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Skies now darkening from pastle shades
Mountains turn to a deeper blue~
Close now lit fire burning bright
Large *** on of natural wildernes bush stew~
Lighting pipe now bushmans meditation
In only a bushmans way~
Thinking some of loved ones past
And times gone of a better day~
Swag all ready for the rolling out
Fly tent all fixed and tied~
Music begins of natural bush
Clothes all now washed and dried~
Horse unrigged and holted loose
Graces close in peace and evening breeze~
Breezes suggesting a night of rest
Now whispering among the trees~
Fire crackling good company
Smoking very little hot the fire~
Started by bushman with smallest sticks
And a little old dry brier~
The fragrance of dinner soon to be
Old dog rests some and snorts a dream~
Getting late now all is quiet
Can even hear water running in yonder stream~
Socks and jeans all washed and clean
Ready for another day~
All dressed now in camp clothes new
Bushman watches another another fade away~
Camp like home out here all alone
Just bushman horse and dog~
Fire letting bushman know
Ready for another log~
Dog comes to the bushmans side
And snuggles into another spot~
At the feet so warm and neat
Best friend a man has got~
Dog awaits a mouth ***** tune
As after dinner this he knows~
That some music he will hear
Out here thats the way it goes~
Dinner eaten some put aside
For breakfast bushman and dog~
Dog awakes and looks around
Just a lizard on a log~
Horse raises head and glances about
To see what dog is searching for~
Dog sniffs the air as if somethings out there
And lays down again on natures floor~
Bushman plays a little tune
Sings a small old fashioned song~
Makes the fire all safe once more
Towards bed roll stroles along~
Tucks himself in for the night
Dog gets as close as he can~
Horse all ******* nearby as well
Silence fills the land~
Stars they shine as stars only do
The moon is hidden by a cloud~
Before the bushman goes to sleep
Night bird cries out loud~
Horse it blows a noise of content
Dog he gives a snort~
Bushman takes a little sip
Of his favourite port~
Another day has faded away
Tomorrow much the same~
Clouds they look a little dark
Tomorrow might have rain~
Fire dims and skies go dark
The stars are brighter still~
Silence sounds as silence does
It's off to sleep for all untill~

Terrence Michael Sutton
Copyright 2007
JeanlBouwer Dec 2009
Harsh, desert scenery
Haven, from lush misery
Forced by Impi, so greedily
This, our new sanctuary

Glitter, in desert sand
The cause, of moonlike land
No more men, with bow in hand
No more happy feet, stamping sand

Scenery, violated by man and machine
A hole, were last buck was seen
Spiritual pickings, now so lean
White man’s god, o so mean

Before white man’s god, we now bow
We ask the spirits, “How can you allow”
Is this, the final raw?
Are we, disappearing now?

After a visit to Jwaneng, a diamond mining settlement of De Beers in Botswana, I was impelled to write this poem to revolt against the injustices being committed against the Bushmen in Botswana. The Bushman are forcibly being removed from there desert land to make place for diamond mining activities.
Lucius Furius Dec 2018
This desert is our life.
From the dry earth we gather roots and melons.
Over the endless sands we hunt the gemsbok and the springbok.
  
Sometimes the ga roots are shriveled and bitter.
Sometimes men are sick with thirst and hunger.
  
When there is water we drink and sing and clap our hands.
When there is food we eat and dance and clap our hands.
  
The eland does not come to us and ask to be eaten --
one must know how to make the arrow and poison it
and where to look and how to hide and shoot. . . .
  
What man is so foolish as to expect more? To expect
the rain to be always falling, his eggs full of water and
his stomach full of meat?
  
You have strong animals to carry you.
You have much food and water.
Your digging sticks are hard and sharp.
Your shooting-sticks are like lightning.
  
You are a powerful man and a good man.
I can see that in your eyes.

But what you offer is a dream.
  
You can give us water and meat.
You can fill our hands with tobacco and perfect beads.

But you cannot give us happiness.

  
A man can only drink so much and then he is full.
If a man is always eating honey, he tires of it and becomes sick.
  
And even if all life were sweet --
what man is not food for lions and dogs?
A man who has tasted in his life no bitterness will find death very bitter.
  
My mouth longs for sweetness
but sweetness brings bitterness
and in the end they are one.
  
So I ask you:
Take your digging sticks and your shooting-sticks.
And do not leave them behind.
Go to the green lands you came from.
We shall walk in this desert as we always have.
(The occasion for this speech is the arrival of an expedition
headed by a European in a Bushman werf around the year 1900.)

