I could write a thousand words about Zen
But then three or four words
Would be sufficient

No doubt.
The piece of gum
Naughtily stuck under a school desk

Instead of thrown in the dustbin
They say smoking's a disgusting habit
But gum is messy
Gets everywhere if you
Aren't careful

Nicotine gum?
The bane of smokers
They say it tastes
Foul

But gum
Either way
Comes in all varieties
Sugarfree I favour
Bad for the teeth
Otherwise -

Raspberry, strawberry, mint, spearmint
The never-ending flavours of life
On this planet

One would think of Aswan
Or the Three Gorges Dam

But here we are discussing
A dam a few metres wide
And a couple more metres long

And barely up to your waist
If you stood at the deepest part
The African rains
Were plentiful
This year

Even with the best rain
The dam doesn't spill
It's always a point to be made

This is a family dam
On the family property
Strange in a city...

But still pretty
Surrounded by grasses and reeds
Covered in water-lilies
The occasional heron
Stops by

Its slender grey neck -
A sight

Gameboy versus home-made
Amplifiers

Computer games
Before the desktop
Took over the world
(laptops came later)

King Kong and Worms
Idly passing the time
Of Day
Of Night
Games, Games

Gameboy - a child's
Victory over adults
Who never take the time
To play, play

Pots, pans and plates
Pots, pans

And the larder
A ghost house
Trembling

The larder
Stocked with oats and rice
Pots

And when it is time to cook
And then the gas stove is lit for
A feast

Pots, pans and plates
- Rows of jars line
The windowsill

Preserves, chutneys, jams
Preserves, chutneys
- and mango atchar

That reminds me
Of India
Oh! Lord Gandhi!

Tumbling down a hole in the earth:
Alice and her wonderland

(but that was just a mistake
of writing)

I was talking about the bushes in my garden
And the open skies
Of the lowlands;
What of it?

There is a colourful little finch
in the shrubs of my garden

There is a majestic eagle
(they that live here call Chipungu)
A self-contained buttress against
The blue heavens

Africa:
It is a lost place
One thinks of sunny
Blue skies
And then thunderstorms

Of running through
Vast, vast, vast
Open grasslands

Of cooking on a fire,
Of looking out
Over the hills of our
Homeland, homeland, home -
Land, land, land

It was two thousand and ten
A minute ago
And now the year
of the deadly virus
ten years hence

Like a dream -

A decade passes
Like waves crashing on
The shore

And I hibernate in
The visions of yesteryear
Picking out my psychic
Territory

A hermit?
Oh! No!
A Saint in hiding

Something then nothing -
A parrot on my left shoulder
But it is not real

I wait in time
Like an ornamental vase
Sitting on the dusty shelf

When I think of writing poetry
I think of Sylvia Plath
And W.B. Yeats

Of Ted Hughes
And Frida Kahlo
And Picasso…

When we were…
and then again…
and so forth…

Hummingbirds
Llamas, and more llamas
And ever more birds…

Creatures of every variety
When the sun rises on this
Vast river of life

Harmony justifies…
The onward march of time
The warblers and dragonflies
The ants and twinspots

We are not just forgetful
We write poetry about
The forgotten…
Harmony justifies!

And so sullen
I was at daybreak
And so enchanted
I was at dusk

Note well
For this is my time to be who I am
And the danger of looking backward
Is at an end

Don’t harp on about
Alligators, and poisonous lizards
For we are free to be,
Just be

Asterisk, mark my place
And untold stories
Be ******
In the un-telling

In between the twilight
And the breaking of dawn
I hide in the shadows of
night

Robin Goodfellow
Does all his work at
night

Robin, also known as Puck -
is my alter-ego -
A figure of the shadows
And farmhouses

And as the new dawn breaks
I disappear
Like a vampire dies

Africa! Africa!
The heart never leaves you – Africa! Africa!
Africa – the heartbeat
Africa – the song of doves
Africa – the roar of lions

Vast plains and raging rivers – Africa! Africa!
The heart never leaves you.

...And a lady in a red dress?
A glass of red.

We play conversational poker and come out with
The ace of spades and high-heels to match!

But I’ve never been to Vegas
And I’m not a gambling man -  
A glass of red!

Turn up the jazz
Let me take your coat
And after a dance -
A glass of red

Your lips of Juno
Are a glass of red!

Take my hand and lead the way
We’ll be buried in stuffy old second-hand book stores
Mumbling Homer and his Odyssey amongst dusty shelves
I would look no further for a book called
A glass of red
Written in blood
A thriller weaved post-apocalyptically

...but your kind ***** and firm sinews,
after all is said and all is done,
Are (your guessed it!)
A glass of red.

I don’t know what we are trying to say Native America…
White man and the Indian?
Fight for your right,
Fight for your white.
Apache -
Underlined in black "indian" ink Africa!

for Geraldene

The **** is fine, relaxes the brain and softens the body
And I keep the fire burning for a now deceased lover

This was long ago, and now
In the present,
I live with my mother who doesn’t understand my cannabis habit -
Forgive her

It means I have to play the game of avoidance
Which is tedious
But I don’t forget Mom is elderly now and freedom
is a thing of the next generation

Nor do I forget to love my mother with all my heart
For she, with all her faults,
with all her faults
Has a heart of gold, (excuse the cliché poets)

And nor do I demand anything
For my own heart is full of years
And the “inner” child now
(having adulted) has the freedom to speak
And, and, one day flows into the next like the colours of a rainbow

And whose not to like (parents aside)
Getting ******? It’s healthy when you compare it to chemicals.

But to turn back the clock (and the poem),
I keep a fire burning for a now lost love...
We were happy together in the “forest cabin” of our affair.
Bless you, bless you beyond the grave!

A hodgepodge of concepts,
Bluntly spoken it is a nightmare.

Were we ever gifted with our own voice,
Our own speech, our words and vocabulary?

To tempt the lion and tiger of
Genius from the dense jungle
Of neural pathways
Begetting the
Flight of fancy
And a solid idea:
The ****.

Strangely,
Last Wednesday
There was a snake at my door
And I could have been bitten.

Moral of the story:
Do not dress up the ego
With sweet metaphor
Else the snake of thought
Will consume itself
In the flames of self-pity
And the cat will go hungry.

Were a poem a woman
And its words her flesh