Poetry

Here are the lyrics to my 2019 poetry album, "Thickly Mulched Fields of Peripheral Visions". It's available in CD hard copy from me direct on simric1@gmail.com - or it's downloadable and streamable at http://simricyarrow.bandcamp.com .
Download codes and souvenir copies of the fabulous artwork are also available directly from me or via my "outlets" in other countries :-)

Here are the words to the poems (and the three songs), all copyright moi. Plus some "notes" to help y'all out. 
AND if you're looking for my earlier releases - my previous CD and book - there are a bunch more lyrics below these ones! And again, audio files at bandcamp, hard copies/CDs from me.

This is a Galactic Security Announcement

There has been a breach in space-time sector Earth 2-0-2-0

The petrochemical cleverness of our previous fatal flooring and concrete constructions

Has caused an unforeseen split in the technosphere

And an unarmed intrusion from the foundational field of peachy peace.

Some believe the resulting global detoxification

Has produced an intercontinental migraine se moer

But in fact it is widening the wily wise cracks in the slapdash pebbledash balderdash of

Decorated generals and plastered presidents.

Let us not beat about the bushy biosphere, beloveds

The razorwire briars round our century-sleeping castles have been ripped out

Lately the egos have been falling from the titanium-tipped towers

In transparently trashy tempests

Now the bull-headed barriers and the iron-clad six-packs in our primal brains that

Bravely kept out the terrifying blaze of Love’s Light are slipping aside

In rhythm with the rising of the magma in Her majestic mantle

We may have stumbled on this epic journey from head to home

We may have carefully drowned ourselves in a cacophony of phony comfort-zone cynicism

But while we thought we were building strict straight solid walls

The Goddess has been cutely corrupting us with curvy-dreaming circles

In each ravishing starburst ripple of her roguishly slinky rivers

Angelic orchestras have been hiding in our long-forgotten belly-pits

And as their symphonies unveil our shimmering secrets the easily-parting curtains reveal this:

Our ever-spiralling multicoloured planetary theatre

The pungent organic architecture of the ripening rainforests

Trembling in our blissfully burnished bodies

Will savour the soaring sap within our softening shamanic souls

The fruity furnaces in our hearts will awaken the

Wild centipede jungle-jiggles of our inner pretty critters

We will caress the landscape with many drumbeat footsteps and make love to the mountains

With every mysterious mythical movement of our divinity-drenched beings

We will prayerfully plunge into the ferociously fermented oceans of each others’ eyes

To the pulsing tectonic melodies flowing from Her magnetic liquid core

We will feast on electric embraces with every gift of oxygen we humbly inhale and our

Sensually quantum dances will cause lightning strikes in the stratospheres of distant solar systems

We will raise potent playful pyramids with our deliciously connecting fingertips

We will conjure-craft palaces of inspiring integrity that hum with finely tuned courageous wonder

So let us know in every sinew of every spirit here lies the bluesy blueprint

Of this blessèd future that already is

As we magical sun-filled miracles finally kiss our funkiest incarnations

And authentically gratefully joyfully cosmically embody the beauty for which, right now

We are being reborn.

 Ode to Chocolate

In some fabulous jungle wizard’s lab there stands a thick and ancient tree

Where liquid chocolate is tapped by the gallon

Every gathering is greeted by a satisfied low moan

As the forest’s spirit-maiden delivers her sensuous gift of sweet acceptance

In some high cave a melancholy monk breathes air

As fresh as children’s kisses

He hums mantras to lull the deep-brown bees to sleep

And raids their hives for chocolate-combs that drip silky stalagmites

On some island boys bring giant pearls to shore gathered from twinkling reefs

And once in a blue moon there’s a malted brown one

Born from the mating dance twixt mermaids and forgotten chocolate ocean gods

Whose staple food is ambrosia from the depths

Some distant star twirls in a lightning-charged embrace of her own power and love

And as she sings her velvet delight

Mighty molecules mould themselves into molten chocolate meteors

Showering the lucky ones with mouth-revealed memorials

To her light-year ecstasies

And we who follow the chocolate trail with our tongues to the satin core of yum

Find our magical imaginations rising to higher vibrations of anticipation

With every devilishly luscious lick…

Tuning in to Tankwa Frequency

we surrender to the field of toe-trance tripping

in a soil built from fossilised ecstasies

till a solitary storm unwraps our minds

and coats our skin in fairy-dew from the future

we soak in a succulent infusion, fusing our thickening love-strings

breathing in illumination in our veins

gifted to us in gratitude from our children’s children’s children

we are the warriors of the spirit

we are the hairs on the wings of the butterfly planet

and as our global gold-plated molecules warm and hum in resonance

we burn in honour of the first tribe

we rise in sculptural salutes to the desert slate-shores of the soul

we kiss the crimson flowing in our bushy core

we mould our movements, awake to our chosen totem-beasts

and beating the rhythm of our broken-open shameless hearts

and we know that this now is the reward for our race

this is the bat-winged edge of the beauty we’re dreaming

this is the cat-cream crystal sky-smile bringing pillow-songs

on the ocean of the ancients and the forest floor of those to come

this is where you and me meet not through electronic toys

but through electric eyes and

this is where we see that

we are foolish shamans becoming love

and the earth, she is rejoicing with us

An Ancient Marinaded Rhyme

Captain! I can spy the shore! Perhaps you’ve seen this one before

An iceberg is approaching fast, the fiddles play, we’ll never last

We’ve been skating on scurvy seas, tempest-trembling at the knees

Mariners marinading our brains while praying for the 40 days of rain

Politely paddling like damp squids at the fringes of the bay

Longing for heart-green pillow-lands to loom and end

The foggy confusion of this mutually agreed illusion

The time has come to escape the mainstream’s rip tides

Sucking us unconscious once more

Time to throw out the deadweight headline anchormen and instead call

All hands on deck of our mothership, all feet on her shivering timbers

All hips trusting the shaking vibration of our newly birthing nations

Feasting on evolutionary vegetation in an aura-orgy of flora and fauna-cation

Navigating with our bold belly barometers into a lightning-strike future made from

Steampunk shipwrecks with elegant intelligence by we permacultured pirates

Heroic electromagnetic generators of tidal-tiger juiciness

Creating the sauces of currents and coastlines as we cascade effortlessly

Over the edge of everything

Curling our mushed egos into the feline forms of freshly minted mind stew

Where we meet the ecstasy in the centre of the hourglass

And conjure up an aeon-turning epic adventure, a luscious lathered lullaby

Transforming the gestures of His story with the cyclical ripples in the nipples of Ms story

Yes, the goddess is erupting from our dreamtime journeying

Urging us to explore the sweet starry entanglement of the dark and salty whirlpool depths

She sings the majestic melodies of the ancestral spiral shells humming in our skeletons

She builds the syncopated sensuality in our embodied dancing dolphin breath

She chants the soft and floozy truth that twilight-tingles on our tastebuds

And opens the doors to our all-perceiving pores

She is the still stallion cresting our heartbeat waves

That crash with crazily intentional intensity

Awakening the rivers that recharge our ocean potency

She is the raw and weedy core, the charming churning in your eyes

The whiff of magic on the wind, the scent of angels swelling the moon

The promise of interplanetary community on a mutual quest for self-mastery

For which she holds both lock and key through recognition of telepathic synchronicity

She is of course both you and me

And so let’s spin the celebratory sequel of this never-ending tale

And sense it floating in this sacred moment

For that long-awaited trip to a new world is but a spirit-stroke of an oar away

If we wild-hearted ones choose to pull together

As those of us who pause to touch the silence right now will surely know

Down the Rabbit Hole Again (Lewis Carroll’s elusive third Alice manuscript)

Oh dear. We’ve uncorked the entrance to that “Drink Me” tunnel of love once more

And who can tell what tasty trance-formative toe-tingling turtle-mockery lies in store

In this marvellously luscious mushy room at the end of the eighth square

Lulled into lunacy while the many, many queens and tarts here present and incorrect yell

“Off with your ego!” – cutlass-card sharp in this right royal land of looking-glass classy dance