Hear Lucius/Jerry read the poem: humanist-art.org/old-site/audio/SoF_007_bushman.MP3 .
Note: This poem is part of the Scraps of Faith collection of poems ( https://humanist-art.org/scrapsoffaith.htm )
It was the man from Ironbark who struck the Sydney town,
He wandered over street and park, he wandered up and down.
He loitered here he loitered there, till he was like to drop,
Until at last in sheer despair he sought a barber's shop.
"Ere! shave my beard and whiskers off, I'll be a man of mark,
I'll go and do the Sydney toff up home in Ironbark."
The barber man was small and flash, as barbers mostly are,
He wore a strike-your-fancy sash he smoked a huge cigar;
He was a humorist of note and keen at repartee,
He laid the odds and kept a "tote", whatever that may be,
And when he saw our friend arrive, he whispered, "Here's a lark!
Just watch me catch him all alive, this man from Ironbark."

There were some gilded youths that sat along the barber's wall.
Their eyes were dull, their heads were flat, they had no brains at all;
To them the barber passed the wink his dexter eyelid shut,
"I'll make this bloomin' yokel think his bloomin' throat is cut."
And as he soaped and rubbed it in he made a rude remark:
"I s'pose the flats is pretty green up there in Ironbark."

A grunt was all reply he got; he shaved the bushman's chin,
Then made the water boiling hot and dipped the razor in.
He raised his hand, his brow grew black, he paused awhile to gloat,
Then slashed the red-hot razor-back across his victim's throat;
Upon the newly-shaven skin it made a livid mark
No doubt, it fairly took him in — the man from Ironbark.

He fetched a wild up-country yell might wake the dead to hear,
And though his throat, he knew full well, was cut from ear to ear,
He struggled gamely to his feet, and faced the murd'rous foe:
"You've done for me! you dog, I'm beat! One hit before I go!
I only wish I had a knife, you blessed murdering shark!
But you'll remember all your life the man from Ironbark."

He lifted up his hairy paw, with one tremendous clout
He landed on the barber's jaw, and knocked the barber out.
He set to work with nail and tooth, he made the place a wreck;
He grabbed the nearest gilded youth, and tried to break his neck.
And all the while his throat he held to save his vital spark,
And "******! ****** ******!" yelled the man from Ironbark.

A peeler man who heard the din came in to see the show;
He tried to run the bushman in, but he refused to go.
And when at last the barber spoke, and said "'Twas all in fun'
T’was just a little harmless joke, a trifle overdone."
"A joke!" he cried, "By George, that's fine; a lively sort of lark;
I'd like to catch that murdering swine some night in Ironbark."

And now while round the shearing floor the list'ning shearers gape,
He tells the story o'er and o'er, and brags of his escape.
"Them barber chaps what keeps a tote, By George, I've had enough,
One tried to cut my bloomin' throat, but thank the Lord it's tough."
And whether he's believed or no, there's one thing to remark,
That flowing beards are all the go way up in Ironbark.
john walker Nov 2015
A  long time ago, I put footprints in a place no one had ever been,
old dusty boots, sweat stained hat ,smell of that place.
My footprints remain if just in my mind,
the quiet moment comes, wraps it's arms around me
My footprints call to me across the distance of time,
this place no one has ever been,I am what I was,
not what I have become, I smell, taste feel my surrounds
happy to be there ,young ,arrogant without shame
....maybe this time, I will stay
Yael Zivan Nov 2014
I’m writing to you because I miss you.

And you may be my one true love.

My first at least.

Though i didn’t know it when I met you.

I miss you

I miss the way you welcome me in

The way you understand me.

I miss the way you can see my truest self.

I miss the way I become myself when I am near you.

the way you are me and apart from me all at once

The way the stars look reflected in your eyes.

I never fear you though others do

I embrace your wildness

Your resilient good humor.

Your unique, nothing else like this, feeling.

The tear tracks on your heart from a thousand brutal fights and you still have so much love.

I kiss you and I can taste it

I can taste the fire, and the sunlight,

the trees and the vast distant rolling savannah.

When i touch you I can feel it

The drumming.

The gum boots, the stampedes, the thunder.

And when I close my eyes,

I can hear it.

The lions roar, the elephants trumpeting.

The thousands of tons of water at Victoria falls

The fish eagles cry

The singing boys at the choir school

The bushman's clicking language.

The cheetah's purr.

The wall of fire from the wild burning days.

The laughing.

The dancing. The singing. The fighting.

And as I breath, you breath,

As I rest, you lie awake, a quiet guardian in the night.

