For those who just never got it

This will
pick at the knots
of your years
where stanzas and
rhyme schemas
were the ababa
of babies babble
and old men forgotten.
This will dissolve
the cement
of metaphors
such as like
beyond your mindscape
and things you give a damn about.
I want this to tell
you that
a poem
is a smell.
It is your nostrils
flaring
at the fennel of
tea after the storm
in the mug.
It is you drawing
steel from the safe musk
of your fathers embrace.
It is hospital disinfectant
and the camphor
of bereavement.
It is the stinging talc
of gunpowder
and earth of the rocks thrown
by children who should not
be looking so intently towards death.
This is
a poem.
I want this to tell
you that
a poem
is a taste.
It is strawberry softserve
more on your fingers than tongue.
It is the cardamom of sweetmeats and family
bursting through the roof of the house.
It is the spice of home.
It is the spearmint of that first kiss.
This is
a poem.
I want this to tell
you that
a poem
is a touch.
It is the cotton of his shirt
before he slipped away from you.
It is the bubblewrap of distraction.
It is sandpaper smooth against wood and bruised on your skin.
It is your mothers arm against yours
when all was strange.
This is
a poem.
I want this to tell
you that
a poem
is a sound.
It is the comfort of mantras.
It is the pull of prescribed prayer.
It is the ribbing of gutstrings.
It is the first heartbeat of that which grows inside you.
This is
a poem.
I want this to tell
you that
a poem
is a picture.
Can you see it now?

“Them that takes cakes…”

Sometimes
I kick
geriatrics
in the shins
in the dark
of half-price cinema.

Sometimes
I weave
new birds of paradise
into your pristine
chobi
from gum
my feet bring in off
of the street.

Sometimes
I split
infinitives
and dangle
participles and modifiers
from the
hanging mobile of
my prose.

Sometimes
I forget
the salt
the sugar
remembering instead
the exuberance of
turmeric.

Sometimes
I
just
make
mistakes.

Day 4, 5 and 6

I was born on the fifth of Ramadaan.

A Friday much like yesterday, except for the faint chill of winter that threads through June air.

I always forget my Islamic calendar birthday, and have to be reminded by my mother.
Once I hit fast#3, the days become one huge amalgamated mass of light and dark, with only the numbered chapters of the Quran and the tear-away days on our Ramadaan calendar providing any sense of where I really am.

However, this is not exclusive to Ramadaan. Just a few weeks ago, I misplaced a whole day. I have no idea what I did with Tuesday, August 26. Any information you might have regarding the missing hours can be forwarded via email to me.

The quiet still shrouds me, amplifying all those ugly, scraggly bits of character I need to do away with. If only a metaphysical Verimark existed, and I could pick up a nifty flaw and fluff-remover along with some Bio-slim (as this month of abstention does nothing for a body that’s stubborn and clingy).

The community website ramadaan.co.za features a really good series by Mariam Mahomed titled Ramadan Bootcamp. A post on forgiveness pulled a string in me, and I began to think on all those whom I had stomped on and the ones who muddied me.

I believe it’s a feature of only-child syndrome to want to be loved by everyone all the time (other solo brats feel free to disagree).

For a large part of my lived life thus far, the thought of someone not falling in step with that line refused to compute. And with that, I lived selfishly, doing what I had to do to get what I want, with little cognisance of the sharp words I’d utter or the disappointments I’d cause. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise…” were frequent and familiar. I’d give you a smiley face and some story of how I’m just so caught up in myself to be aware of what I’ve really done. All would be forgiven, because, well, I’m me, and everybody likes me.

But it happens, that one day, someone actually is not able to stomach you, and it sickens you to your bowels, because really that’s never happened before (or maybe you were just so caught up in that little monarchy in your head, that you never noticed). That experience was enough to allow for a long-overdue growth-spurt of maturity. And you begin to think on who’s really forgiven you.