Take a step, take a chance, proceed to Go! and collect two hundred kisses –

but know you have no monopoly

Fear not the shabby Jabberwock, my son,

he’s just that trickster tricker hookah-smoker caterpillar in disguise

and he’ll soon fade into warm hilarity

like the creamy feline smiles we feel pulsating from

somewhere below our burrow, somewhere breathing through our muscular marrow

to the bone china of this, our magnificent electric and magnetised

human tea set

For Hey! Presto or perhaps Hey! Allegro

Is a fairy-circle forming magical speed at which to spiral in synchrony

with waistcoated rabbits and dassie and dormouse dreams

as we form flaming flamingo-winged croquet sculptures on the lawn

and realise once more that life is truly a hairy marching wonderland

whenever we remember that we are still innocent enough to eat a thing that’s saying “Eat Me!”

whenever we remember that we are still innocent enough

to take all the cosmic expansion in our stride

for the cycling of breath is the source of all our sauciness

So while we are still young and frolicsome, let us pour a little more playful potion

Stirring us into the kind of creative cauldron the planet loves to party with

A little lubrication for heart-communication, a little more trust in the joy that is us

Dear friends, this story, we know, has a happy ending,

for as we awaken to our truth with underlying alchemical algebraic integration

this wonder-full dreaming never stops unfolding

TRAFFIC UPDATE

Words, vocals & keyboards Simric Yarrow

Music composition Simric

Didgeridoo Ronan Skillen

We interrupt this life to bring you an update as it’s apparently all clear again on all major highways

After multiple snarl-ups over the past few months

In this juggernautical astronaughty solar journey there’s been a lurching and a loosening of the wheels we call society

It’s time to find a little luminous headlight humility and learn

To change the tired tyres we call the capital economy

And admit a patriarchal piston-pounding’s caused us

hangovers of note

And exercise more than the minimalist yoga of our

so-called democratic vote

And in case you haven’t yet caught the high-speed

low-tech joke

We are the next generation self-drive vehicle miracles

of the gods

Although, yeah, we’ve wandered lonely in a cloud of tweeters picking electronic petals

(“She follows me, he follows me not”) - across tarmac tarnished with infantile pothole politics

Immature joyriders racing in the disempowered lane &

firing off turbocharged toxic speech capsules

So let’s change our gears

Feel the sacred seeds in the ipods falling from the

i-maginary i-trees in our fertile souls

Remember the soft crooning of those ancient analog tractors

Spinning shellac 78s through the

thickly mulched fields of our peripheral visions

And gather our hitch-hiking spirit guides

from the unseen slipstreams

Yes, we are the heart-based artistic intelligence of

the fourth industrially-spiritual age

Beyond the rock teachers and plant teachers and

eternally orgasmic bonobos boogying in our bones

All we have to do is figure out how to turn our ignition on

And by the way with all this genius circuitry

there’s never just one switch

But the beautiful binary code of breath is

one of the keys of this Gaia-based game

So let’s gratefully absorb the air into

our microbial meadows buzzing with internal symphonies

Brazenly baring the brassy basslines of our

sultry sousaphone semibreves

As we engage our natural horsepower antpower sealpower lionpower eaglepower angelpower

Give up being fast and furious and become

firmly flirtatious with everything

This is not an A to B perpetual motion machine trip

It cascades in gushing spirals of mutual curiosity through mischievous eruptions of richly reforested canopies

Watered by luscious thunderstorms of

divinely-programmed kisses

We will unlock the reboot of inspiration in our

yearning goddess engines

And fingertip-forge technologies of true liberation

As our magical mouse moves decode the quantum epiphanies encrypted in our sunflower-sprouting skin

Our trembling calves will plant dragon-seeds and dreamscapes

As we screech the banshee ballads of our

wildly warm wolf-hearts

And honk our kudu horns to accompany the

peace-brewing mantras of sunrise doves and sunset bugs

We will daisy-chain dance the soaring stories of our

sensual descendants

Rising from that molten choral core of

mountain-moulding melodies

And drip with the somatic sweetness of our

mindfully ecstatic embraces

And taste the salty softening truths in

each other’s eyes and hips

And hear the laughter of the oceans rippling juicily over our lips

And vibrate with the cosmic echoes of our

evolving biological harmonies

The echoes of our edge-born secret desires mingling with our collective moving prayers

The echoes of the eternal applause for our

gorgeous forthcoming performances

The infinitely epic echoes of our

extraordinarily sassy source-connected sorcery

WHEN WE SINK INTO OUR SKINS

Words, vocals, keyboards & trombone, music composition -

Simric Yarrow

Percussion - Ronan Skillen

There was a girl who craved a hug and found a fist

There was a man who gave up gold for knots on ships

There was a baby crying while his mother passed away

There was a hunger filled with songs of a desert guitar

When we sink into our skins we find the ancestors there

When we turn and face the candle’s softening wax

When we ride the wild sea-horses of the past

Mermaid’s purses filled with memory grains so fast

There was a lady who loved dancing as a girl

There was a woman who told children life was more than factory smoke

There was a soldier who wrote poems to the wind before the fire

There was a man who used to smell the flowers in the field

When we melt into our dreams we find our stories there

When we turn and face the spirits in the wind

When we fly so far and true to albatross-webbed skies

Feathered dresses drifting down on eddies of disguise

Let us thank them for they tried

Let us find the flow inside

Let us rest their weary souls in peace

And feel their tears of joy upon our face

At witnessing our smiles of release

In my legs there is a marcher against fear

In my lips there rolls a sweet sweet mango rich in juice

In my lungs there rings a simple sermon clear

In my eyes there is a worshipped god shaking loose

A WHIFF OF JASMINE

Words, vocals, piano, trombone, music composition -

Simric Yarrow

Percussion - Ronan Skillen

today I found a pirhouette inside my pocket

a dragon roaring in tear-stained lycra

perched in sepia with an eerie ancestral ache

unfolding over the toast and marmalade

of the mainstream media

tenderly I discovered the dicotyledon leaves in the courtyard

that wobble their timelapse selves towards the dawn

throatily croaking in an unheard helium octave

shooting like toddlers towards the helios dance

that rumbles in my bones and calls me home

home to another lacy moment tasting blackberries

upon your effervescent lips and home to the first sliver

of the shy crescent moon returning in a blue cheese sky

home to the lonely microphone upon the open stage

a plucked dandelion attracting honeybees

still searching for the ghosts of last year’s nectar

together we sit on the cusp of wonderland

where this flat and icy world of synapse-zapping infowars

will snowflake-float away and we’ll pause

to mulled-wine mull upon a piece of truth

that’s skating towards us in curvy clues and

blasting beyond the late winter blues

in these moments of immaculate perception

(goaded on by playful pixie prickles

from beyond the veils that coat this scene) - we tunnel-tumble

linking fingernails and pressing our warbling palms

against the force and current of one another’s tides

and when we hide there comes another peeking toe

for this messy imperfection rides its skirts up the carburettor

smudges the menu with yesterday’s sorrow

and holds the universe to ransom for a whiff

of tomorrow’s jasmine in your hair

THERE’S A GOD AND SHE LOOKS LIKE YOU

Words, vocals, keyboards/bass, music composition Simric Yarrow

Guitar - Jamie Jupiter

Percussion - Ronan Skillen

CHORUS A : Well yeah we are the people of the deep deep south

I see a sparkle in your eyes and a smile on your mouth

And as we kiss there are angels which our lips bring to birth

Cos we’re dancing here for heaven on this fragile earth

CHORUS B: Well I know that there’s a god and she looks like you

She’s got purple-streaked hair and her skin is bright blue

& I’m singing from my heart & I’m singing through my mind

& the magic of this moment lasts until the end of time x4

Take me to the limits of your ecstasy

Warm me with your sunlight so that we can fly free

Honey I can taste the birdsong humming in our souls

This is a blockbuster babe and we’re the starring roles

Now let’s open our arms to the friends either side

Each one of us a galaxy a zillion light years wide

And as we feel the vibrations rising up from the ground

We’ll know we’re also planets spinning round and around

Open up your crazy stories let’s climb aboard

We’ll ride and fight the demons with a samurai sword

We’ll float on clouds with angels dancing over the hills

It’s a rollercoaster feast in there with all of the frills

I’m spying out a future where we quiver with love

And it flows to all this wild world below and above

And it’s roaring towards us calling us to awake

you’re driving from the helm I feel my whole being shake

DRESSING UP

Composed & performed by Simric Yarrow

Ladies and gentlemen put your shields down

For the super sale to end all sales

Float over a shop floor sea to the

Secret delights of the fitting room

Fear not that you might not look like those

Emaciated models and mannequins

Or our corset-choked Northern ancestors

Faint and wan and under the thimble-and-thumb

Just float over that shop floor sea to the

Secret delights of the fitting room

Fear not that you might press promising Eastern

Poly petrol fabrics to your private places

Produced perhaps by smiling sweatshop sweater slaves

While farmers burn pure wool in trade war madness

For is not this the stuff of which sweaty dreams are made?