I lift up my hand and you take my fruit.

You silly little bushbaby.

I’ll give you my pineapple forever.

I hide behind the small acacia tree. and I see you.

I see the great king of Africa.

Isilo the Elephant.

The eyes so wise.

The tusks so fierce.

I am protected by you.

Beauty is to small a word to describe the way your body curves.

The blue of your skin. the green hues, the deep orange gold of winter hills.
The purple sunset.

The wetness after a storm.

The glowing embers in the night.

The dragons back. the most magical thing I have ever held in my eyes.
I miss you

Little grandmother on the hill.
Who bakes and meditates.
and drinks tea and gets her way
because *******, I deserve respect!

And little chocolate friends.
Your shandy on the rocks.
Your cottage in the woods.
Your cats and now your coming twins.

And the neighbors who play with eagles.

And Barrie who let me fly in his plane after only knowing his name five minutes.

And the witch who lived next door and could turn into a leopard.
And my grandfathers paintings that cover the old hotel.

The way people say my name.
The way I become myself.
And for the first time in my life,
I know who I am.
Released from my old stale life, I was rooted in magic, and earth, and love, and sacred eternal energy.
ADVENTURES so magic... I could cry.
I miss you so
I miss who I am around you.
I wish I could find you here.
I will find you again.
I will come back to you.
My beautiful country
One day
my one true love, otp, miss you everyday, home, africa, love, forever,
tree stumps burnt black
no koalas in sight
only tracks
and charred embers
of nature’s wrath

indigenous insight ignored
to dingo’s demise

what does a bushman know
that lord sydney doesn’t?

surely, the conquering clan
and its bellicose band of einsteins
hear the kangaroos’ scream
from the smoldering
ledge
of extinction

a choking ode
to imperial exuberance

~ P
Listen here ******
Your hole is too tight
There are no fake ***** out here none made in China
I despise virgins, cause ***** don't fit

I don't appreciate blow jobs that's temporary
I prefer full time jobs
So won't you take ******* ***** as a full time job mouthy?
Won't you wind my tambourine till it weeps and sobs?

I don't like ******* that weren't ****** before
They got penises acting like tampons
I don't like being the first ****** this **** stays  on girls hearts like tattoos
If we ******* are my client, we build a rapport

Growing up l had a phobia for hairy vaginas
I always told my ****** to shave because I never imagined myself dating a bushman
Nothing is an idiot like my **** I saw it growing feet and standing cause this girl in a taxi was eating banana
Growing up I had a phobia of a pointy ***** in public.
Don't hate, my pen_is writing.
Katie Hill Dec 2014
This week we talked over beers,
and my mother told us a ghost story.
We each have  dreams that plague us
again and again, over years,
threatening to creep their way into our realities.
(these are our ghosts.)

My dream was always deep blue and black,
of my body surrounded by water, though I did not drown,
or even gasp.
I was ensnared in moving parts that I had no power over,
held underwater in this churning machine,
not quite a victim but certainly not a hero.
Sunshine was my eventual respite, as was the cushion of my bed,
but the morning always seemed like a fragile gift, then.

My mother dreamed of her teeth, over the years.
She dreamed that they were the traitors inside her,
decaying and betraying,
perhaps cackling as they fell to the floor or
just lying there like bones.

My mother’s delayed trip to the dentist promised her a bridge,
or an implant, but also some calm.  

NPR and This American Life pulled my dream,
my ghost,
from the shadows, too. The story of a diver
ensnared
at 900 feet below the sun,
who would never see it again.

