Friday 21 February 2014

MANDELA





1

They folded the old man up .

and put him away in a box.

They held the lid down

with the weight of their prayers,

and swept out his dreams with the dust.


He remains inside books on the shelf,

interleaved and in marginal notes.

In sticky-taped folders his photos are silent.

His stories just paper

that blows down the street.


The old man has been put away in a box.



2

Is it best to be forgotten than to be showcased and packaged

into relics bought with blood and sold for gold?

Is it best to be gone from the bankrupt world?



3

We racket on noisily, choking up the bright smiling space

with peeps and clicks as we grab and grub at the moving ghost.

With our plastic and silicone tricks and cons,

we constrict and construct, devise our devices,

and vie to own the dead hero's fled spirit

to know he blessed us lesser and more mortal souls.



4

For twenty-seven years

they folded my hero up.

They slotted him through bars of iron

and cemented over the cell.

Danger, danger, danger clanged the gates and bells.



5

I had seen that before.

The white skull of the pulped dog,

frothing at the red on its halo of mad stones.

The crushed snake staring with flat tired eyes

at its own curving skinless purple flesh under a brick.



He left us to our hissing silence

to peep through hooded eyes

Don't think, don't speak, don't see.



6

From the white death I was bequeathed I wanted a black angel to save me but
he was not an angel, just a man, and mercy was buried with him on Robben Island, under the grey limestone dust.



7

I was angry with him for turning to the dark side

which was where they said he belonged,

which they said, was stating the obvious.

They said he was mad, bad, and red.

He wanted us dead, they said.

He hadn't saved us from ourselves by riding in

on a storm-horse of purity and purpose.

A laundering hero to whiten us whites

and bleach out our sins.

Somebody better than us

That's what I needed.



8

No.



9

He chose to be what they said.

Terror, black, black terror.

I was angry with him for leaving me

alone in a world without anything good.



10

Then we forgot.



11

We forgot him.

We forgot all about him.

We lived on only in his memory.

We were dead to hope

and to our ideal of freedom.



12

Then Mandela walked out and back with his hand raised.

He stood up.

He came out of the box.

Mandela.

Human.

Hero.

Ours.



Monday 3 February 2014

CHANGE OF SKIN




My friends won't know me.

I am about to shed a skin and go through changes.

For one thing, I shall be taller and newer

(which in itself is amazing!)

and for another, little bits of me

will have shiny corners and gleam

unexpectedly, refracting strange lights.



Mostly, at first, my awkward angles

will show through more pronouncedly.

Instead of gnawing my knuckles, biting my nails,

and rubbing my eyes half-asleep,

I shall tear off whole strips of skin

which will quickly shrivel and blow away,

brittle as a bug's transparent wing.

I must admit that this time around

I had hoped for wing-buds myself.

Instead I have a knob on one shoulder

and on the sixth finger of my left hand

a claw which I keep folded up in my palm.

No doubt I will find them useful

for carrying burdens and climbing mountains

in my next metamorphosis.



However, with every shrug of my shoulders,

a patch of the new me will be apparent.

Soon I will be iridescent -

a veritable Josephine in a skin-coat of many colours.

Though the rainbows won't last for long

and soon darken to the painful lace of tattoos,

I will have my moment of glory

when I stand up straight in an explosion of possibilities

leaving only a little mound of dust and scales at my heels.