It would not make any sense to go back to every single person you’ve wronged for all your time on earth. What would you say that wouldn’t rattle with empty? “Look, I’ve just had an epiphany. I’ve been really ugly to you. I know I asked for you to forgive me, but will you really forgive me, because I’m being sincere this time around.”

You can’t expect people to hand out their heartfelt maafs on your demand. They have a right to withhold it for as long as their soul will allow. All you can offer is your honesty and prove by your subsequent actions that you truly are regretful.

As for those for whom you penned great epics of wrath and rage for, it’s all kind of laughable really. You would not be who you are today were it not for some reptile who forced you to walk on another path. While you need not cut out your heart for canapés, know that hate makes you brittle.

I visited my family in Azaadville today; with all their quirks and crazies, they keep me grounded. Reading salaah next to my grandmother, I found it hard to suppress a smile when she made her takbeer aloud and proceeded to recite her prayers just above that of an audible whisper. She’s been praying like that for so long, I don’t think He minds anymore. This is the woman who raised me, more mother than grandmother, I’m blessed to have three I can call Mummy (the recent addition of sg33k’s). My grandmother laments my weight gain and pushes sweets on me, all in the same breath. The ways of the old sometimes grate on the young, but in that exercise of patience, lies great reward.

My uncle had a tumour removed from his bladder two days ago. He’s caught in that horrid limbo of waiting on his results. Some of you reading this may have met him, and for others who’ve not; know that he is a father, a husband, a son, a brother, an uncle. At a time where our prostrations are just that little bit more extended, and we’re inwardly clamouring for the Almighty’s approval, remember him, and all those who are not in their best of states, in your prayers.

Jelly and Ifthaar are inextricably linked for me. Whobbling wonderfulness, I lose at least twenty years whenever I’m shlurping some.

Day 2 and 3

There is a stillness in Ramadaan; a special type of quiet that wraps around us. A stillness that renders us malleable; a warm and pliable soul, ready to receive all of Good.
Those things that rub against our grain; loaded words that bring on brain-hives and the desire to strew expletives over the offender — for no well-reasoned argument will dumb the donkey’s bray that offends — we find those things have no place in this soft soul.
It is from the stillness that patience is to be born, with a certain measure of tolerance and the will to let things go. Water off of a sheet of glass.
But I must acknowledge how fortunate we are to have within our midst, those who abide in domiciles built from a certain amorphous solid, and who are only too keen to hurl projectiles at those who pass by. Well-meaning missiles, of course; targeting our ill-placed sentiments into something that loosely resembles one person’s notion of what constitutes a Mu’min.
Why, you need not scar your forehead asking of The One to guide you onto the path of Truth and Light, when you’re being herded onto a trail predetermined by one who simply knows better.
And everyone knows better. Except you, of course.
My patience is not complete. It has yet to be tempered into something better than glass.
(Coffee at Sehri, keeps you Merry. Salma will agree, that rhymes somewhat)

Day One

It was hard for me to bask in a spiritual infusion today, when my brain must’ve been trying to escape through my eye sockets, for all the pain I blinked back.
Hello Caffeine Dependency, you are such a bastard.
A website I was working on had its database eaten by some e-tokoloshe.
That translated into two full days of work having to be compressed into a couple of quicksand hours in order for us not to look like inept fools should some client surf over. This excluded the two hours of downtime we experienced due to the power being cut-off because someone was having a Marie Antoinette moment down at the municipality.
It takes a strong person to not want to smash up the internet and unleash an inner Gustav on anyone within arms reach.
I am not a strong person.
I tried to smile, and I failed.
The frustration and the physical fatigue gave my aura the brown-colour wash of a party-pooper. I could see relief iron out the wrinkles on my boss’ face when I asked to leave early.
I admit the juggling is a feat and I’m trying very hard to keep work, pray and kitchen in smooth circles up in the air.
But this is only Day One. I have an entire month (and beyond) to work out my arms.
And there is something truly magic and complete about breaking your fast with someone who builds your world.

verse to verse or catching zephyrs with a colander

there used to be

poems
for every
pavement crack

ballads
for every
boy with
stained sleeves
and a hole in his chest

couplets
for every
gambler with a broken dream
losing fast on a threadless seam

elegies
for every
father who lived
too short
and died too
long

epics
for every
Madiba-shuffling
Ghandi
with his face on a t-shirt
made in shanghai

ghazals
for every
lover so loving
love itself could not requite

odes
for every
sunset
burnt behind an
eyelid

but now
my verse
is
blank.

