The poet is a sangoma
throwing bare-bones words that
uncover occult
universes where they
land.

Spend your day restraining moth and rust;
I'll spend mine subduing child-woes and dust.
But tonight,
tonight, my darling,
let's sneak back into The Garden
and try to remember what it is like
not to have to hold back anything at all.

If you don’t mind, sir,
                                            I think I’ll take your

“It’s a fact”
And put it over here      
                                             And then I’ll fetch            
                                               “No, it isn’t”
                                                                               And  put it over here.

Let’s wait, shall we, until all the
to-ing and fro-ing and up-ing and down-ing is over
And everything is quite still?

                                                      Then,
                                     Once the scales have settled,
              I’ll be able to tell you if I will ever trust a word you say.

So.

Here I stand,
alone,
a tall, awkward pole in the vast,
echoing desolation that used to be
us.

And I wonder,
Bewildered,
what the **** just happened.

And the answer rings like a bell -
clear in the silence:

I was not enough.

She is too wide a world
To carry only
A bright side.

She is the hole in my
Roof. And the stars I get
To watch through it.