Bring your own salt.

.:.

The farmer tills and tends the earth, her harvest feeds our bellies The writer, well, he feeds our souls and that matters deeply too With fickle seed he sows a yield we’ll never touch or see, yet careful please don't blunder here thinking his crop will never be. Farmers mend fences They set traps to keep the wolves at bay Negotiate with neighbours' need And keep the house in order, as they say, in one piece. Writers, though, they take this peace and wander the collective Conscience This is where they reap and sow, producing stuff of ineffable nature: still food for mind, sustaining thought, which must be chewed with eyes, and gulped by ears, and viewed with open, open open Heart. The farmer needs her man, the writer, as he needs her nurturing embrace They share in laughter, under blankets, there they've made balance so few mammals ever do thei...

Let’s do nothing As it goes Let's do nothing but watch as it drip-drops life   away. Let's do nothing   as languages are lost   faces forgotten    as we become copies Let's do nothing, yes Let's stand by Let's do nothing As our neighbours are murdered, till It trickles red under our doors –   It always starts as a trickle. Let's do nothing   as smoke fills our lungs gathers round our children   our own children   Let's do nothing   As our dogs run away   Howling how could you    Let's do nothing     As the aerials tear from the rooftops Let's do nothing. Let's do nothing, Sit distracted, glance outside as the last leaf drifting, down Dead   Let's do nothing as   a snowflake the final snowflake   melts Away – gone there won’t be another for ten thousand years there won't be another while we –– Ho...

…chronic discontent, a marathon runner restless, a wonderer, his forever struggle drifting past the hills, fearing plateaus. He arrives, desperate and breathless, at another house party: "I need to see a man about a god. That is, a dog." Receive their tinkling laughter. Complicit. Some snide lip curling 'round a cigarette. Kom ons raak a bietjie dagdronk God. Damn. Feel. Good. Feel welcome, here in the company of emotional vultures. Sophisticated. Kak classy . The DJ sets up his beats in the living room, still Outside the one they all wanna fuck strums and sings She's still sleeping her way through the riptide of being so badly wanted, and the consequences of affectation. It's another popularity contest, they say, out there in the Real World, now that school's out, or so I've been told (when they told me so). "When, exactly?" "Oh, did they?" "What time is it?" Her chords jarring now ag...

…in the chair typing trying to make Keys sound wanting to understand, yearning yet still only ankle deep and sifting sometimes skillfully the stream   separated by layers from the chair separated from thoughts by the chair occasional magic: separated by thoughts from the chair siphon with effort a layer of my world in words submerging myself for inspection setting with keys carefully to make it look alive hoping for crystal value hoping it will hold up under inspectacles or sometimes trying to fit readymade keys to holes hoping they will just slip in hoping they will open closed spaces To pass across liminal fields of things of thought ever more hazy find faint tracery almost imperceptible almost illusion a gate, slip beyond a truth may be just near enough ...I am now nowhere near the chair   .:.

Father is a sailor, he is humbled by the sea Me I stay at home and build my models of the Ark We are our parents' product, The product of our parents: I mean we're really little more than Packaged triumphs and mistakes (plus the pressure points of private hopes), so 'It's okay to cut yourself a little slack, son, Every now and then again.' Set to sail on God's ocean, Set sail till the engines fail, and then: 'Oh well.' 'Guess our kids will deal with this mess.' Forced into the waters, we were born swimming, swim and fail ash and oil coats our skin and then and only then. Perhaps. How many adults hiding in pathetic lifeboats point the Finger scream and (case in point) shout out until we're hoarse, it won't stop us sinking, no, won't get us to shore anymore – just how much more can we take, can we take any More? Well we are not children We are, well…are we ...

the box glows blue channels one to seven billion we are not even present flicker, flicker, a taper for your dream cushioned consensual comas it's nice flick, flick, flicker the box glows blue the background noise squaring some view by standard definition limiting horizons the box is you the telly, who knew? aloof on a pedestal the box glows blue blankly witnessing divorce its quality is true it's quality the box glows blue Channel 666: Another standard – hand – held – remote – control. With buttons. Rectangle horizons set sunsets without warmth. Serial cycles: death, credits, rebirth The recent eternal, those pesky men of straw are at it again "Tonight in Hegel's Dialectic see truth being bludgeoned by hillbillies, Survivors, <celebrity_name> , <politician_# 93419 > , the News at 7, <CurrentPropagandaPiece> . Don't miss it!" …at home on the couch, with filters wide open ...

Frustration an agony unable to create anything powerless to capture the something shadows the raw emotion of being like answers that flit from view insubstantial impossible to snare I sit in snarls futile impotent fingers clutch a full pen stubbornly withholding its thoughts an infinity stretches lined and white and empty   waiting : tabula rasa this whispered challenge to forge legacy are you up to it can you face the gauntlet of creation the discipline to shape a life to make when faced with infinity how will you efface the onslaught of the ordinary how will you answer the only question:

Vultures circle, I am jaded World-weary but far from dead I don't have to fear them yet, here In the wasteland of whispered choices I fear myself more than anything So much lost time thinking things through. Just overhead, smile creases of irony Shape banks of cloud Playing over the face of determination pulled Taught across the sky And the wind carries only silent laughter. I have scaled these thoughtscapes I am up and out of the furrows, now I am stranded on the summit Present floating flakes, the dry skin of insignificance. Vultures circle, practiced patience so cruel but I refuse fall prey In animal eyes I have increased, past A lost prophet to the kingdom of illusion And shifting sands A withering world of memory Me; my somehow alien self More brutal than we ever let imagine. Warily I tread the line between love and hate What's wired inside, what’s not in control If nothing else now I know more than bef...

Depths, mirrored in a place Of infinite ripples Indifferent skies edge above, glow Beyond black digits clawing at the stars; Obsolescence Shed the tattered blanket strip by strip until just bare shreds beneath a   a wind to chill the bone. Alone, so alone For a moment slid across a cloud till it touched then into the heart the moving mirror of me swallowed by my heart final instant between calm holding on till empty the spasming emptiness agitated still      sinking,   sinking,   beyond what stops

writing                 is like                       using your soul       as a mirror                while you cut out               a piece of your heart      and ignore your mind                                screaming is like using your soul as a mirror while you cut   out your heart and   ignore your mind … Writing is is using your soul as a mirror while you cut out a piece of your heart and ignore your mind screamin...

He starts to build a tower Half of dream and half desire While others live he's digging He so badly wants to be. He struggles to fuel the fire Finds the dreams burn up so fast But he labours on regardless Days slip by until at last. He's in love with what he's crafted Won't see this cage he's made is he Stays up till sunrise thinking Picks at meals alone and free. He is sad sometimes, frustrated No one ever taught him That his tower's to return to, Not to dwell in, endlessly. Still struggles to fuel the fire Till his dreams dry up at last But still he sits in silence Too proud to leave, to flee. Because he knows there's something to this, He just knows it, must be, So he labours on regardless Forging  must be, must be.