Fear not that someone will mock your choice

For today’s ranges are full of flavours for every palette

Colours for every ice cream cone,

patterns for every wallpaper junkie

Logos to match every Jaguar or Beach Buggy

Lingerie to match every hopeful boyfriend’s wallet

Lycra to give you that medal-winning feeling

And lipstick to match your glossy undercoat

Fear not for hanging space as our wardrobes expand

In Narnian exponentials and the Third World fills with

Kindly donated corporate-branded cast-offs while local looms

Stand hopelessly frozen and traditional garb is lost

Beneath this summer’s must-have item

Does our naked beauty still lie mocked by crude boy-men or

Indulged with skimpy little numbers for little girls?

Are we still taken on a trolley-ride far from the warm-hearted chaotic clarity within?

Let us reawaken our spindle-fingers,

stretching beyond the pins and needles

Teasing out the fresh-view skeins,

unravelling new soft-touch balls of delight

Let us play at unwrapping the swirling silk of our soul

Let us tingle-touch the finest fibres and smell the way the simplest natural cloth picks up our deepest essence

Let us lift magisterially magical veils that

sweep starlight in their passing

Let us find ceremonial robes to

thrill our inner biker priest-priestess

And night club groove-tubes to

enliven our inner swaddled swamis

Shining out from our leather-bound armour-plated halos

To our fairy boots with zip-up suede pom-poms

via our cackling lesser-spotted joy-thongs

for now is the rhyming, reasonable time to get truly attired

spectacularly zootily-suited,

expressing our marvellous moment-to-moment selves

swapping and jumbling and sharing the contents of our chests and our drawers

with all the rip-roaring elegance our spirits know to be

our fully-dressed justly-deserved dessert

AN INTRODUCTORY FIELD GUIDE TO THE TWO-LEGGEDS OF PLANET EARTH

Composed & performed by Simric Yarrow and some birds

We could begin in the usual fashion, with a little sardonic scientific observation

Classifying documents and souls

according to habitat and chatter

We’ve fiddled our grasshopper helicopter cacophony

to drown out the fires below

Carpet-bombing the last stuffed dodos in our memories

We’ve ignored the purple-feathered pigeons

just beyond our supersenses

Cooing clarinets, quietly carrying out global recalibrations

with resonant incantations

And yet the morse code tapping

of the woodpeckers in our skeletons

Reminds us that only together do we hold

the gilded key to new dimensions of creativity

Somewhere fireflies jive in semaphore

a message to our mammal pores

And the mosquito-sized concerns we have of

missing the great onward flight connection

Are swallowed by spirit-swifts circling the lake of time

We step out from the crumbling concrete

of our skyscraper elevators

And boogie on down with those angelic alligators

We set our navigation dial to the tune of germination

With a healthy dose of holy hugs and voluptuous cultivation

We take that sacred quest for secret chalices and bodices and

Ruthlessly embody all our inner feathered goddesses

We plant the crazy seeds of treeline canopies

Where we can dance candid can-cans

with the toucans and the pelicans

For Mama Gaia’s just warming-warning us

so we can hatch anew

Yes, we’ve finally reached the

deep bass camp of collective evolution

Can you feel that itching in the shoulder blades

that says the time has come

To unleash those hidden human wings

So while the feral rhythms of the jungle night

sound out in full-blooded applause

We become our own warm-blooded saviours

Pick up those kaleidoscopic binoculars that just flew into view

Now is the moment for a more magical magnification

Catch that eagle eddy arising in your belly

Soar and see the songlines in our bloodlines

that we’ve just begun unravelling

Smell the whale-chorus in our salty wombs

born from the ocean’s constant kisses

Taste the harmony a-brewing in our bodies’ melting-meeting as we leave our fears for desert compost

And become as trustworthy as migrating mountains

Follow the tornado concerto to the mystery’s pulsing heart

And fall as grateful raindrops into her thirsty arms

Trilling our trillions of melodies

born in the dreams of ancient stars

And as we breathe the bounty

rolling in our lilac-breasted beings

Her unabashed blessings will vibrate out

from our softening core

Her ripening wisdom in our cells

will mould passion-pollen palaces so that

With every carbonated feeling we release

and every sensual stroke of oxygen we receive

We will hear and know we are the alpha and the Om

of this birdsong-programmed planet we call home

ELEMENTAL CYCLE: A QUARTET

1/ AIR & GRACE

Words, vocals, trombone, whistles, adungu, music composition - Simric Yarrow

Additional percussion Ronan Skillen

imagined supersonic applause rumbles heavenward

while through this airy elemental auditorium

the simple, brilliant elegance of feathered flight

is cast aside by an egotistical squadron

these disconnected dragon-souls

beam destruction down upon distant worker-ants

wreaking collateral damage and thermonuclear deceit

sealed away from the roaring of winds

the pilots of convenience overshoot the lonely albatross

but force their passengers to swallow caged air

full of stale words in a global bacteria zoo

rebounding fields of electrotext cause popping in

the invisible parts of our time-trimmed ears

somewhere the locusts fly

capricious hurricanes tear at paper roofs

unseen bellows fan the forest fires

earth’s breath belches topsoil-stripping tornadoes

in a wild countdown till the oxygen burns

and the high drones of technology

confuse the bees and scatterflies

air-creatures delicately searching

midst the subtle pollen radiance

spreading seed-wisdom wide

alongside the birds and squalls

and we who tune our inner aerials know that we too

are an illusion

an awesome intention

almost entirely space

we take in the gusts right to our guts

we feel our body-glove that glows unseen

we stretch beyond our eyries for the fingertip visions

we seek the naked freshness

of rustling tree and hilltop flutter

whistling gliding symphonies over busy breezes

carrying afar the giggles of children and soprano stomps

and the soft strumming plucking siren songs of

an orchestra of emotion open to naturally coloured freedom

the greater breath blows its chorus

the feathered cloud-herds float in eloquence

and somehow peace is proclaimed

through all the multiple domains

where the feisty fruity flutes of dawn do reign

and our ancient galactic angel’s arrows

soar serenely in all directions

towards home

QUEST FOR FIRE

Words, vocals, music composition, additional percussion -

Simric Yarrow

Percussion - Ronan Skillen

now is the winter of our embezzlement

auction hammers made in China resound across the chasms

sirens close the factory chimneys and tyre-millstones

burn the souls of brilliant petroleum executives

and still the sun rises at dawn

though shack-smoke dulls the sky and

bitter-brittle cocktail-bombs smash across the bows

and moonshine-fuelled guncracks wreak deep-fried havoc

in romantic tabloid crush-crash-crimes

still the sun rises at dawn

daily, it blazes out on the shock of new true love

bruising gangland busts warm into beauty-bursting moments

chargrilled chatter sparks into spiral wildcat comet-tales

till we risk a hot-coal salsa-step

beyond the night-ash of our yesterselves

molten honey flows golden from our crystal core

surface-rising to a budding-giggle-wriggle-bubble that

erupts escapes explodes

we are a jubilation revelation on a holy quest to quench

a thirst for flirting with the salamander-spirits of this life-space place

we are the thought-flowers of the cosmos leaping into outer time

we are the royal rainbow flame-crowns stripping free from our crumble-crusty shields

