Loss Poem #93

This poem was in the South African lit journal New Contrast in 2008, vol 141: 32-33.

Loss poem #93

I walk the streets of this African town

with women carrying boxes of oranges on their heads

and the road a mad chaos of slow strollers

oblivious of two ton tins captained by crazed pirates.

Every day, this is my walk to the post office

to open yet another empty box.

The day has been fine so far but now,

now the weight returns

like another bloody cold front coming on from Cape Town

and I miss you and see you walking the streets of that American town

so far from here, so far.

I don’t know why this agony returns every day as the clock strikes one

or why it’s so difficult to reunite with you

but more than miles separate us, and its

not so much the ocean but the obstacles

not so much the continents but the constraints

and as I walk through this African town

on a sunny summer’s day with dozens of bright bandanas

blazing like flowers in a meadow

I feel like a fly trapped in a web

and my heart sinks like some stone

into the muck of some polluted pool.

What is this spider that has captured me

and bound me in its threads?

The spider is called paradox and the prime rate

and woven into this web of loss,

I don’t stand a fucking chance.

Hand Piano

Short excerpt from a novel in progress:

It was about this time that I invented the hand piano.

            Hell, I know I didn’t invent it. It was the oldest musical instrument of all time. There’re five fingers. That’s five notes. A pentatonic scale. The bones are like bones. They’re both the black and the white keys. You can play the blues on your hand. The hand is a percussive instrument, but it's also a melodic instrument.

            One can refine this even further

            There are three accessible joints on each finger, each with a different note. A single finger can register three distinct pitches. This means that, superimposed upon the basic pentatonic scale, we have a harmonic series. There are a large number of melodic and rhythmic possibilities buried in the hand.

            Bless the hand piano.

Moving Day

This appeared in Botsotso, a South African journal, May 2011.
http://www.botsotsoportal.co.za/?page_id=194

Moving Day

“Are you ready? Let’s go.”

            It was lunchtime and the cleaning staff were lounging or lying around on the benches under the plane tree that I’d watched transform all these years as the subtle seasons of the Eastern Cape passed by my office window.

            It was a common pose when the weather was warm and they were loud and raucous and full of life. There seemed to be a megaphone pointed toward my office window and I continually wondered why they had to shout at each other when they were only fractions of meters apart but there was laughter, and lots of it.

            They rose in near unison, clearly ready.

            We piled into my little VW Polo, two up front and four in back. Xhosa words rattled around the headspace like ping pong balls as we darted across oncoming traffic and made it across campus on the shortcut to Beaufort St.
.            When we got to my place they all piled out and pushed in, with twelve eyes scoping out the place for loot or good deals. I lived in an old building that dated back to close to the 1820’s, and was never meant to be a house. A wall had been constructed and two rooms been installed downstairs and a loft upstairs but it was really an old church, all open space.

            “How much for this?” said Herman, displaying a thermos he’d pulled from under the ‘kitchen’ counter.

            “I think I’ll keep that.”

            “What about this?” hoisting an electric kettle.

            “You can have that. It doesn’t really work. Not for me anyway. You have to have the touch.”

            Meanwhile, Nkosinathi was swinging my dumbbells around, feeling the strength of them at the end of his arms.

            “I want these.”

            “Oh, you do?”

            “I want these.”

            I thought about it. My shoulder was fucked from recent rotator cuff surgery. I used the damn things about every 19 months for about 20 minutes.

            “Ok, R50.”

            He gave me 20.

            “I’ll give you the rest back in the department.”

            “How much for the bike?” Ezekiel was pointing into my ‘storage’ room.

            “You don’t want that bike. It’s American. You can’t get tires for it.”

            “How much? I’ll give you R200.”

            “You’ll give me R200 for that bike?”

            “R200.”

            “R150.” I offered.

            He grinned and grasped my hand in the shake that I could never quite remember; shake, flip, shake.

            “You drive a hard bargain.” I said.

            There was a shout outside and I went to take a look. It was another university employee with a blue coverall, pointing at my car.

            “How much?”

            “R35000.”

            He mused a bit and approached the car, eyeing it as if he could suss it out without the need to actually take it for a spin. He stared at the broken windshield. He hovered over the hood.

            “R30000.”

            “You want to look at the engine?”

            He nodded.

            After a few minutes he noted that I had some kind of oil leak. It was news to me, but it was true.

            “Well, ok.“ I said, “They told me over there at JX Auto that I should sell this car for R40000. So, I said, ok, R35000. Broken windscreen, R2000, that makes R33000. Oil leak, that makes R30000. I’ll take your offer. I need the car till Thursday.”

            “No problem.” he said.

            Inside, my cd’s were being pawed like medallions of sirloin.

            “I want this one.” Nkosinathi said.

            “You can’t have that! That’s my favourite cd right now.” It was Vusi Mahlasela’s new one.

            “I need something to remember you by.”

            In eight years I’d barely spoken to him, or he to me.

            I picked out a collection of women jazz singers.

            “You’ll like this.” I said.

            And I knew he would.

Mass Murder in Afghanistan

The killer who mowed down innocent women and children in Afghanistan has been whisked out of the country to a safe haven in the US. What the hell is with that?
This man walked out of a US military compound onto Afghan soil outside of any military ordered action, brutally killing unarmed non-combatants. This act was outside the context of war and the rules of engagement. The killer removed himself from the jurisdiction of the US military and exposed himself to the laws and justice system of Afghanistan - and he's carted off ultmately to be tried by a US military court! This is outrageous! He should be handed over to Afghan authorities, to be tried under Afghan jurisprudence.
If they condemn him to be drawn and quartered, beheaded, have his eyes ripped out...or whatever...so be it! It'll be hard to feel sorry for him. It will be hard to feel sorry for any accomplices he may have had as well.
Sorry, Bruce, We Take Care of Our Own doesn't cut it here.