Women’s Day 2008

A treat
for Women’s Day;
manicures for all the girls.
How nice to have one’s hand
wrapped in another’s;
soothing
exfoliating
grooming.
A drive
to the shops after
and there’s a woman
at the robots,
her baby growing on her back.
Her hands hold out
a small bowl.
Window wound down,
buffed and filed fingernails
bounce off sunlight
as coins hit plastic
with the cadence
of impotent guilt.

cremations and the blue-footed booby that arose thereof

Despite having done the following for most of my life; drinking things warmed in the microwave, eating kool-aid straight out of the packet, using a roll-on anti-perspirant daily, a couple of weeks ago, I managed to hit a quarter century.

However, it was a birthday spent mostly in bed (I wish I could do a giggley-wink-wink here, but I was merely whiney, miserable and sickly with flu et al.), followed by two weeks of corporeal rebellion.

How predictable that epiphanies would come bouncing along wearing their “Stick with the winners” badges as I approached the eve of ageing.

It’s been a while since my last cigarette. Note ‘last’. I can say this with an almost arrogant certainty, “I will never smoke again.”

I did not find some aspect of God. A fractured personality did not suddenly develop moral fortitude and stage its coup while I slept. I just didn’t want to any more.

There was something about my habit that lingered with each dissipating exhalation.
The blues and greys were the rising detritus of past demolitions. Ugly things that diminished me and built me up so long ago, they might as well have not existed. And yet I still held this thing to my lips.

I smoked because I wanted to see. I smoked because I wanted to feel. I smoked because people didn’t expect me to.
I smoked because I liked it.

I have fond memories of burning tobacco.
There were conversations with good friends that stretched over sunsets, ashtrays and hours.
There were the liftclub cigarettes, the packs that belonged to everyone and no one, the ones we prayed over, hoping we didn’t stink of the guilt when we got home to our families.
A solitary indulgence sometimes, I’d take to quiet heights with views of the city and myself; the roof of the archi building at Wits, Great Hall stairs, the balcony of my boss’ house when we still had offices there.
I can still taste the menthol of a slow Craven A, the best after a meal at Muchacho’s while driving down the Brixton Hill towards Auckland Park that one day in 2003.
There was the cigarette in my cousin’s garden on the morning of my wedding; everything was damp from the rain, and so sharp, I could cut with the leaves.

My last cigarette was dispatched without any ritual; the end stubbed out among a billion other crutches in the communal ashtray of our office smoking room. I walked back to the office, without a word to anyone.

And that was it really.

I don’t wish to glorify something that has the potential to harm you. I lived through my grandfather’s struggle to breathe. A chain smoker, who had to stop because of a bullet that grazed his lung during a robbery he stumbled upon. After decades of reaching into his pocket for the next one, he quit just like that. The damage was already done. It was a few years after that, when he needed two oxygen machines, because he just couldn’t do it on his own. Something so basic, done without active thought, and yet there he was, aware every second that those humming machines were the gatekeepers of his mortality.

I should’ve known better. And I did, but I smoked anyway. There’s this quote from Gregory David Robert’s Shantaram that I often pull out, something along the lines of, “I smoked in those days, because like all people who smoked, I wanted to die as much as I wanted to live.”
And maybe I was caught up in something I didn’t quite understand. But you get on in years, and if you’re lucky, you learn from what you’ve lost and your world becomes that much easier to navigate.

This is not a ‘come walk with me, I have seen the light’ post.
People smoke for different reasons. People quit for different reasons. Some people never smoke at all. But one thing I do know, we all have our crutches. I know I’m still leaning on a few.