into a fiendish sweetmeat phoenix-feast

right here the dragons in our fingers and our hips and lips

mouth-blast our deep devouring desire

to take that big-breathing journey to

the only one there is

right here the walls tumble to the silent chorus yelling out

the message from our massed magnificent hearts

we soar, soaked to the inner scorch-skin

in the glowing oil of truth

and as the sun sets still we shine

building dream-temples of a vision life

knowing it begins with us

being and becoming simple and divine

surrendering

sacred

fire

WATER OF LIFE

Words & vocals Simric Yarrow

Music composed & performed by Simric & Ronan Skillen

trickle-tickle rivulets bubble through the backyards

soaking up the cardboard slices

eddying round shiny wrappers

pooling into instant creeks

swarming swamps of new-laid parasites

fizzing with the desire to grow and swell and bite and

feast on passing feet

urgent churning whirlpools babble past the cracking drains

sweeping forth our detrimental influential

excremental effluent

flushed pink by amorous sweet-smelling detergents

purified bleach-brooks ripple into

triumphant alien algae blooms until we find

amidst this mighty ever-restless acrid

putrid petrol-driven stagnant sea

there is not a drop to drink

we gather where the dust scatters

where determined duiweltjies lacerate our flaking skin

we swirl in dancing torrents that recall and recreate

our ocean origins

our own salty animal soup

the flowing crystals dripping daily through our cells

the anointing cataracts of conscience

springing forth from ancient ancestral orgasms

and in an instant we are present to

the snowflakes of a perfect gratitude

the glimmer of mermaids

the water-wisdom of our long-forgotten new-found tribes

catching the thunder-waves on our

sap-filled surfboards from the source of thought

hearing us, feeling us, dancing with us

the world’s sea-womb rejoices in a

wild and kelp-hairy game of chase and be-chased

her angry sickle-shark cave-carving subsides

into lagoons where dolphins laugh and flamingoes dream

into smooth spring tides

that carry trusting sailors to their futures

into soft and supple orchard-gifts

and freshly-ripened paddy-fields

until we dive into Bacchus-vats of

bottled and fermented whale-joy

until we splash into clear streaming-mirrors

witnessing and soaking and

wringing out our souls

before darting forth in homeopathic doses

channelling our fishy-wishes for the rainbow-juice that joins

in trickle-tickle rivulets

of fluid unstoppable desire

EARTHY IN-SINEW-ATION

Simric Yarrow - words, vocals, additional percussion

Ronan Skillen - didgeridoo, percussion

Jamie Jupiter - guitar

Music composition by Simric & Ronan

some place all place shows its face

twist turn stub toe

wake up call

from forces of folding entwining waiting

for we stumblers to tumble into

recognition of our mother

the low hum of the turning earth is there

the still illusion crumbles dusty

each time we bend listening-low to

the seed-sounds of borer-beetles

furiously full of thick energy

excitedly eating their way to

self-declaration

the still illusion giggles into space

each time we stretch our tattered branches

into a mind taking in the suppleness of rock

hugging close the rich-shifting-time-seam streams of silver-sheen

squeezing in our cells crusty aeon-stories

the still illusion sprinkles into sauce

for micro-mineral-magic tempting out

the first shoots and strands

insisting on the pleasure of the dark dance

swarming with potency

caressing our skins from within

the salt-rooted sap-rivers of our corporeal earths

will aura-bloom in daily celebration

of a spicy-seasoned spring

will boom a grounded throat-warble

born in the depths of our wild worm-wings

the salt-rooted sap-rivers of our corporeal earths

will bathe in brown beauty until

soil-soaked and tossed in bony bliss and sultry sinew

they swirl into crisp crystal oceans

will chocolate-churn and pistachio-peacock preen

and speak a honey-charm bass-beat babble

that reveals more than our

tiny shiny single-sting minds alone can grasp

that unveils a single-shell secret in our treasure chests

that uncurls a feet-thigh hip-heart spiral

winding over magisterial mango-pulp magma

to the solid realised summit

of the ripe dreams

she’s wanted us to dream

since the first sunrise of our sublime species

since the first surrender to her

eternal mud-warm embrace

since the first grateful guava-sip

of her ever-swelling bounty

GRATITUDE FOR ROCKS & SAND

Composed & performed by Simric Yarrow

And so the time has come once more to reach into our fiery core and feel we’ve done this all before

The rebirth through the common touch the sharing gifts the blessings such that inside we can feel so much

And after all we are just sparks of light descended from the starry night and all together we shine bright

Our wild hearts are singing out so warm and standing strong before the storm calling pure love into form

CHORUS

Roar our kinship with all the beasts

Share our love with trees from west and east

Sing our joy out to the sea and land

Sing our gratitude for rocks and sand

Wise we turn and sense within our bones our earthly mama’s fruitful tones her joys and sorrow moans

Crystal structures formed within our cells are playing chords that chime like bells across the mountains of our souls

Raising up our branches to the sky a guiding father so close by who wants us all to fly

Joining hands a circle on the ground we plant our roots

so we can stand and touch the spirits all around

Taking gulps of air deep within and sense it tingling on our skin as the veils between wear thin

Candles hidden deep within our eyes building bonfires leaping high blazing truths that never die

Burning with a human passion here that melts away all human fear into a brilliant future clear

Flowing with the rushing river tide until we reach the other side tears bubbling into laughter wide

SIREN SERENADE FOR THE NEW SUN

The sirens are sounding! The sirens are enticing!

People of Earth, choose the way you view,

for the Purple Butterfly is landing.

The Condor and the Eagle are taking off.

We are now arriving at our long ached-for desire-destination.

We are passing the testing post-fact period of

pesty teste patriarchy.

So put a feather in your cap if you have one.

And if you don’t, ask the winged messengers to send you one.

They will, 100% bank guaranteed.

Float your bobbing stocks and your logarithmic lives on the Great River of Rhythm with joy in stacks and pogo packs for this is the time of fast-forward reward

and slow-down breath-bliss pause.

Pay attention to the signs for if you choose they are clues to the new you always knew was going to be here now.

In fact, this is the time of the New Sun

when we remember why we came

even if it’s a Manichaean time-plane stream

some of us never expected to be in.

A time of unravelling the twisted truth in

twisted hair harmony amidst the

awesome pollination of some fabulous bumblebee melodies.

A time so unknowably creative when we can fight the demons best by predicting exactly what we most wildly wish for.

So here goes.

It will be a time when polar bears make friends with penguins

through magnetic ecstatic acrobatic telepathy;

an age when American multi-billionaires will take sacred medicine in the Amazon

(without buying up the potent plant-patent rights)

and expand their free-flight horizons as they

empty their inner trash cans

faster than a water-wise toilet flush;

an era of holy hoping and voracious hopping towards the

candid soul-sound bright lights – camera - activation;

an epoch of bracing embraces, of unbundled

day-to-data communicating commuters

celebrating communion with our androgynous divinity

so –

it doesn’t matter if your sunny touch spirit screen is

flat or curvy,

for the boneshaking once begun cannot be undone,

the rattling of our mitochondrial serpents is unravelling the

ancient whispers of the secret seed-spells in our cells

and the love-bomb has already smashed the Vatican vaults and sprinkled the ashes of the archives with chilli’n’chives from deep-heart dives

and the whales are singing that there is no going back

for the boneshaking once begun cannot be undone

and when we open our soft sweet lips and utter

the horrid truths we hid into the always-forgiving world

we know that there is no longer any wide star-jump Renaissance Man analysing of the aeons

needing to be performed with telescope microscope stethoscope

just a big beating globe longing to be felt

and we feel it

when we choose to trust

that we do.

 TAKE OFF 2012

Bing! Bong! Bing!

This is the final boarding call for the spaceship Gaia

Leaving from gateway 2012, destination far beyond the currently possible horizon

Passengers are reminded that they are in fact crew.

