16.06.1976

For Unknown 16/06/76
(after a visit to the Hector Pieterson Memorial in Soweto, June 16, 2005)

a frozen face
on a white wall.

open mouth
rigid arms

your eyes
are the eyes of your comrades

children
with weighted shoulders

and loud voices
muted by the captured moment.

but I hear it.
decibels of scaled anger
your suffering erupt,

holding out its arms to me.

am I worthy of embrace?

1976- not even a seeded thought
in the mind of a girl I call mother.

you are background
context to your time
framing the “struggle”
painting it with your essence
as bullets tattoo your fate.

A bricked acknowledgement
that you were felled on that day
now bedded on gravel
bordered by the crunching tourist tiptoes
echoing now-impotent jackboots

the granite speaks

of more bodies,
not nobodies
but somebodies
with names
and for others without

there is a brick
in a yard
on the gravel.

Those singular moments of plural possibility…

…sometimes visit upon us when we’re at our most unreceptive.

We shall refer to him as Significant-Geek or sg33k for brevity. This is what I call him when I’m trying to be cute or ironic. That or “Hey Pumpkin, you’re Smashing!” Which is as emo as we get.

Sg33k’s an interesting fella. Incredibly talented and hard-working, he’s so focused it makes me sick. Because I’m as batty and scatter-thunk as they come. If I had a second’s worth of his drive, I’d be on book four and a half.

Sg33k’s also a challenge (not challenged. Although when he laughs sometimes, he has that special person look…) And I know that when he reads over that, he’s going to say “bleh”. That’s just the kind of guy he is. A guy who says “bleh” a lot. And a guy who reads blogs. Sometimes this blog. That’s kinda how we met. But I won’t go into that. He’s not into mush and sentiment, but he did get me my very own domain to which I gush, “You had me at www…”.

So as I was saying…
singular moments blah blah
…sometimes visit upon us when we’re at our most unreceptive.

‘Quite smoking dammit’, ‘Get off facebook’, ‘You know, he just may be the One’; those missives hit you like hailstones in the highveld, chipping and denting, indelibly.

It only takes that moment for volumes within you to displace in eureka-fashion, sans, we hope, the running through the streets of Syracuse naked.

I’ve just had that moment.

And it’s terrifying. Because even though the possibilities are vast and unmeasurable, it’s like continental drift. The pieces can go anywhere, but back.

And now I’ve gone and blogged it.

There’s no such thing as The One. But there is The One you choose.

And yeah, I guess I’ve chosen.

Bleh.

this time from Ougadougou

From: mutamuta baruka
Reply to: muta_baruka@yahoo.fr
Date: Mar 27, 2007 12:00 PM
Subject:BUSINESS PARTNER NEEDED

THE DESK OF DR MUTA BARUKA
BILL AND EXCHANGE MANAGER
BANK OF AFRICA.
OUAGADOUGOU,BURKINA FASO.
TOP SECRET

Dear Friend,

I am DR MUTA BARUKA, bill and exchange manager at the foreign remittance department of BANK OF AFRICA. I got your contact from the internet ,while seaching for an honest and trust worthy person, who will assist me to implement this transfer. l discovered the sum of Twenty Two million and five hundred thousand United States Dollars (USD22.5M) belonging to a deceased customer of this bank.

The fund has been lying in a suspence account without anybody coming to put claim over the money since the account owner late Mr Salla khatif from Lebanese , who was involved in the December 25Th 2003 Benin plane crash. Here is the air crash
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/12/26/benin.crash/index.html
The said fund is now ready for transfer to a foriegn account whose owner will be portrayed as the beneficiary and next of kin to the deceased customer of the bank. Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his next of kin to come over and claim his money because we cannot release it unless somebody applies for it as next of kin or relation to the deceased as indicated in our banking guidlines and laws but unfortunately we learnt that all his supposed next of kin or relation died alongside with him at the plane crash leaving nobody behind for the claim.

It is therefore upon this discovery that I decided to make this business proposal to you and release the money to you as the next of kin or relation to the deceased for safety and subsequent disbursement since nobody is coming for it and I don’t want this money to go into the bank treasury as unclaimed bill.

The banking law and guidline here stipulates that if such money remained unclaimed after five years, the money will be transfered into the bank treasury as unclaimed fund. The request of foreigner as next of kin in this business is occassioned by the fact that the customer was a foreigner and a Burkinabe cannot stand as next of kin to a foreigner. I therefore soliciting for your assistance to come forward as the next of kin, I have agreed that 40% of this money will be for you as the beneficiary in respect of the provision of your Account and services rendered, 55% would be for me while 5% will be for expencses incured during the cause of this transaction If the money is transferred to your Account from BANK OF AFRICA, I and my family in this transaction will proceed immediately to your country for our own share of the money.

I expect you to keep this business strictly confidential and secret as you may wish to know that I am Bank official. Be rest assured that this business is 100% riskfree on both side and every arrangement to transfer this money to the Account you are going to provide have been concluded provided we maintain the confidentiality and secreceirity involved.

