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

disinte-grace-tion 23

i can smirk and say i was the mountain over your earth
and that sings of me imploding into you
the dust of our skins is our sweat
yet, now it’s all far away and I grab at you
in my dreams. i realize you’re a throne
of which the legs are being slashed with hatred
i light a ciegie and open a beer
i cheers on your despair
no one can be trusted my love
i’ve washed my hands in your body and still
they are hacking, moving up with there pangas
to the gold silk that decorates the seat.
you do understand my position?
declaring loyalty to your party would meen death
so i just sit and nod my head to the tune
that there bashing makes and i force a smile
i’m faking it but it seems real
i refuse to participate in the violence
yet, i can not avoid being swept up in the turmoil
they boogie hatred whilst slashing the cushions
the terrible danger of it is in your eyes
i feel myself reaching out and being close to it
to your eyes
drawing you neer i spit fires of fish and
pacify the crowed for now
in my flow to you
i feel the crowds resentment dancing close by
a nine inch nail turns with in the cocoon
i push the peach of your sweet tongue away
i wait
i hope you understand
the small and vengeful will destroy their own homes
i will remain unsullied and disinterested
thus helping you to smile again

this is a time of disintegration
of collapse
and don’t make me touch you
we can’t boogie no more
don’t make to much of it

©2008 Sjaka S. Septembir

in a friend's flat in Melville, after he has left for his waitering job…

up there
three flights up
there’s an amazing sun set happening,
but I choose to sit here
and stare at the wall

up here
three flights up
there’s a spot where you can sit
and watch an amazing sun set happening.
But I choose to sit here
and work away at this beer,
smoke this cigarette,
and stare at the wall
that stares back into me

the wall stares back into me
with no eyes
and sees the colours
of my sunset


- ©Sjaka S. Septembir, Jozi City, Feb. ‘03
This poem was published in some publication, can’t remember what. Never got a copy.

hickory-dickory-dock
i ate slices of toast for breakfast today
i ate lying in bed
while reading a Sam Shepard play
hickory-dickory-dock
there’s no mouse here and no clock
my cell phone beeps in a sms
while my computers screensaver
turns languidly behind its glass shield
hickery-didockery-dick
flickery-shnickery-shnick
this will rhyme with the word kick
and what’s did all those nursery rhymes
spilling their images into our minds
bicory-pickory-kock
i’m gona masturbate now
then go for a shower
then i’ll meditate
hickory-dickory-dock
my brain ran into shock
my chakra hit one
my star sign drank wine
hickory-dickory-dock tick
-tock
tick- tock
tick -
tock

The Phone Call

What fear do I excrete
From my heart
When I go over to that phone over there
And dial this old number
That I’ve found in an old diary?
A number which I forgot that I had
A number that might again put me in contact with you
Why do I feel this clamped in anxiety
By just thinking of making this phone call?
What am I afraid of hearing?
Am I afraid that you might be all beter
Out of the psychiatric ward
And you’re doing fine, but you’ve decided
Not to phone me up?
Or is it the fear that I’ll have to face you, talk to you?
…I push all this fear aside, and lift myself
From this chair
I don’t want to think, I’m just going to do this
And I put the plastic receiver against my ear
I feel how it immediately gets hot from the heat of my ear
I dial
It rings!
‘That’s exciting.’ I think to myself,
cause I was hoping that it would be engaged.
then I secretly start hoping no one will answer
but after the third ring some-one picks up
“Hallo”, it’s her house mate Deidre
and she’s sounding chirpy
“Hallo, it’s Sjaka.”
“Hallo, how’r u?”
“I’m fine thanks…” I stumble over a few
of my words trying to explain to her that I
just found this number and while stumbling
I try and sound confident and cheerful and I
Believe I’m succeeding
“I just wanted to know how Mariska is doing?”
“She’s fine. She sounded cheerful the last time I spoke
to her…” I think to myself it’s cool that
Deidre’s visiting her in the asylum
“…Look’s like Australia’s treating her well.”
Australia?
“And she’s taking her medication so that’s
keeping her well”
Australia?
I handle the rest of the conversation calmly,
She left for Australia on the 11th of Jan. and
She’s coming back on the 28th of this month
So she went back to her husband?
I say good-bye
“Send her my regards and ask her to phone me
when she gets back.”
“Good-bye, hear from you soon!” says Deidre
still as cheerful as white flowers in spring
I put down the receiver slowly
so she when back to him?
and many things flash through me
synchronicities of the last month – how that guy
from Somalia on the train spoke about Australia,
how the Murakami book had al these correlations
with things that have happende in your and my life
- and now it all makes sense, all these pieces
suddenly fit together
and over all that’s been, I reach into myself, an find
that I am happy for you
happy, if you have found happiness
and happy that I have found clarity on where u are
so that I now can go on and find my own happiness
I am also sure that you have not
Wiped everything we have shared completely away
That you have brooded over many things, including me
And that you have felt bad about these things for me
And I know that you have trouble expressing your feelings
And I might ask you, “Where you in love with me?”
And you might answer, “There is no way I can answer that question.”
I sit here, you are there in Australia
I don’t know what your thinking, what your doing,
But I’m thinking about the totally irrational, chaotically wonderful,
Electrical charge that passed through us, between us
And I regret that that mythical space
Is probably gone, forever
…But I’d like you to at least tell me!
Tell me to forget about you!!