Please check in with your whole beings, leaving only your baggage behind;

This craft has been designed to run on a judicious fuel combination of Love and Imagination, and all taking this trip are therefore requested to ensure they have a

Full Heart-Tank prior to departure, and that all extraneous flammable gases are released,

Preferably at high volume and in the presence of children.

Running, skipping, leaping and whooping in the aisles is mandatory, and for this reason seat numbers will be regularly swapped before excessive comfort sets in.

Please observe carefully as our delightful bevy of attendants demonstrates how to loosen your safety belts.

There are no emergency exits worth taking because it’s time to wake up.

Yes – we have been sleeping

This young upstart start-up species of ours

And what monsters have visited our nights!

Shame-worms and guilt-snakes and

Figleafs spawning fashion industries and plastic surgeries

Steel-lipped smiles beneath large cool shades

But the global alarm siren is crooning to us

Haven’t you heard? Body-based bliss is the new bling

Let’s sweep our flame-wings up and

feel the potency of the carbonated sunshine in our spines

Don’t be a kundalini meanie, dare to share your fleshy tingles

Open your eyes and dive your magic-mind-body-beautiful

Into sumptuous seas of skin-shine silk

Dive into the delicious black hole at the core of our galaxy

Dive into the delicious mystery at the core of every soul

Can you cope with this succulent cornucopia?

Let’s be guided by that ancient perfect GPS beating out our power pulse

Breathing in the essence of presence from all directions

Until from every ecstatic pore ooze laughing Buddhas, horny angels, fabulously mythical fellow mammals,

foul-breathed long-hidden wild-scaled and actually gorgeous darling devil-dragons

peace-giving sword-wielding sons of gods and terrifying tornadoes of goddess sensuality

This year let’s trust we have the inner polar charge to polar-shift society

Let’s trust we have the strength to build the

most exotically erotically poetically vulnerably vibrating version of reality imaginable

brick by multi-dimensional sublimely demented DNA-transforming shape-shifting brick

Let’s trust we nuclear doses of divinity can stretch our spirits

so that every last festering wound is offered to the sweet healing breath of this life

Let’s trust we have within each of our hearts the perfect

mothers fathers elders brothers sisters teachers lovers we used to complain that we’d missed out on

and

Let’s know that the universe is waiting to share with us how much it loves us

Let’s know that this exquisite earth is rising to express her full animal-vegetable-mineral glory

for those of us who pause and feel and rise too to the challenge of our own born-free birthright

seeing our own star-studded brilliance streaming out

in beautiful surrender to the desires of the only One there is

hearing the music that She plucks from our throats

dancing the moves of her cosmic paintbrush

ripening into the vast orchards her visions have planted

rejoicing with embodied relish in her unstoppable flood a-flowing

and sensing just how big our tribe is growing

Ladies and Gentlemen, I do declare, we have planetary lift-off…

Song for Sheba 

sheets folded convent-style

perfect as freshly-opened double cream

we crumple them with our soft storms of legs and lips

a deeply earthly cleansing 

and when I meet your hennaed hands

and lose my fine edges in their playful curls

I marry you anew in this blackbird-spoken moment

and we reveal again our looking-glass divinity

while the languid streams of passing carpet-flights

promise silk-routes to the source-sea 

we may be the first to grin with

the secret smiles of flirting daisies

the first to wonder if

archangels inspired holy hymns to

self-denying ashrams and austere monks

and helped them steer souls with their harmonies

through the alleyways of years

so that one day we might dance our

lovers' sambas to their ancient speaker soundtrack 

for this ice-warm 21st-century purr

this potent ocean star-juice-knowing

coconut-cracking clawing-giggling tenderness

resurrects the gods

[The Song of Solomon is of course the "sexiest" book of the Bible, which perhaps isn't saying much. His great love is considered often to be the African Queen of Sheba. So here's a post-patriarchal update...]

Climate Co-Creation

The coral fades to grey and the field-beasts fade to white

And the waves carry surfers high above our barren buildings

And the winds blow acid onto the stunted saplings

And the parched land rains frogs again

And the earth’s cries of grief are the only memory left

And cancerous locusts eat the bones of our vanity

And the rotting hulls of auto-wrecks remind the ghosts

Of our monumental ice-mammoth follies

We could choose through delusion this vision of oblivion

But let us rather choose to polar-melt out of me-polarity

Linking hands and feeling with feet

Playing humbly with our mortal solar power

Allowing the bounty of the ground to shower

Untold miles of festive smiles

Rousing the forgotten saxophone voices in the

Politicians’ souls that wannabe as free

As our love-dove songs and

As loopy as tumble-honey bears dancing into spring

A freedom no oily crude barrel-bribes can buy

Returning the clock to that time beyond time

Where CO2 is just a thing for trees to chew

And humans have no time to divide nations and minds and lives

And lands and limbs and lambs

But only time to make acorn-ornaments for bird-bower houses

Floral monuments and curly-turtle sand-shows

Wand-wishing beauty-seeds over the fretful world

Till faint strains of these, our choral conquests

Wash the ocean deeps

And cool the corals back into bloom

Gathering Dust - (a live version from a couple of years ago is here )

A new exhibition is being curated

In the All-Africa Museum of World Culture

Where, subject to strict temperature controls

The complete set of Stonehenge uprights is on display

In another room, a signed Folio of the renowned shaman, Shakespeare

And some Grimes Graves ancient arrowheads

Please mind your fingers as you pass. Refreshments are available

Along with souvenir replicas of the Mona Lisa (a recent purchase

made at smiling gunpoint)

The original cast of The Marriage of Figaro

Stuffed and tastefully mounted

Right next to the section showing

Admirable bits of admirals’ rears

All contained, of course, within the European room. A room with

Medieval pedigree reaching back to the times of

True-Cross-Splinter collections and saints’ worship-worthy knucklebones

Beyond this faintly rotting gathering of gods so dead

That sacrilege is no longer deemed to apply

A woman waits, burning her journals, and weeping like her mother did

For her gene-generations tell stories from other caves

Whispered on days of blessing and mourning

Sung over moving dunes under starlit skies

In forgotten tongues that only scorpions hear

And single-filing children seeing scimitars

Feel the dust-walls fall and dream of feelings

Those Victorians failed to crush in drabness

And having felt the power-pulse they move on

Confident that heaven alone archives what is true

Here, perhaps, new cathedrals of the senses

Collected collective celebrations

Will rise in sandstone dreamblocks and shine for all.

[Grimes Graves - a Stone Age quarry site in Norfolk, UK; every ancient Catholic church seems to have its ghoulish relics from the True Cross to saints' bones]

 

SANGOMA CHILDREN (First published in 'Flying on the Lucid Fringe')

They’re at it again

Sangoma children drawing fiercely

Filled with the seasoning of purity

Quivering with the giggling eruptions

Of tiny giants falling.

Delicate, delicious, then suddenly

All-devouring these boldly going souls

Step delightedly on toes

Squish beans and mash and fish with fingers

Slimed and slippery until the awestruck

Parents servants clear the decks

Pristine seconds till the pendulum 

Swings back and time rolls us on.

From the first crawl to the siren of bikes

Is shorter and further than the fifth element

Still the sangoma children lead us on

Pounding us with feisty funny rhythms

That wear no sleeveless hearts

But strip us bony, peel us to the inner

Naartjie 

Fill us with a need to tumble and tremble and

Tickle us with sweet flowers freshly picked

Call us to build safe temples for

Fragile shongololos 

Forcing us to fart out our demons

Until we too truly learn to be

Dragons riding the wild horse herd

Of raging life.

Blessings to my sangoma children! 

Camagu!

