Satish Verma, 30 july 2016
Ugliness in pink flakes
elopes with a terrorist.
Sun bleaches the black scorn
muscles ache with cramps.
Full moon peeps through the veil
of branches. Eucalyptus sways
in majestic conception.
Time to exude honey.
A perfect discrimination against
the trees. A painful ulcer on tongue
bleeds, pure as the malignant pain.
I will not talk about existence.
The shadow of god crops up.
Foolish dolls play the game.
Subjectivity has frills to counter
the drive of madness.
Anguish becoming responsible
to deliver the particles of imagination,
which move faster than death.
Future of man was in peril.
Gert Strydom, 29 july 2016
Just for a moment it is there, the lightning bolt that falls
and the smell of something that burns and melts next to a puddle
from where the blue spark bright blinding touches and reach
and with a terrible thunder suddenly roars
with fear on the faces of my child, my wife
that just where I am standing
that lightning bolt does menacing fall.
In that moment’s blinding blue light
while a terrible rainstorm pours down
and I do shake like a reed
I do know that such moments does not linger
but you can take them out of your thoughts again
just like moments of bliss and happiness
where the touching, the colour, the sound and smell does remain
and etched you can find that moment again
from where like old letters you do fold them up and keep them in a small box.
When more lightning bolts slam down my ears are tingling and ringing
while I run to where the woman and child is waiting on the porch
and in the garden its twilight, almost night
where the woman and child are both crying from emotion.
Satish Verma, 29 july 2016
He was not ready
for a stash of negligees
put up by moon, on the trees.
A hanging valley drops the pretense
meets the river on the way
for a rendezvous.
Nymphs are flying randomly
against crystals of stars
blank night asks for nothing.
Sometimes hallucinations are welcome
when it is too hot inside
and the life sucks madly.
It was all very puzzling
the nudes in mirrors,
the stings in prayers.
Leaning against the wall
gives a scope for existence
remember, the desires are many.
the separateness was the idea
to put the damper on shouts
we are not, what we willed.
Gert Strydom, 28 july 2016
(in answer to Mteto Mzongwana)
I am astonished at how things in the new South Africa do go forward,
see the mountain and places around Pretoria in flames,
hear a the ramble of a uprising at the universities where people are fighting
and others pray in groups for peace amid great suspicion.
At schools some girls are raped until they are pregnant
and Christian teachings are unknown,
boys are chopped with axes and swords and are bladed
and some children do disappear without a tract and are missing.
The false prophets in parliament keep telling people
how they create jobs,
that it goes well right through the country
and people are hungry, impoverished and at the portals of hell
because as in the far past crowds are coming from eMbo
(from every African country to the north)
under a new Nguni and Dlamini in a second great roving expedition,
while the country looks like Eden and a rainbow nation paradise
and everywhere there is racism and political correct fraud,
terrible unemployment
and in South Africa it goes far better than it ever has,
on the highways in Gauteng people pay e-tol
and most motorists are fed up with this new tax
where the other roads are full of potholes
and the conditions in state hospitals are terrifying.
l’Envoi
A poet must tell the truth
and cannot talk injustice, dilapidation and lies good
of a country that is sketched as ideal
but in reality is nothing but another rubbish heap state.
[Reference: ”Es daar mense” (There are people) by Mteto Mzongwana.]
Gert Strydom, 28 july 2016
To the front in the road
blue Metro traffic cop lights flash,
a roadblock is set up and pistols
are aimed at the occupants of a car
in the bright daylight
and bombs are removed from the criminals
which the PCF-community guard report
was meant for the blowing up of teller machines.
An armoured car parks at a bank
where four guards with machineguns
and two with money canisters jump out
and one of them commands me to halt
when on the sidewalk I want to pass
and all of them become very angry
when I do not take notice of their antics
and screaming.
At times I do hear jets bursting through the sound barrier,
see the snow-white lines against the bright blue sky
when I hang the washing
and wait upon the winter sun to bake everything dry.
Right through the night my dogs bark
at a police helicopter
that swishes up and down
our well to do suburb
and it hits me when we drive into the garage at home
that unknowing we may be living in a war zone
but it is safe where we live
behind steel palisades, barred windows
and steel gates
with a emergency button to press
for the ADT-security’s armed response
that arrives within five minutes.
[Reference: PCF = Police Community Forum.]
Satish Verma, 28 july 2016
Sleep me, conceive me like sphagnum;
propel me to essence of death.
Seeing has put me behind the truth,
objectively.
Like centipede, fear crawls in deep blind cave
throwing the feelers.
The gene has faltered. No red lights.
A paw, a blackboard, white lines
message is not clear.
My absent candles are freaking in wormy
darkness, noiselessly. The solitude
trying to gather the words.
Listen to time clock. Past and future.
Present has held the lantern to see
the hands moving. Sound comes out
clearly from the prophets of galaxies.
I want to catch the winds
in my legs to blast the horror of life,
underside of the gnarled credibility.
The rains are coming.
Gert Strydom, 27 july 2016
When the sun does flower outside
the children want to rollick
but you are still asleep
and will not be ready for some time.
You are glued to the mirror
and with your DD-breasts you are too fat in your own mind
while you do look at yourself in your scanty bikini
where you do have a perfect figure.
On the beach I do apply sun-tanning lotion to your body
where you sit under the shading umbrella
while every man does watch you
and from behind sunglasses you do peep at the other people.
Every afternoon we eat at a restaurant
on the edge of the beach
where you order seafood and the children feast on their steaks
and you do regard the holiday as miserable
even when we do drive out to places
and the children want to stay forever at the sea.
Satish Verma, 27 july 2016
And everyday we talk about the sinister designs
of semilunar nights to rob us of our days
when the sleep was far away chasing the sleep
and the crumbeled continuity of a tale lay unpeeled.
How to highlight the dates on our calenders?
You keep forgetting even the years
when your forefathers left.
And deep in the green grass the names were wiped out.
Winged days were shot down after returning homes,
late evening, when listening to commentaries on death
and reviving myths of blissful healing
from reincarnated saints.
The pseudo-dementia, scented jasmines,
flickering flames, leaking petroleum,
human torch,
and your non-stop crying.
All night the onion breath blows on my sweaty face.
Tomorrow morning I will walk with
my shirt ripened with stains
where my heart had bled.
Gert Strydom, 26 july 2016
I yearn for the secrets of nature
where wild game graze next to the dust road
and I long for the veldt where it is silent,
silent from the bustle of the city,
where the sky has an own blue hue,
where the rain comes in the afternoon with thundershowers
and you can see interesting things if you look carefully,
can be astonished by insects, animals and flowers
but in the city I hear the turbines of Impala platinum singing continually,
are choking from the coal smoke from the squatter camp that is nearby
and on the highway people are angry and cannot restrain themselves,
at factories in the distance I notice pollution and vapour,
the money machines at Carnival casino jingle without end
and on Friday afternoons the whistling of the alarms echo
when poisonous gasses and dangerous things build up at the factories
and it is at these times that I want to leave the city,
go back to the veldt where you can find the works of God
and be able to believe in Him with the faith of a child.
Satish Verma, 26 july 2016
The template had the fault,
I was buried alive.
Brick by brick they erected the cell
around me.
I could see only the reflection
of a moon at night
in my glass of water.
During the day sun peeped through the cracks,
was hurting and very disturbing,
forming a skull and crossed bones
on the walls.
I watched a piece of sky
as a hub of pallisades.
I planted a word in that hole.
After one seed, there were many
echoes. Starting in the distant hills.
I was rising in red fog.
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