© 2005, Sjaka S. Septembir

waiting for your tsunami

eating my shepherd’s pie and waiting for you tsunami
my heart is an organic pyramid structure
and ticks in the fashion of an antique coo-coo-clock
my blood sends shadow cut-outs of
old time composers, namely Sigfried
Wagner, Engelberg Humperdinck, Dr. Wilhelm
Kienzle and Richard Strauss, through
my veins
i’m waiting for your tsunami. my dried
protea eyes watching for the flight of your hawk
heart. watching with my telescope and binoculars
for the shadow of your heart on my water filled horizon.
i spoke to the grumpy professor next door
and he has calculated that it is about 4 hours
till you hit, and i know the dept of
your love and subsequently the depth
of your hatred. i can already picture it
30 meters of vengeance rising from your
beautiful fragile body
all those kilometers of sensuality
in the curves of your body that i loved
and orgasmed in, with blood and digital
contingency, now twisting up like a cobra
to crush my being
i’m waiting on your tsunami and remembering
how much we loved, as i move my
now empty plate away over the glass
table.
i throw the newspaper to the side as i
see how you repeatedly sat out here with me
on this balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean
how you smoked your cigarettes with shaky
delicate hands and we had to guard that the
monkeys did not steel our nartjies and banana’s
and how we laughed at their clever attempts
how your eyes could laugh!
…but now the flat is empty
and i’m waiting for you tsunami
while i sip on ancient tea, eating
a slab of top deck and breaking a wind
my heart still mechanically tic-tocking.
the composer’s tune in my blood
has changed to that of Don Quixote
and you are coming
i can feel you
approaching fast
i laugh cause the professor with all his calculus
and computers, knows nothing of women.
a whole community of people comes knocking
at my door, urging me to evacuate. i chase them away
with my own special brand of yoga-karate
and then i choose to sit down again and wait.
i know you my love, so i’ve been stocking up
on your favorite mayonnaise and chocolate cake
so as to soften your impact…
but chances are that you will be blind
and this will be futile
against
your fast approaching attack
as further defense i have put up three medieval
shields and asked and angel and 2 lions to keep watch
from the roof top, but i fear this will be just as futile
against your might
finally, 3 times a day I do ritual prayers with
wine and cupids to strengthen my pyramid heart
cause this is my only fear
if my heart folds, everything else will crumble
i have prepared and i’m intuitively ready
for your approaching tsunami
my phone is charged and switched on,
i have topped up with airtime
all i can do now is patiently wait and see
if i can withstand the impact of your anger
that anger that i traced in you, back to
the first sprouting of your family tree
back to Frankfurt in 1733
i’m sitting here
patiently waiting for your tsunami
…cause after denial comes anger
and i told you last night
that it’s over
that we have to break it off
that i never want to see you again,
and you were all to… calm about it


- ©Sjaka S. Septembir, July 2004, Durban

the sound of my voice

(photo by Esti Strydom)

my manufacturing psycho penis-machine
my fruit tree laughter in Van Gogh’s sun
my nutty half-moon mind
my bubbling champaign ego
my extreme pointless inner corrosion
my meditation on my icy will
my praying to Pan and fortified fornication
my penniless thoughts
my shaken fear factor vicissitude
my stride of golden mermaids
my crescendo of poetry, saluting
and wailing up in me like a cherry orchard
swaying in a warm breeze
my tongue filled with all of this
slides into your mouth like a wailing siren
and over all of this my voice blows
hauntingly
a non directional desert wind
touching your skin
and the skin of ten thousand people across the world
bringing in the smell of fresh blood