[Sangoma = African shaman; Naartjie = small sweet citrus e.g. tangerine, satsuma; shongololo = African centipede; camagu = Xhosa term of respect/blessing]

OF GOD AND GAIA (AN EVOLUTIONARY LOVE STORY) 

I found you swimming backwards

up a chimney clogged with dolphin’s tears

caught on a wispy whisper

until at last you learnt to grasp the flames 

I etched with you in primeval forests

sketched spirit-seams penetrated wild and weedless

by cycads bristling with

cycles of carbon crystal curls 

I kissed you as willingly as you shone

through the glazing of petrified thoughts

to numbers on a slate

slates on a fractal mountain

red with the sunset in your veins 

I lay with you and felt soft

metallic droplets of time soothe our backs

as creatures from our dreams lumbered juicily

over the furlongs to the starting gun 

Which woke me from dreamtime to a deeper human sleep

I forgot the foreverness of our shared story

forged iron choices built on lonesome shadows

till blood-light flowed on my blade and pierced my heart 

I cried for you and more for us

our lush entwining vines now biltong-dry

your most mysterious pearls crushed underfoot

by burst banknotes and bullets in the belly 

I sing for you a new creation carved

in airy freedom on the wings of rainbow spirals

beyond three-dimensional despair

born from an ancient urgent longing to smell the

colours of your mind and know

that you feel the pure gold of my being

silently pulsing in the moonlight 

[biltong = southern African word for strips of dried meat

 cycads = dinosaur-era gymnosperm plants, still relatively common in southern Africa]

 

Take A Step With Me

take a step with me

and let it be an awkward never-before step if it must

but take a first step giant leap onto a new planet

maybe it feels like one where the air oozes

medieval restraint, courtly gavottes and shy eyes

but dance a dervish arabesque anyway

and if your waltz freefalls into a poker-faced polka

find your inner dotty bikini

let this world’s warm eddies lift your fluttered lashes

there is a Harlem jive in every girl and boy

there is a child in every tight-hipped stone

(stones have their own low-down funky moves you know, but I’m sure ours are more fun)

loosen that tuxedo, do the barefoot tap

swing your heart over your shoulder and if

it needs to wail from some ancient pond

long obscured by water-weeds and ulcer-aches

know this dance-planet is a sanctuary

and the screaming-streaming is the first flow

the first burst-through bubbling of a spring

on its way to whirling mighty seas

turn your tutu

meet the dolphin-souls around you

feel the sonar-sounding salsa pulsing through your being

trampling demons into wine in a circle of connected flair

we’ll dance a dance to praise the dead

we’ll dance a dance to raise the living into bloom

shaking out the royal jelly in our belly

catching eyes and tossing them back again in this

the rattle-rolling tangy tangerine tango country

the deep beat heart-heat bleating rippling with promise land

the extra-terrestrial no-shame game galaxy

the lead me backwards in stilettos and surrender sister solar system

the bird-free on two feet together kingdom

the golden glory catch-me-if-you-can universe

take a step with me

and dance with us 

towards yourself

[first performed at Biodanza teacher Daniel Cohen's 64th birthday party!]

Theatre in the Park

window-panes tortoise-drip see-through streamer-lines

clinging to the darkening frames

wood-shack planks swelling now

remembering their sturdy forest forefathers

snails drown delighted in vrot milk stout

and while the pumpkins roam free across the park

a man sniffs the damp

umbrella-clad

turns another page of trash-pulp

littering his mind with unscooped poop

his brown-eared pup shakes off its drenchcoat

a centrifugal centipede movement-moment

now weaving across the slowly marching master-figure

back and forth in instinctive sine waves

(for only human ley lines run straight)

and then as the geese fly low on their

volcano-free flight-paths

our hero feels a pelvic undershriek

crushed too long in tight thought-bottles

and as the clouds pause for insucked breath-beats

he surges out of slip-shit shoes and performs

a Swan Lake in laddered leotard

mascara-smudged and gorgeous

voice brimming with the melodies

of the half-tended garden beds’ fat vygie fingers

from the grateful waders and daisies

comes an orchestral ovation

at a pitch heard only by dogs

and passing angels

now there will be more performances like this

and the land’s ever-glowing heart 
will love them.

[vrot = Afrikaans for rotten/off; vygies = "little figs", succulent ground cover from which the Cape Flats favourite sour fig jam is made]

A Nuptial Sermon from an Ordained Minister in the Department of Foreign and Marital Affairs

Dearly beloved lovers of love

We are gathered here today to witness

Two declaring that they’re one and free

And to say in wonder “oh my! How they’ve grown!”

For what mere words can capture the perplexed complexity

The exaltation elation morning percolation before the tribulation and palpitating revelations

Of relationship?

Shall I relate the revealed truth about the theory of relatives?

(Sometimes known as the theory of special relativity)

It’s right there in the Apocryphal Gospel of Numbers which is

Channelling through us all right now – Can You Feel It?

You see, 3 cried out “I’m tired of everyone seeing me as just the sum of 1+2,

I want to be an individual!”

And 9 said “But darling, you’ll always be a square root to me”

4 declared she would stick by 3 through thick and thin

While 7 just gave a mystical grin

And 6 yelled out (as usual) “I am not a number, I’m a free man!”

Until 8 patted his hand, rolled onto her side and bamboozled him

With her infinitely chaotic curves

Thus began the great and slippery adventure of relating

The great love-crumble baking

The great incitement to excitement

The first peeling of a passed parcel

The first mixing of a new and juicier kind of glue

Of which we see before us today

One glorious and wholly improper fraction

For the goddess of amour had said to Adam or Abraham or Andries or another of those old patriarchal dudes

“Yes! You can have order and results and balance, and even a perfect marriage and bites of delicious apples, but only if you keep everything moving!

If today 2+2 wants to play at being 6,379½ recurring, let it! It’ll be a much happier 4 tomorrow!”

So I invite all of us beautiful products of this cosmic wrestle

In these quantum times of mindful togetherness and

Fractious fractal waves flirting with a ferociously fruity future

To bless these two in their pea green boat

And let us unleash our piggy-wig passion from within

And if anyone knows of any impertinent impediment or unseasonable unreasonable reason why we may not celebrate this evening

For heaven’s sake, go shout it to the hills,

And when you’ve got it out of your system come and sigh a sweaty dancing Om with us

For ours is the king and queen-dom

The power and the gorgeousness

Forever in all weathers and for all our relations – water, fire, air, rocks, plants, beasts,

Our children, our women, and our men.

[google Number 6 and his quote if you like, especially if you're not English and of a certain age; this was originally commissioned for Peter van der Post and Jacqui Simpson's Commitment Ceremony in 2011]

Psychedelicious

it was a time of instant graffitication

when billboards flashed out pounds of flesh

when ranters rampaged

across the trillions of ill-digested words

and wanderers wondered at a world full of

deurmekaartic governments

it was a time of fighting for the right to shop

for pre-cooked veg from sleazy strip-malls

built to block the dangerous dreams of

permaculture gurus and their untamed soils

it was a time for FIFAllic displays

mighty strutting peacocks distracting the

people from fair-play trade-aid

corporate-tackling truth-tellers

it is a time of alien conquests

in hapticklish cyberzones

while extra-terrestrial terrorist tourists roam outside

punk-passing trance-pills to the sleeping masses

but also teacher-plant trips to the wakeful few

chewing air thick with newer views

 it will be a time for schizophrenic society

to thrash and moult its padded skin-thin cells

to drain gulps of rampant log-moss juice

and feel a tongue-burning cleansing passion-poison

a time to find

previously unknown new pubescent protrusion

promising potent world-pleasure to those realised in the real

a time to banshee-climb to newly-spoken body-forms where

jigsaw jigs and even rumpus reels are daylight-danced

a time for all times and none

for stepping through the plume-waves of ash that

strip open our long-plastered wounded holes

into the whole

where the fields of planet-plants grow fruity delights

for our sixth and seventh senses

and hold us in our collective masterpieces

where each soul is a vintage universe

and all universes are you

vibrating at the frequencies which

solder our spider-spiral-healing soldier-souls

to the funkiest beast-beats in the yonder blue

and you are now

and we planet-dwellers weave fine-lined journeys

through whichever dimension we might choose

[deurmekaar = all over the place, messed up (Afrikaans slang) - add this to democracy and you get deurmekaartic... haptics are the science of virtual touch, hence hapticklish...]

