from dôggie to kêttie

the chair barks
the sun sparks vomit over my cappuccino
my nose licks at the morning
i taste the echo of your touch
as my ears howl a longing foghorn to you
melanie, in our flat in cape town

the chair creaks tortured elephant tears
but there is no chair, i’m floating at this round
table at reddit’s coffee shop in grahamstown
my phone beeps
“tjolie snoefsnief from your kêttie” i hear through
your sms
your words in proper digital hieroglyphics call through me
to where my heart caves echo with no hearing
an “ayoba one more time!” echo

yet i sit alone in grahamstown with metal rays
of sunlight soaking my bones
the green chair has now become the chair of love and
it comes back into being beneath me
ghostlike theatrical murmurs rise from my half full cup
as the sun creeps to a midnight afternoon
then suddenly your shadow swooshes across the sky
“is it a bird? is it a plane? no, it’s melanie!”
i become your muishondvoëltjie that stares up at you
with his hundreds of rows of teeth gleaming and
you laugh at my macabre tomfoolery
“one day our days will no longer be counted,” i declare,
“we will burn wild and free into our endless
raging, raging against the dying of the light.”

i shift my bum on the gaunt legged anorexic chair
which has again become loneliness
i sms back to you:
‘i will love you from your toes to your toes &
beyond, in zenith circles of crooked horizontalism.
das is good meine schatz.’
my thumb presses ‘send’ and i taste our bond
spinning into the ethers as i order another cap-o-chee-no
the blond waitress’ smile echoes your smile
the chair sits upright next to me and we begin
a poetic discussion around harry owen’s ‘non dog’
the chair barks & barks with
red feet that pitter patter on our moon-sun
and you sms back
“i luf u my dôggie”

© Sjaka S. Septembir, 2010