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Thabo Kanakang
Kimberley   
Kimberley   

Poems

Mateuš Conrad Nov 2023
on the edge of etch: letters appear but disappear
without sound -
       tumultus origins of English, as a tongue,
later a people: a letter to the people -
outsourcing the orthodox passing of meaning
without hieroglyphs -
as the Polynesians did for almost six thousand
years when they set off without horses:
or rather with the horses of waves and the winds
across the great plateau of the Pacific ocean...

zahn schleifen liebe: tooth grinding love

       'ōlelo:                 word (language)

palapala:                       letter

          kani:                   sound

face:            maka

            ki'i:                         image

huikau: hybrid:         hiatus of haikus...

on the edge of an etch - apostrophes aplenty and
like reimagining Hawaiian as English
with two consonants: but'ter
            plo'tter - no, not plot'ter

per time: manawa: rather manava -
and Minerva: time spent executing an Olson typography
oh how apostrophes '
      fell to the earth of the linear winding of meaning
in sentences and became punctuation marks
of words in paragraphs rather than poetic cascades
of line: anew...

       J          'ot         down on the edge:
              Ed-ward googled his own name,
some Edward, ed-gear: but that's the eDGe
   i.e. by sound dictation: shion... dicta-shion
   Ej
                        jacket ej

     as with etch:             the visible T yet not really
uttered, sort of bypassed, and heart drowning in
clearly: English is prone to dyslexic fancies
because clearly some letters submerge...

   four tao's of the thai tau:

         the ouroborus no longer eating itself...

                                    T
                                 T † T
                                    T

or perhaps to ask Andrew and the Edinburgh Greeks:

                                 T. T
                                   X
                                T.   T

i can say much more about Edinburgh than Dublin,
safe to say: concerning these two cities
of the former a bad case of trainspotting
and low tides of culture -
   while Dublin, markedly not on the maps
of meaning of the one map that is the Union Jack(et)
since... the Irish did not fare well
with flags associated to cross-bearing marches
across the desert...

               that is i on the guillotine that's ι -
i hardly think it was a common courtesy of the romans
to go all out spectacular for an added head
recliner upon reaching Golgotha:

     how † was actually a T - because that year
it was even cold in Jerusalem so extra firewood was
needed...
and once the deed was done you think that
they didn't use the crosses for fuel in the garrison?
i can just imagine the incense of blood soaked wood
enraging the nostrils of the centurions...

truly, as i were there: in ghost...
      
   ah... only yesterday i picked up a revised hunger
for *******:
hence the zahnschleifenliebe...
   because i have already buckled on loving her
by grinding my front teeth to the point
of chipping one of them...

teeth like butter-softness
   niho niho: no plural? how about
tooth is niho and teeth are nihi?
   so much for a people talking but not writing...
can you imagine: is the nouns became bankrupt
i.e. if someone forgot the name
of a name, so that the word mea - thing was conjured?

what's a waapa?          a boat? not a wa'apa?

oh 'a'ohe mea -              yesthing for nothing
that's ae'              a'ole        no yes no no yes yes no
oh nothing, nothing...

        'olu'olu 'a'ohe mea: sweet nothing -
for a something: kekahi mea...

tribunal of pirates and vagabond burping barbarians:
yes, no word for wig...
kāpiki - cabbage - kapusta in ****** -
who helped conjure up an anti-etymology
for the Hawaiians?      'ōlelo as distinct from
kanaka - a language but not the people...

   kai kanaka - sea people...

'ōmato               (potato)
                  'ūala         (tomato)        

potato toe: manamana wāwae 'ūala
although it is not an assurance to conjure a translation
in that order: and not toe potato...
which would imply: french fries, no?
chips...

            mahina: that is moon and machinery
maszyna - to imply the tides were settled in the minds
and the moon was the machine behind
the phenomenon?
i clearly must be looking at something akin
to cross pollination, etymologically speaking...

you take a word from greek and fuse it with
latin then sprinkle some german or dutch
onto it and you arrive at English...
   not always... greek for orthodoxy still intact
with words like etymology, lexicon and:
well obviously little differences from the original
but most still intact...

talofa! foliga fiafia!
that would be me, being dragged out of darkness
of bad dreams falling out of bed talking
to someone in my sleep...
don't ask me how or for that matter why:

                          is                                      is

two ises ensure that there isn't an isn't...
             or at least that's how it might feel for
a Japanese samu samu rai rai
    visiting these islands...
comparatively an Englishman in Lithuania...
or Latvia...
                      moderately compared cultural differences...
    how will
i ever return to those islands and that Lā

                 to the place where a syllable has meaning
or rather a noun status...
ther-                  thermometer...
one moment less: per tier of integer           mother's
ether...

                             Fern...   ꟻ labours with Theta at
taught thought fabulously... by speaking first...
then listening, then observing, finally scribbling
sound-encoding to reach meaning (:expansive)

because i had to watch ******* yesterday
  because pleasing myself using pictures of you is
like trying to scratch an itch that soon becomes
something either artistic or philosophical...
artistically philosophical: an aesthetic...
that's the meaning of aesthetics:  
                  
i perceive AIS -          eyes
    thes-pain                   thespian
                                              the theta i see...
a letter that became a cheese that became...
surely from the Medieval ages onwards
   it was well established that gold was not really worth
what it was supposedly worth...
since the end of the wooden wheel...
    rubber... rubber and salt... to preserve the meats
to give us culinary ambitions...
                        rubber, salt, morphine, love

and money: to get out of each other's way...
i like money as a concept and as a practicality...
to get out of each other's way...
     and yet to somehow make this life bearable...
money: as means of getting out of each other's way...

ah but still, love... that challenging aspect of life,
for a wish to not write about it,
yet still, unbearably writing about it,
covertly, like so.