Fermata

the burbling humming honking of the day

comes to rest beneath the sun’s last pink wings

and birds make gentle calls

at heights to crest the hills

between my toes the solid crunch of

branches worn to twigs

rocks worn to pebbles

warm-blooded beasts worn to pungent soil

is felt throughout my vibrant skin

and inner notes rise up within

singing with a clarity to shape the clouds

and tempt the moon

and owls to share a wisecrack hoot or two

there is peace in the world

and it begins in my softening heart

I know my fingers touch the winds and there smell the world

and in a smile of sky

I fly home too.

Peace Day

Let us declare the arrival of World Peace

the always-peace that lies

in every watery cell of our beloved much-abused bodies

in every watery cell of our beloved much-abused planet

Let us wail cataracts of wild calm,

spout-sprouting coral-tunes with our deepest belly-swirl basslines

Let our vapour-breath mingle into magical mushroom clouds

spreading torrential outpourings of pure peaceful presence

May monks’ musical mantras blossom

into flying white carpet-blessings from their snowy lands

May our tear-words clear to liquid crystal displays of joy

in mirror-pool meetings with other moist souls

May the holy rivers of blood within us glow

with seaweed-wishes and hearty community stews

May we take up arms and fingers and tongues

to sound out spell out sing out pebble-ripples of softness and connection and

Let us swim the eddies of the chaos with salmon-trust that our voices of love are heard

turning warships to worships to will-be ships of global friendship

sailing over the ever-listening ever-caressing waters of our world

riding onto soothing shores in a passionate wave of peace-prayer

that floods over the rocky barricades with surging beautiful foamy truth

daring to surrender into the bubble-bursting giggle-streams

of a peace-performance

which we weirdly wonderful world-loving peaceniks can no longer hold back from

for it has already begun  


[first performed at the International Peace Day celebration at Cape Town Civic Centre in 2011]

Meat or Greet

I've got tummy ache.

It started under fallen yellow arches

back when a large Coke was the real thing to do

and a sticky flesh slab in a bun was kinda fun

garnished with forced smiles and the gourmet tastes

of tik and ketchup brew

an inside sewage kind of stew

I've got tummy ache

E numbers flash before my eyes in

ecstatic effluent excess

effusively leading me to farty Smarties parties

these days even baboons on raids

prefer their yoghurt fat-free

But oh! The shame of Aspartame!

Just google it and see

I've got tummy ache

and as I soften 'neath the gentle hymns of Kenny G

apathetic victim of supermarketed allergies

I wend my way through the miles

of sacred shopping aisles

a weekly wedding cavalcade

that covers more than it unveils

(meat crimes hide with elegance

behind the words we've loaned from French

but that's another tale)

I've got tummy ache -

it's bubbling over with stout-soaked stoats

and well-swilled wines

marinaded fish eggs in a vodka-coated slime

served on a bed of dollar bills

in a globulous gobbing tribute

to the overfishing trawlers of today

and the brave sailors of the past

who would not rest until the last

Mauritian dodo had been eradicated

and they could laugh off their scurvy stench

displaying all the scary teeth of the Great White Human

folk memories repeat in the throat

while I bite another leg of stoat

I've got tummy ache

growing groaning self-raising in my gut

too much affection for confectionery

insulating my skin with insulin

just another junk-food junkie

cos the sugar on the label

is no natural bee-buzz

but a snorting crystal rush

and the caffeine and tobacco

waging war against the calories

lifts me high above the cane fields

till my buzz-balloon bursts

I've got tummy ache

and it's not the tinned chakalaka or the Boerie en sous

or the joy of soy or the polony with pesto

or the Allah cart halaal or the kosher whore d'oeuvres

or the screams of the lobsters

or the muffled shrieks of oysters

or the pizzas with enough garlic to subdue

the five thousand being fed

or the sobbing of the widows of the suicidal farmers

seed-bank slaves of the millionaire marketing men

It's the fear of a dumb animal watching his species

drink-drive the boxed-in bloodied path to the abbatoir

and I don't want to admit it stresses me out

in case they line me up like a Kommetjie beached whale

whose last meal was plastic bag in fishing line batter

and put me out of my misery with a caring gunshot

without asking me why

because they always know best

I've got tummy ache -

time to stop the caramelizing and start animalizing my mind

through my animal eyes

letting in pure-earth-blood-love in the

vibrant roots and shoots and leaves that fill my family feasts

so it pumps through my continents of praying-river-body-being

and though my head might throb with wallet-ache at the

conscious A to Zees, alpha to omega-3s,

my belly-ocean croons at the news

that I'm quitting all this food abuse

one day at a time.

My gut says:

a single beefburger

or drinking water for the rest of your life?

You choose.

My spleen says:

beyond the wallpaper ads that clutter our minds

it really is that simple.

You choose.

My heart says:

beyond the 'O' blood-type excuses for still pursuing

the warty slaughter rituals of a bygone aeon -

you choose.

And I don't mean Coke or Pepsi.

I'm not talking Virgin Cola or Virgin Active.

Not banana shake or bubblegum.

I mean listen to what the whales are saying and choose.

Remember what your uncle monkey

hollered in your holy sinews and choose.

Softly press your leopard-pad paws into night-soaked soil

forget your paunches lift your haunches

to the lean heart-beat game of game views and choose.

Stoke the blazing mantra echoes through the wilderness of caves

recreate your mammal molecules and chew

the cud of full-cream free range choices

knowing that the cows will bless your mellow songs

and the blossoms and superfood seeds

will fruitily toot their melodies

you'll no longer be saucily screwed

by the millionaire marketing men but

making steamed fresh love with taste-budded fingertips

My tummy ache is a part of me.

It's led me on a voyage to the magical styles

of the infra-red range of aisles

to intuitive desserts richer than chocolate-death sauce

to slow curry-concertos of local food and

global garden barley and oat cuisine

to Gorgonzola gratitude with every meal I'm given

spicily stirring love and Popeye spinach into every meal I share

and so creating with my cooking a rarified kind of air

coated by unseen painters and players.

Molweni! Sawubona! Bonsoir! Goeienaand! Greetings!

Tonight I welcome you to my table.

Let us drink to the health of the millionaire marketing men as we

welcome their companies' imminent transformation

(or demise)

and then let us eat.

[hmm where to begin... tik = appallingly destructive drug ravaging the Cape Flats; tinned chakalaka = popular sauce for meat especially in township communities, while Boerie is short for Boerewors, the classic Afrikaans farm sausage... with sous, sauce of course; Kommetjie is a village on the south-west side of the Cape Peninsula, where a pod of pilot whales beached themselves in 2009 and were controversially shot; Virgin Active is Branson's chain of gyms in SA; the rest you can figure out]

 

THE BLACKSMITH’S DANCE

Stepping beyond our well-carved niches

The ever-shrouded clockwork spiral urges us

To meet

Brow-beaten beneath the sun’s brooding

There brews a catlike unfurling

Towards each other

And an effervescent ferment

Overlays the bones of two who once were lame at heart

And we call it love

But in truth it is a blacksmith’s dance

For this crown (inlaid with mother-of-us-all) must daily melt

And as we pound our lovers’ soot

We’ll strike wisdom

Cracking open each mined petal with squirrel-soft touch

Leaves us breathless, laughing, and sometimes spinning

A jewelled journey awaits the brave

Moments may come when we turn away

To face our well-carved hibernation zones

But we’ll find we have outgrown them

Together

So let us blink beneath the sun’s blessing

Feeling again - within our smiling skins, mutually moulded -

The joy upon us of the world’s kiss.

