the
ill the murdered the raped and the heartbroken ones
I know my country was fabricated
once from hope – it stays with me
it’s incomparableness stays with me
immoderate is my feeling for this land
dumbfounded we listen to the hairdryer sounds
of our leaders arid-air scorchings of nothingness
I do not believe in miracles
but the peaceful liberation of my land
was a miracle – astonishing and filled with elation
I have no other land than this one
we have become the prey of ourselves caught up
in ethnic avarice and a total incapacity for vision
it is as if we have no idea any more of how to live without
being violent anguished and brutal towards one another
I belong to this land
it made me
immoderate is my feeling for this land
gnarled and tough but unambiguous
I have no other land
than this one
I do not believe in miracles
but the peaceful liberation of my land
was a miracle – astonishing and filled with elation
it stays with me its incomparableness stays with me
(after David Grossman)
Lady Justice blindfolded
1.
the pants are unbuttoned, the erection thrusts,
Lady Justice lies on the floor pinned down
by men who dig around stubbornly in the squalid loam
of their consciences trying to verbalise
that she was looking for it, yes she provoked them:
thus lust pushes justifiably
through the President’s doublekeeled
swindlehead. but behind this tableau lies of course
another: one foot firmly planted on gold, the other
athwart the land while one hand takes
the other claws from the unbuttoned fly
dangle Baron Boerdick, Viscount Saltdick
and their mate the Duke of Acorndick
in this tableau the worst has already happened: blood stains
under the thighs of Lady Justice her eyes glazed
nobody helps her up – between Lady Justice’s
silence here on the floor and Lady Justice’s
blindness lingers more than the injustice of three centuries
and the recipe works like this:
2.
one does not know who one is one
feels in a constant state of
restlessness of nervous distress one
feels forever weighed and found wanting
one feels too insignificant to be
worthy the reason for this one does not know
therefore one feels how even less human
worth is added to one’s dehumanisation
after a time one adopts bravado and
avoidance because wherever one turns
that White Eye watches that White Eye
judges that one is so nothing, so nobody’s
somewhere in one’s deepest trampled self
only scrapings of one’s hopeless
hurtlessness and spacious fury move
unquenchably one thirsts for a purifying deed:
something bulletclean-freesinging something un-
touchably cuttingloose something so
ravishingly violent that the white-jabbering
Eye can only shit out its fear
if one beats with an iron pipe until
blood spatters the roof one will
call the police oneself: look, I
have dealt with the Number One Boer myself
3.
between Lady Justice and Lady Justice’s historical
blindness the Men of Great Nations play
(corrupt of head rapaciously pituitary aflame
with self-seeking covetous power neuroses: pornographically
staking claims to everything) to keep what they’ve
stolen while reminding themselves to steal again
from those places they’ve sucked dry before
between Lady Justice and Lady Justice’s silence
row the Russian kleptocracy, the netherworld of
the Ukraine the carefree historical virus of German
corruption and an American president completely at
ease with his stolen election handcuffing the rest of us
with monopolies exploitation consumerism
wars and spy-systems for the day of vengeance
4.
the lack of moral imagination
feathers