I’ll never be at the bottom of Bushman’s cave,
but, the ghosts say,
you never know.
zebra Nov 2022
Needled fingered hematologists prepare our dinner. Her name, Mercy, all body candy, tattooed with a snake ****. Her ******* pierced with rose paved sparkles and ******* stabbed with bat shaped studs. Nurses sharpen knives while quack doctors tend to little plastic dolls and blood bathers with crossed femurs in hospital beds where they are cultivated as condiments. Between the umbilicus of limbo, and the theater of cruelty the rational world remains a derelict void. Welcome are hallucinations that abolish reason, that give meaning to blood shot gazing eyes beyond the limits of sanity, where madness cannot be opposed in a world of tug a war monsters and gods. Lyrical voices of demons shoot through Mercy's nerve membranes, while a marching army of squat shadows move like flames in a vacant lot of burning violets. Monsters groan. A snake head eats its own tail in graves of scattered voices and speechless tongues. Arteries pulse vermillion, naked and wanton waiting to be pierced for sanity's release in a lyric of dread's desire. A tidal force lifts a dirigible from hell in a fountain of blood while Jesus has a cheeseburger moonstruck in torn *******. A spreading bride dissolves hoop-armed around a formless shadow hallucinating her beloved killers foot stones kiss. Mercy Kneels on the Dias subserviently. She is sumptuous and a willing betrothal in a gauzy white gown. Happily, headed for death, she disrobes and centers herself on the long knotty table spreading wide smiling, as if a performing dancer, a naked contortionist in a shadow that flickers. Her knees bent to her chest, ******* heaving, her red rose toes pointed, feet arched. She is ready for the final churning and dispatch. Vampires with moonish eyes crouch on all fours like ancient bushman with black wings like hovering capes to eat her with little teasing bites and licks before kissing hisses and insinuating their bifurcated tongues followed by needling punctures that look like spider holes with reddish volcanic mounds and a leaking web of blood rivulets on her pink primrose pudenda "blood on a sugar cube" mouths, feeding mouths, feeding mouths, licking each other's claret tongues mixed with foot kissing adorations and pinkish toes red blooms and  mad mumblings about the grace of Satan while burning black sabbath candles and incense, uncrossing themselves in cosmic Goetic rituals during devotional masturbations and copulations to give thanks and pay homage for fear that their god would take their girl away, their lovely girl food dressed in hemoglobin crystals, their sweet bleeding lover at fangs point, their peaches and cream, robe of blood and starve them.
Vampires are like the rest of us, hunger always wins, hunger for beauty, hunger for love, attention and shelter, hunger for every ******* thing. The vampires wept tears of gratitude licking torn sumptuous flesh like wild cats on the Savana. The pain of their bites excited Mercy, oh it hurt so, while they filled blood goblets of her, weeping and tumbling downwards in her honeymoon crypt like a spooling galaxy as they ate her belly, throat, eyes, and **** with their switchblade kisses. Mercy drugged on ketamine pushed passed the unendurable limits past limitless pain, like a burning witch laughing thinking in fractured clouds, and hot *** heaping ******* at the site of her depraved condition before sinking into an impenetrable dark water labyrinth of death. Her lips glossed black, the color of the grave, her hair dyed red and purple, her thighs and belly trussed in white gauze by ladies in waiting. Her areoles scorched and punctured as incense holders. Vampires coalesce, with fangs and ravaging kisses, biting Mercy like wild hyenas with panicked raw mouths of red saliva diamonds. Mercy gushes blood like a red river banquet, chained and strapped, legs stirrup wide, her feet beautifully arched and just so, glistening for fiendish kisses. In a candlelight ritual she is copulated by both sexes and fed upon. Mercy laughs like a loon screaming as she is lapped up by the wicked gift of ravenous tongues. Half devoured she emerges, a blood perfume delirium. Mercy arches upward and writhes in a blistering frenzy. Her eyes glare like a tempest then go vacant in loop tee loops in and out of focus. Her mouth, a red licorice lipstick smudge, gapes like twisted wire and pierced blood-soaked lips. In a ghastly shriek Mercy's belly oozes while the very last of her falters. Mercy surrenders her remains in a last hideous lament. Her hair looks like matted steel wool, her nostrils wet with mucousy brine. Her eyes bulge from their sockets, while a single smoldering finger in flames still burns as if it is a candle. Mercy tumbles downwards like a spooling galaxy as they eat her belly, throat, eyes, *** **** and nibble on her toes while she lays prone on a worn blood-stained porcelain Dias and spreads wide exposing whats left of her innocent bottom and smiling like a bewitched demon.
Old grey split boards now lie
Under flapping tin~
Once new Lister engine .. Now still
Making these days no more din~
Cracked and dry old leather belts
That ran the boggi now hang loose and low~
The smell of wool still slightly lingers
From once polished rails long ago~
Creaking building in daylight warmth
Sadness one feels stepping in~
Deep inside a bushman's heart
Old shed ..sorry sight .. So grim~
But old shed you are not dead yet
But tied as here you stand~
Gone are the days of summer dust and haze
When you were young and ever grand~
And now you keep company old shed
With old yards and gates and races~
No longer are you filled with sheep
And loved with noise and life's embraces~
Once yelling and press thumping
Old lister with rhythm pure~
Flapping belts and tar boys running
But now ..loneliness you endure~
You had your day in your time I say
As then you stood so proud and grand~
And now ... You bring back memories
To a just as old and grey once busy man~

Terrence Michael Sutton
Copyright 2018

— The End —