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Stillness

incomparably satisfying
as without trying
I reach double my
usual daily distance
not ending my
writing upon sighting
forbidden heights
and futile fights
with damaging debate
are flung aside
as I resuscitate
appreciation of
beauty in stillness.

Cigarette smoke

Blue cigarette
smoke amidst
oak wooden odour.

Someone lights a cigar
then a pipe smoking
patron walks in.

Both disturb
the equilibrium.

The Dreaded Outsider.

The Dreaded Outsider evolved over a number of years, emerging from a lab project that combined an unfinished movie script, reams and reams of meticulous poetry often edited before pen even hit paper allied with an omnivorous and relentless capacity for introspection and analysis.

Having read some poetry and short stories at the Grahamstown Festival of 1999, Dreaded dropped out of circulation for a while with only a couple of readings and photographic exhibitions.

The scene is set for a return gig in Grahamstown 2008 complete with photos, performance art as well as readings from his novel manuscript.

Born and raised in Joburg he is still affected by flashbacks of the remorseless and unforgiving pace of the city that forces it’s participants into ever faster races against the clock and each other.

He is currently unromantically involved with completing a book and contemplating life without her keeps him awake both day and night, despairing of finding another mistress muse.

The influences in his work are sketchy but there are definitive moments of existentialist angst and the debt owed to Jorge Luis Borges is blatantly apparent.

Poetry is his ultimate weapon, as he favours brevity and economy, with the art of the short story filling in the gaps left by poetic miscalculation. Where the novel will actually fit in, is a mystery compounded by the fact that he generally refuses to talk about it except in general terms of a “peoples’ narrative” or a “factional novel”.

Concept art is another topic that he will debate endlessly and he has started to believe that there might be life after the epic Pink Floyd moment, ‘Dark Side of the Moon’.

Politics he is skeptical of and people amaze him and cause him to continuously reassess his optimistic confidence in their ability to learn from intentional mistakes.

He has been known to ruin a tune or two with the rasp that has been honed and perfected over many hours of inhalation laced with nicotinely, blue cigarette smoke.

His most humbling experience is being befriended and than adopted by a feral cat.

Joburg.

Looms forever painted,
just above a receding, framed
horizon that never quite disappears.
In fact, in dreams, I can almost
reach out and touch the space
it occupies but my fist clenches,
grasping madly at a vacuum.
The images I have, reside
only in my mind. They fit in with neither
history nor reality. And visiting
the city suffocates them, making me
distinctly uneasy. Dislocated as I
sometimes feel, the distance I inhabit,
sharing it grudgingly with the city,
consoles my soul.