Satish Verma, 8 january 2016
A surreal religion comes, straight to altar.
The doubts shift, organise the intolerance.
Life looks deceitful and modesty goes awry.
The craft, the art, the maneuvering become sexed.
Sperms gauge the pathway.
The beauty of empty mind,
always delivers an eclectic music.
We search our hearts, the bared silence.
The death was creeping,
within the seeds and,
we were counting digital roses.
The pinnacle of vision was crumbling.
You squat on the cinders of untruths,
it was powerful dementia.
The denial of fire,
was your timeless perception.
The brain had ruined,
the realm of hard truths.
We were falling apart behind the curtains.
Gert Strydom, 8 january 2016
Forward I stride
in the mind’s swamp
immersing at places,
bogged down
in the damp mud
struggling on
treading were feet
had stamped before
through painful thoughts
and more happy ones.
Curtained off by swelling fog
rising all around me,
blotting out the copious flow
of the river of the soul
and the only thing
I am able to see
is the treads that I leave
below my feet, ever trampling on
through foul smelling, rotting weeds.
In front of me emerging
from all of this
a little hillock rises majestically
and I see hundreds of rock rabbits
running to and fro
along its slopes
and the nearer I get
the earth becomes more firm underfoot.
Orange-red aloes grow here and there,
Sugar-bushes with huge blooming Protea-flowers
are cupped in splendour in colours of red, white
and pink, scented sweet,
are all around me everywhere
as if I have stumbled
into a little piece of heaven
right against the morass.
Gert Strydom, 7 january 2016
Dawn now wakes me earlier each morning,
bringing light at a time
where a month a go there was only night
with a chilly breeze
and where the darkness
were like a blanket
spread wide over the garden, the houses
of the suburb
I now see the horizon getting grey
with the sun sneaking
slowly over it
and sometimes when I wake up
a little bit later
and pull the thick curtains open
and its already a bright sunny day
with a sweet freshness breezing in.
Satish Verma, 7 january 2016
My brothers killed me for a song
an antithesis to kiss for a chaste tree.
I hold my viscera in cupped palms.
Their eyes burn like flaming windows.
An evening primrose smiles at my stupidity.
Questions have no full stop, I grieve.
Why did they punish me, for my lone voice?
I die daily amidst the barbed
Hawthorns for the sake of posterity.
The ribbed cage of desolation, in the kingdom of potencies.
The innocence drops like,
a terrified mirror on floor.
Death will obliterate, the lights from blue eyes.
I adored a dream, which always stayed in shadows,
The moon will grab a cloud,
creating a music of eternity.
The non-real will become a solid absolute.
Gert Strydom, 6 january 2016
It is a kitchen with a big settee,
and big old coal and wood stove,
a big table where the whole extended family
ate great meals, sat chatting for hours
sounding to outsiders
like a riot
with a fire burning joyously
or only having comforting glowing coals
and at eleven in the morning, or four
in the afternoon
tea in porcelain cups, sometimes Swiss roll
or her own fruitcake
soaked in brandy
and baked to perfection was served.
It was a place where my grandmother
was bigger than life,
a lady born from Scottish ancestry,
but more an Afrikaner than me
with a true belief in the creator God,
where her love was a dazing light
till one sad night, leukaemia finished her years,
stripped her from me
while I was away at university
and the family
had never been the same again
like it was then
and suddenly that kitchen, that house
was stripped bare from furniture,
was painted and sold
and somehow I was the only one
who did not get
any last words from her.
Gert Strydom, 5 january 2016
In the big old white house against the hill
my mother had a pantry, a secret place
which she locked,
where she kept ingredients
for cakes, cookies, ginger beer
and all the lovely surprises that she made
and there were baking powder,
icing sugar, raisins, cherries
and dried fruit
and sometimes I would wiggle
the lock open
with a small piece of wire
and just looked at the shelves
with stacked things,
in the twilight of the room
trying catch the great smell
of everything around me,
but wouldn’t dare to touch a single thing.
Satish Verma, 5 january 2016
It was a fractured miscarriage.
The system groaned like a huge cow.
We milked her till human thirst chopped the teats.
I belong to no glamour,
my faults burn like classics.
Total freedom will come
when I am through.
The dates creep under the skin, I faint,
The tiny minims shine on my lips.
The symbols crash.
Me and my shadow bubbling with
the smell of poems,
I come back to arguments.
To justify the Armageddon
of first & last love.
How could it happen?
The fear has death, as a lover.
I sleep with it every night.
The demolition of memory, it sweats like a black cloud.
There is no religion in desires,
choiceless destruction of each dawn.
Gert Strydom, 4 january 2016
It had been a hell of spring with the sun hanging scorching,
with nature longing in the flowering season
for the rain that had not come and the days turned over and over
while everything did dry out in record summer temperatures,
while the heat did daily creep higher and higher,
while in the yard flowers and vegetables did continually wither
and on the plains cattle and sheep did die of the drought
while I was still praying for rain to fall
to the God of the universe
and at times the rain did pour down before the heat did come again
in a exhausting summer and I am astounded
that everywhere there still is life,
that buds did appear out of the earth
so as if God was secretly active.
Satish Verma, 4 january 2016
The questions haunt
the genes who could’t stay
in flesh and a womb.
A winter moon picks up
the forgotten trail.
Night slaps a white cloud on my eyes.
A face swims on a lake.
A splash of color.
A yellow leaf falls
on the path of destiny
the moon enters a tree.
Burden of arithmetic shifts.
I take a break from my pain.
A star twinkles hesitantly
outlines a shadow.
I watch a violet flame.
The fear sprints.
I run towards a non-truth
Revenge of love overwhelms,
journies to zero pain.
Inward window opens to more queries.
Life revisits, ignites the dark spaces.
Intimate trust melts like lava.
Gert Strydom, 3 january 2016
African coots fly up black in the marsh
and long-tailed widow birds hang
somewhat tempting as if I can catch them
and I am startled as plovers do bombard me
but the marsh does tempt me past them
with a own unknown insistence
till where a Cape monitor peeps like a crocodile
and scared I run back, right across the maize field,
do drive away a group of baboons in my fright,
rock rabbits do run in all directions,
donkeys do stampede out of my way,
the dogs of the neighbours do howl,
the round gate does spin around
and I do not wake mother, as it is Sabbath.
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