WENDYS & JANES

I'm driving with slow arms,
the road keeps a tolerant beat.
My loves do me no harm,
the Sarahs and Zoes and Petes.

THE UNFULL FILLED

and if it hangs in loxton like it hangs
in stellenbosch, this unfull moon, this old
obscurer, then may they afflict (these pangs
of wholeness) you. and you, as me, enfold.

NEC IUSTUS NEC PECCATOR

when that salt life or this, insipid, ends,
when ordinary ruth has been deployed
and while the tame dogs dice for dividends,
some corner drunk will slur into the void:

he was, like me, an old habitué
who loved, and tired of, the red café.

RUE GIT-LE-COEUR

his hard opinion finds himself amended
(he was no saint for sure whose bowel
has been evacuated here). thus ended
this his quest, his faithlessness defended,
he trades his english beef for free french fowl.

090612. thirtydawn

some bastard's gone and scrawled across her spleen
the slogan "HOPE": a vicious cri-de-guerre.
she's half a life away from where she's been
or else, by some accounts, she's halfway there.

PHOTOJOURNALIST (1)

he is hard as headlines.
she shoots him still and climbs the threads of his eyes,
unravelling him into the void of the night.

081209: stellenbosch

these oaks were never sacred. and the young
summer legs of women, and their com-
and elsewise pliant berries, always hung
beyond the grasp of tantalus... and from

these mountains' clefts, of course, there never sprung
the stream which dulls the blade and whets the tongue.

acrostic exercise 2.5.6: rachel, fifteen

risk every notion which your catalogue
accumulates: allow fit lambs their legs.
contest the unexamined truth, first dog
his heels who claims your bent knee, or who begs…

endure the small weight of an empty sky.
live this your life, with your own heart comply.

T MINUS FOUR

the first glint, always, is alluvial.
the camera pans his rivered bed, it gleams
the fool's gleam... mahmet's mountain moves: he will
be driving piles into the darker seams.

acrostic exercise 2t.5/5/2.3: chloe rose, thirteen

clocks and calendars - machines which capture
hours, and cages for our bird-free days -
let these slip by

(overlook, in their precision's rapture):
every unguessed laugh, spontaneous phrase,
resistant cry...

once you've found your own path and you've mapped your
self's course, freed from time's and custom's ways,
expect to fly...

HER RED-FLUSHED FLIGHT

[for isebeau, 17 june 08]

no god distributes party favours at
her thirtysomethingth, poets only write
their frailties. all there is is chance, and that
endows the lizard with the knack of flight.

AND FROM THE WEST

the weather and your plane are coming in:
the coucal murmurs of your e.t.a.
at ten to six. the breaking of my drought
is fifteen minutes and two k's away.

MY LOVE IS TRYING

[for francois]

my love is trying
to keep up with you
four minutes
and two
seconds

ago i thought
i had you...

these are the days
of the toothed mango-eaters
of bronze busts
at silver portsides
and egrets
oracling among
the dew-heavy figs

(steak steaming fresh
off the golden calf)

and my love is testing
the solid waters
of your long and arctic isle