Death and the King

Death sits silently
At the back of the audience

Her eyes focused on the king
She taps, with her toes

Her rages begin to hum.

She breathes – gently
Although she doesn’t need the breath
This has been her project

Personal and pointed
Apart from her soul-collecting work

She feels the heat with her hands
This person at the back

And this person
The person in the corner
And the person outside in tears

Death sighs
Although she doesn’t need the breathe
This is her work
Pointed and personal

Apart from the soul collecting
Death begins – silently, slowly
to dance

And as the crowd cheer the king
The ground begins to shake

Death is calling her rages

They are ancient rages, and new ones
Born and reborn

From this silence
From this burning

The King opens his mouth
Death opens hers

As he begins to speak
She begins to sing


Her rages squirm themselves
Out from under the floor

Their humming holds them together

Death directs her eyes
Towards this corner
Towards those tears

Her rages fly
Scream, burn

The audiences hear nothing

But this corner,
Those tears, are held in flames
by the rages


They hum themselves into the bodies
Death closes her eyes

The King’s days, she knows, are numbered
The rages will warm the corners, the tears, enough to take the king in his sleep
To take the king in his talk

And the rages will return to her

The King’s days are numbered, she knows.
But he is just one king.
That she knows, also.

Mosaic

I found you smashed tonight
No - not you
But my emblem,
My memory of you:

The mosaic plate you got me
For my 21st birthday,
Of Santa Maria Novella.

That time we went to Florence,
I opened the shutters into the square
And onto the world

I learnt you and Tata in a
New way then.
You snored gently,
Smelt of old,
Your mkhaba wrinkled but solid in your centre.

Tata took out his dentures

We spat watermelon pips in Rome

I started drinking coffee

I experience you as married

Not lovers, but companions.
With all the angles and curves
Accompanying that


I opened the shutters on
Santa Maria Novella square

And onto my life.
It snaked different ways after that trip.
I had a new palette for my joy
A new map

The square was dirty when I visited again
Years later

You were wizened
Hardened
Too much poison in your roots

I found you smashed today
Santa Maria Novella
Mixed with instant coffee
On my kitchen floor

I saw you disappear
Last Thursday
When I couldn't get you in the car
Your body is still too heavy for me

You were angry
As i pried your hand from the seat
You had to hold onto me so I could get you in

You disappeared as you held onto me

The stroke
The poison
Ate you

I won't see you again.

I will remember Santa Maria Novella,
Watermelon pips in Rome

I won't clean the kitchen floor.

Not for a week,

I guess.

honeysuckle

I am anticipating
The loneliest funeral

I will sit
With my small sister

Remembering angels flying down
Through the honey suckle

In a time and space
Where I still felt safe

Now I sit at 30
Everything is fragmented

I am happier than I expected to be
And sadder

But sitting on that church pew
I will be lonelier than I thought possible

Trying to say goodbye to some one
Who was only as real as the tin angel
Flying through the honey suckle

Grown Up (sauntering into 30)

There is a wry smile on my lips
As I watch my friends turn 30.
I saunter towards that mark,
Not particularly interested in
The honeycombs that are only behind me

Not overly concerned with the pools
That will mirror gravity, ahead

I am just sauntering towards 30
Feeling that this time, this decade, will be more mine
Than the previous ones

Proud of my friends who enter this state
In all sorts of diversity

Praying we will remember to tell our daughters,
If we have them,

That there is no such thing as grown-up.

Verona

We watched opera in Verona
Over 10 years ago now

I don’t remember the opera
Aida, maybe?

I remember you,
All our childhoodness caught in one breath we breathed together.

Your fragile-strong
Around me, always.

How we learnt together:
My stubborn chin-forwardness,
Able to adventure because of your fragile –strong foundation.

We could stand in the wind together.

That night Verona’s colosseum
Held us together, a basket of stars and voice,
We were so close we didn’t need to hold hands.

Over 10 years ago, now.

I don’t have the words to tell you how I miss you.

Into your hair, we sing

We hold you up
On our broken legs
Glass shards in our feet,
But it is your breath that is failing this time.

We hold you up
Take your heart out of your chest
Put it on the roof for the sun to strengthen

We take each of your fingers
Kiss them gently, take off your hands.
We put them in a tree nest, so they can sleep
So they can stop their frantic tangling and rest.
Remember their writing, the hands they have held
And the banners.

We dip your feet into a bowl of salt water
They are bloodcaked from glass shards and thorns,
From your own blood and the blood your carry in your mouth
Below and above and around you

Into your hair we sing the sea and
Futurepossibles
Some flying fish
Some sunken stones,
Our broken voices just able to curl round your face
To take some of the weight,

Just for today

I wish you dancing

I didn’t know you
I know only your ghost
Traces of you
Snail trails of words

Of marks on my lovers body
In his car
His phone
His email


I felt your fight
Your life, your grief
Pulsing through him

I fell in love with you a little
Your pulse through his fingers

My love for my lover bittered
Through you
You, lemon in milky tea, turned
Us sour

We have never recovered.

I have never forgotten you.

I touch you sometimes in digital space.
My fingers tracing your face.

He left you for me
After he left me for you
After he told each of us about
Marriage
About dlozi and home.

Now you are dead
I hope this was your choice
I hope you took a breath and flew gently, away
From this world of fight
World that you didn’t have the right dimensions for
Too wide, too deep for such small ribs

I hope the choice was yours and
Not the man you had run to
In your pain
The man whose violence played your pain
Out
On your body

Now you are dead
Sky-bound only

I send you sky-fish for travel companions
And I wish you dancing
Happy, wild, hard
I wish you dancing.