When Love Dies

Poem was published in Chiron Review, December 2011, if I recall. Written in 2005 or 6.

When Love Dies

When love dies it’s not like a gunshot to the head

or the heart.

It’s not like the crash of tangled tin and gleaming chrome

of a 4 wheel hack or a silver bullet fallen from the sky.

It’s not like a mortar lobbed into a foxhole or

the glint of a blade and a line of blood along a slit neck

or peeled scalp.

It’s not like a shiv stuck in your stomach to disembowel you

and let your innards fall like rotten fruit onto a stained soil.

It’s not like the whiteout and mushroom cloud of a megaton delivery

from demonic fools

or the rush and rage of flame thrown from flyers over the jungles.

No, it’s not like that.

Love dies slowly and unseen, taking its time, taking its toll,

creeping like a vine in the attic

or a nest of ants diligently working in the walls

or a fungus eating out the insides of an old tree,

and you only realize it’s gone when its already been dead for quite some time

and the glorious once-tree finally falls in the forest

and spills its dust onto the moldy leaves and musty humus below.

Misconceptions

A student recently interviewed me for an English assignment, meant to probe a professional in her field of biology. One of the questions she asked, and my answer, was:

Any common misconceptions about Biology?

Sure there are lots of misconceptions about biology, or aspects of biology. The whole concept of a 'balance of nature' is probably one. It is a steady-state concept, whereas most ecologists and other biologists now accept that ecosystems are dynamic, constantly changing, with outcomes of organismal interactions shifting back and forth. In my own field of evolutionary biology we are constantly faced with misconceptions. A common one might be that organisms do things 'for the good of the species'. This is completely incorrect. Oranisms do things to maximize their individual fitness (survival and reproduction). Period. 

During my time teaching evolution I always began by enumerating some of the misconceptions about this process. I recreate these here.

Common misconceptions about evolution

• Evolution is a process of perfecting organisms.

     -Organisms are rarely perfectly adapted. They are as adapted as they can be in their current environment, given past history.

• Evolution is progressive, striving toward a goal.

     - The history of life is like a bush, not a ladder (leading to humans).

• Evolution is a random process.

     - There are random processes in evolution but natural selection is deterministic, selective.

• Natural selection = evolution.

     - Natural selection is only one mechanism of evolution.

• Organisms change because they “need” to.

     - Mutation is random. If a population has variants that reproduce more than others in a given environment the population will change. 

• Evolution explains the origin of life.

     - Evolution is about organic history. It’s what happened after life began.

•Adaptations are for the good of the species.

     - Adaptations are preserved because individuals that have them reproduce better than those that don’t, not because they perpetuate the species.

• Microevolution and macroevolution are distinct processes.

     - Speciation (formation of new species) and extinction are the only processes that occur above the species level. It's the relative rates of each that determine macroevolutionary patterns.

Rumblings in the Madhouse

Continued rumblings in the madhouse...endless farts from assholes filled with fat heads...the babbling of ten thousand pundits and politicians undergoing reverse development...when will it end?
We've gotten past one bugbear...one of a long line of bugbears...it wouldn't do to go too long without creating another one. Now the bugbear is Iran. The war talk is increasing in volume...the flatulence is filling the empty balloons of the airwaves and internet...perhaps they will pop, smearing shit all over the faces of...people who have read and studied much but learned very little...leastwise how to think...less so how to feel.
When will it end?
Enemies are everywhere...we must threaten and throw down a monstrous stone upon the ground to deafen all who would dare to defy, make them cower in fear of our might...
Well, when a defensive regime is threatened by nuclear powers (such as...), a logical response is to develop comparable defenses. The greatest stimulus to Iranian nuclear weapons may be the threat of military action against them.
When will it end?
In the rooms of power the minds narrow so that they look like upright flatfish, eyes pointed in only one direction.
All may not be hopeless...but I am not heartened.

Delusion and Fantasy on the Fringe

Here in Sacramento a group calling themselves The South Africa Project came out with placards, skinheads and tattoos decrying the 'genocide' of whites in South Africa. Why do this at the Capitol in Sacramento, California, USA, is not clear. A segment of the Occupy movement came and engaged in a bit of violence toward the police who were protecting these people. I was moved to write this letter, which was published in the Bee today, March 2.
:
Re "Two officers injured, three arrested as protesters clash near state Capitol" (Capitol & California, Feb. 28): Lest one take 'the South African Project' seriously, I'd like to affirm that after 8 years living in South Africa I can guarantee that there is no genocide of white South Africans, in any sense. These deluded souls pine for the days of white supremacy and special priviledge, nothing more.
True, South Africans experience considerable violent crime. The vast majority of victims are black.
Also true, the economic purse-strings and bulk of the wealth in South Africa are still in the hands of the white minority - it isn't surprising that those who seek to get something on the quick might target those who have something.
This group's website is sufficient to dissuade oneself of any doubts that they are a racist, anti-semitic, neo-fascist fringe living in a fantasy world, few likely to be South African.
Here we have Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich to worry about...

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/03/01/4299456/mondays-protests.html#storylink=cpy