1.your sex

2.your age

3.occupation

4.your nationality

5.telephone no.

I am looking forward for your prompt response.

Yours faithfully,

DR MUTA BARUKA

—-

From: Saaleha Bamjee
Date: Mar 29, 2007 11:01 AM
Subject: Re: BUSINESS PARTNER NEEDED
To: muta_baruka@yahoo.fr

Dear Mutamuta Baruka,

Your name instills in me the maddening urge to put your moniker to music, something with a spicy-latin beat, like a rumba or a sexy samba. Can you hear my maraca’s baby? – “boom, chicky boom chi, muta-muta, ba-ruka, boom, chicky boom, chi.”

But I digress, I don’t usually get people emailing me when they search the internet for terms such as honest and trustworthy. Certainly not after that misunderstanding with the orphanage lunches and my account at Prada. How much do four-year-olds need to eat anyway?

Anyhoo, the sum of Twenty Two million and Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars (USD22.5M) held in a “suspence” account (i have a suspense account too. my creditors are always wondering when they’ll get paid -grin-) could not have come at a better time.

However, since joining the Church of Former Day Heavenly Goody’s Latter Day Rumble In The Jungle, I’ve learnt the path of selflessness and would prefer that the money be sent to a better cause.

Hence, I attach the details of a noble movement to which I feel all these monies be directed:

The Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust
First National Bank
Durban, South Africa
Branch Code: 221426
Cheque Account number: 62087217818

Thanking you Kindly,

Saaleha Bamjee

capsule roadtrip (mafikeng)

There’s something about a 300km stretch of tar.

Something about the road that pulls at you to start pulling together.

And that’s what happens on the N14 from Krugersdorp, all the way through to Ventersdorp and the R503 pass Coligny and Lichtenburg on the route to Mafikeng.

You pull together.

Just me, Duritz and De La Rocha (who screams in an oracle of irony “Fuck the police” just as I drive pass a hoot of speed cops on the roadside.)

Just me and a long way ahead

The Aveo chews kilometres at a rate she never dreamt when her rubber smacked the streets of the city. But out here, her voice breaks, and she croons like a lounge singer to her audience of enquiring sunflowers who could not tear their faces away.

And while Aveo is seduced by the way she’s been allowed to stretch out on this country route, the mind of a lone driver charts its own course, looking forward, back and where I’m at.

And on that road to Mafikeng, one realises that there’s lots to pull together.

So between the RATM and Counting Crows, old risks are weighed up against each other, their consequences lined up like dominoes arranged to form the face of Elvis.
A finger nudge, tik tik tik tik.
I count the number of times on one hand. I will nudge again.

The edges of some parts of the road looked like they’d been masticated by a tar-monster on a bulimic binge. It was only suddenly, when static washed out Duritz telling me that Richard Manuel is dead, and the rooibos-bred voice on the traffic station floods out my speakers, that I wonder if I entered an alternate dimension when I passed that roadside stall selling “Tamaties!!!”
I drive on with my fingers melted securely to the steering wheel, generating reservations about the innocence of the seed bars I ate earlier. The traffic voice stops its loop about the backup on the N1 and the trouble with the traffic lights near Booysens. Duritz displaces the weird energy left behind by the strange intrusion, “And what brings me down now is love, Cause I can never get enough”. Sing on man. I pull together.

Priced to go…

I park at a garage rest stop where the signs proclaim the toilets to be clean. I order a cup of coffee at the take-away. “Percolated?” they ask which confirm my suspicions that I’d entered into the bizzarro space-time continuum at the padstaal* with the histrionic tomatoes.
“Yah, that’s fine,” I say, hearing the crackly jingle, “Ricoffy, fresh percolated taste” ricochet in my head disturbingly. I wonder when they’ll start calling it filter coffee in these parts.
What I receive tastes like ditchwater that’s been strained through two layers of dirty dishcloths and nuked for good measure.
So much for percolated I think as I empty the blasphemous abomination out onto the lawn. It’s so vile, I forget about any ants encountering the liquid and mutating.

And I’m on the road again, carding my thoughts, making neat piles of things as I pass a small dam, its water reflecting scatters of the sun, so pretty and sparkly.

The drive is longer still and I start thinking about the people in my life especially the one whose eyes crinkle up at the corners when they smile and the thought of whom leaves me with a warmth and tenderness I can not title.

I pull together until the sign ahead reads Mafikeng.
The woman at the guest house offers to take me to the halaal steers. Those questionable seed bars ingested earlier were about as substantial as eating clouds.
She can see I’m hungry enough to devour anything in an unladylike manner.

Every sentence out of her fastens to a close with a ribbon of “mm” or “aah”. The next day I find this to be a general idiosyncrasy of towns inhabitants. It’s such a distinctive “mm” conveying agreement and consideration in just that one sound, Mmabatho*.

In the afternoon I pensivate my route back to the city.

There’s just something about a 300km stretch of tar.
It pulls at you to pull together.

—

*tomatoes
*roadside stall
*an area part of Mafikeng.