I have to occupy a good polish soldier and later
somewhere in a club in Warszawa
I am forced down from the mountains
but it is no longer raining and I am
surrounded by Legia there is dancing.
 
This time we will win even if we do not we will rebuild some
things are worth fighting for worth remembering some
places worth returning to how ever many times
you are made to leave.

There are so many cats in Old Town, Nicosia that they swirl
as smoke around your ankles, as cats are wont to do.
And where you can’t walk for the tourists you cannot
sit at the many cafes and bars and restaurants without
at least one cat possibly two approaching you well before
the wait staff introduce themselves to you.

And while we’re sure they’re here to keep the rats at bay
and would be preferable to pigeons there are still pigeons
as with all balanced systems and surely behind the scenes
then as many rats as these many cats would allow.

That first day we got lost along the winding streets between
the hotel and the tour group as
we decided to head back for our passports
crossing into Turkish Cyprus at the forefront of our minds.

And in the sweltering heat the end of Autumn come around
what this place must be like in Summer I can’t imagine
the feeder streets smell of sweat and perfume as we hit
the fabricated wall layered with an icing of barbed wire
again and again as the little blue
arrow spins like some mad swirling
dervish in a geomagnetic storm.

And we pass the corner shop we recognise
owned by the three Palestinian / Iranian?
brothers and their friends and patrons
standing outside drinking beer in the heat.

And we walk single file along six inches of
pavement with big city SUVs and Mercedes
gliding widely past at speed so impassably
narrow and effortlessly European.

Tomorrow there will be an accident and a line of cars
will back up around so many twists and turns
that the drivers will need to escape the confines
of their cabs or risk melting to the faux leather
seats airconditioning aside.

And we slip across the Ledra Street Barricade into the Turkish
north with the Turkish bazaars seemingly quieter more
reserved and I can buy a beer so that makes me feel more
at home but I still have to pay to take a leak
admittedly I’m getting used to that.

There is a restaurant just off Apollonos Str that offers me free Ouzo
every time I sit down. I sit down quite often as a result
and before I am given a menu the owner places an Ouzo
clouded in water in a tall highball in front of me.
It’s all very Ernest it’s all very Parisian
but I am neither him, not there.

There is another restaurant, a cafe really that I frequent as often
where the owner is the most beautiful woman in all of Cyprus
and that’s saying a lot. In Cyprus all the women
are beautiful and they always smile at you. She wears her wavy
brown hair down and when she’s busy she ties
it back and in the heat a fine sheen of sweat on
her cheeks like down and her smiling eyes.
 
I am drinking far more Tsipouro than I can afford but when
a woman smiles at you that way you take whatever she
puts in front of you and you say thank you.

In the morning I masturbate in the shower
watching my reflection in the mirror
I have the body of a greek god
gone to seed.

In the afternoon I sit in front of my
PC practising my beat poems and
waiting for an email that
never comes.

And in the evening we stroll down Ledra Str looking for a restaurant
which is not as easy as
you think, with the cats
swirling around your ankles like smoke
and the owners offering you free drinks
and all the beautiful women of Cyprus robbing you blind
with their smiles.

He gets onto a plane and flies effortlessly
from one part of the world to another
wanders dislocated through
wet meat markets waiting
for his soul to catch-up
before returning to the hotel

where he develops a cough and dies
three weeks later in a field hospital
in a foreign land
surrounded by strangers wearing masks. 

This happens more often than you can imagine
from your living room eating
Pringles churning through memes
counting down the days.

There are fashion manufactories making
shiny black body bags
and other personal protective
equipments, and car manufacturers
making ventilators for New York

I love you but your empty streets
your crematoriums operating afterhours
the only smoke now seen from space
from Nasa Satellites,

and the animals have spoken
and in the ensuing silence
finally we are listening
with our fridges full, and the poor of the world
walking entire deserts
on their hands and knees
to counter lockdowns  

And in Britain this summer all the rage
is (finally) brexit
is (finally) the mexican wall
is finally an apocalypse worth staying at home for
to Netflix. And chill