[originally commissioned for my brother Kielan's wedding to Kate Mandeville in 2009, previously published in the Living Consciously diary for 2010]
 

HOME AFFAIRS (MIGRATING IDENTITIES)

If these passes give us more legroom mouthroom heartroom than

Those that were withheld

From passed-on serfs and freedom fighters

They remain pure petty symptoms

Of prattling-Gatling power-powder

State property in our pockets, branding us with barcodes

While in the more sophisticated nations

Smiling is no longer permissible 

Yet today global apartheid's fence-hopping strait-swimming victims

Fight back against lazy long-dead maplines

Toyi-toying for a personal future

Often built on bribes and false pasts

Because such finger-swivelling is the only correct response

To the gold-standard arrogance of those

Who issue and declare with puff-penguin passion

Who insist that this system is for every citizen's safety

Who assert their dutiful rights to pass or fail 

While newspaper knives spread pasteurised panic-butter

And too many bloodshot anaesthetised eyes

Look away in loathing

Seeking only their vaccine fixes 

The time will come when the razor-lights grow mild with dew

And lino-shiny tiles become coated in moist bubbles

Which are all that remain of the government-issue green pillars

And the gatherings of chino shades

and dreadlocked iPods

and fried egg faces

Finally reach the front of the snake's tail

And the posters are handwritten in bright pastels

The blue-rinser on your left no longer wastes her Mixit minutes

Texting some fellow-dateline-pensioner

Waiting to reach the finish line before the pearly gates close

And punctuating passport stamps create a cacophony that

Rises in tidal swoons above the caged clerk chorus

Visa fees flee before the tight-lipped legal Sméagols

Can pin them down and apply the screws

And men with caps and badges will discover that

Love in triplicate knows no secure borders

Or idle tribal private pride 

Know then that the secret spies of spirit

Squeak beyond the barricades

And break the triple deadlocks of the desperate despots 

For the seat of power is not deep inside the frosty corridors

Or somewhere in the spider-scurry scrums that are forever England

Or shooting lenses at the metal scars of battle

Or above the tabloid state affairs surveying the changing Guard 

But off the satellite map

Where rituals turn the earth

Where life is undefined

Where you speak, I hear, we touch

Where dusty lovers hold pearl-pebbles and feel

The laughter

That crescendoes from the forest floor

That crumples the word-weapons and roasts the ageing fury

Of the self-appointed guardians

That scissor-knits the planet into blooming passport pastures

That teaches us the patient lessons of right action in queues

That makes us know that the guttersnipe xenophobes

Have been us all along

That makes us know that it is we who are the magical monarchs

Holding light-orbs swelling from our fingertips

Constantly creating journeys through our own First Nations

[inspired of course by long periods waiting in the SA Department of Home Affairs for identity documents... and longer and ruder periods waiting for the British equivalents. Mixit is a chatroom facility highly popular with South African youth]

Remembering Bra Winston 

The bright lights shone so cool and yet

your presence warmed them all

those fruit-full tones rippled out

juicily piercing the night air

refusing exile's brasher badge

though perhaps a homecoming would have seen

Cape Town finally fill those seats 

The bright lights shone so strong and yet

you flew above those tunes we played for five-star guests

a packaged New Year aperitif for those

too drunk to hear your soul

and yet you couldn't help but give 

Perhaps some who shared your stage

felt they were the stellar ones

for you, crafting the hotseat

moment by moment

remained screen-hidden by nature

the rarest Cape vintage 

The bright lights sparkled to the rhythms

while dancers jazzed in Galaxy sweat

or swayed in Gugulethu fields

and something bigger than the world we knew was born

each time your lips touched reed

each plagal cadence ushering communion
each backstage look of brother-love 

Can I shout your name from Devil's Peak?

Rouse a media-molested people to meet

your passing wake with honour?

Cause cheating industry execs

to pause and hear recorded lines

of your wordless elegies

your eloquent breath-sermons

and the ripe melodies of your inner heart? 

If not, and this fickle town forgets

and new generations never know your songs

and the bright lights shine ceaselessly

then bless the angels with your voice

surprise them with the knowledge

that beauty still haunts this land.

[Winston Mankunku, Cape Town's greatest unsung jazz hero, who died in 2010. It was an honour to play with him; please listen to his music!]
 

“Mirror mirror on the wall… does my aura look fat in this?”

Humans are beings of light. This we know.

radioactive light rising monstrous from the swamp

an unleashed from the depths avenging squid pro quo light

a radiopassive hypnotising cold glare light

a prison prevent-terror search and spotlight

an indecent Immorality Act flash-exposé light

a subliminal flicker advert-pervert-the-sublime light

an eerie do-nothing change-nothing be-nothing neon glow-in-the-dark multimedia mall M-pT 3D-player light

You cannot be serious, man!

Is this the way we choose to lighten up?

I prefer milkier ways

loosely curled in crater-caverns

soft-centred fluffy crystal feather-lights

Donald Duck soothe your inner-night-child lights

richly-stained saintly halo at the window lights

moon-cool slow-drop dead gorgeous in your soul-lights

wave-rush foam-green galloping to shore lights

Tonight, let’s be that forgotten luminosity

swept from the hearth and under a Persian fatwa rug

like lanternfish stumbling into a long-sunk cathedral

a you-were-just-a-twinkle-in-your-daddy’s-eyes light

a painted rainbows in pyjamas loony-on-the-lawn light

a wind-up-your-parents noisy after sunset torchlight

a jewelled glimmer jelly beams and sparklers light

Yes, I have a scheme for solidarity through solar power!

Let’s be smouldering swanky impolite lights

blazing rip-roaring lion-fire in your eyes lights

squawking Force-filled sabre-toothed lazer lights

lusty Lucy-feral lick-lips lights

shake your beauty booty baby lights

stretch your rays out music-in-your-fingers lights

golden glowing magma flowing delightful dawn shine-symphonies

strike-twice lightnings enchanting the air

communal candelabra-cadabras my bras

flaming wands, star-spangled burning bushes

wonder-spell Words made fleshy truth

living shimmer-gifts, shape-shifting comets of joy

coaxing coy shadows out of the theatre's angel-wings

loving the world wildly till her molten core sings

SACRED LIFE (first published in "Flying on the Lucid Fringe" 2009)

we climb above the moist decaying triumphs

of the tree line into gypsy territory

carried by lichen dust and the presence of reindeer

a world where horns have horses and

icicle kaleidoscopes hang over

cotton wool valleys

shattering the blue

somewhere here lies the truth

(obscured by quartz crystal balls and scissor-wielding so-called

scientists desperate to uninvent the water-wheels of the soul)

in the cold grand breath and the alkaline cadences

of pulsing palms hoisting our flagging torso temples

we witness our own glory

flaring down – flying back – no need for visas

from a future hoed by calloused hands

the music of butterflies expands

over space that’s rippling thick as honey

tempting us, teasing us, pizzicato pricking us

in gypsy colours of the mind we sink

drowning in the scent of geraniums

back below the line of fire

where luminous fungi rage and munch in gooseflesh steps

along the pathways of the monochrome brain

but we ride bareback and whinny and sculpt

unsolvable riddles in the wind

joining lightning fingertips until the

water-wheels of our soul become yet again

the engine of the ocean of the Universe

joining breasts and hips in quiet massive causing

sometimes the beasts unleashed are merely parasites in swarm

sweeping acid storms into spirals of inter-tribal torrents

crusading beyond the asteroids of feelings in a

quest for one-size-fits-all pain

then we’ll remember where the gypsies live

skip once more to the surface of the crater

embracing and thanking and becoming the air ’neath our feet

thick with thoughts

full of futures

resonating with spirits

glowing in the shattered blue

Ballad of an Englishman (Eat Your Heart Out Billy Bragg)

I’m going to tell you a story

It is the ballad of an Englishman

He grew to be bitter and angry

At the fate of his ancient land

He grew up in the east of the country

Looking neither to the north or the south

He was ten before he visited London town

And the crowns and the sceptres left him wide in the mouth

You see England was built by invaders

It seems that conquering was in our genes

And the Celtic fringe in all our family lines

Were battered and raped or just lay down and died

Whatever happened to the voice of the druids

Whatever happened to the songs of the bards

The Romans rode straight across those rolling hills

Now most of them are covered in tar

They say that irony stops at the Channel

Perhaps beyond it lay the land of belief

Where a man could look another man in the eye

And show him his heart, not feel a fist in the teeth

Now Britain had its moment of glory

Standing united ’gainst the fascist threat

Back in my grandaddy’s day he dropped bombs in the war

But I didn’t get why we had to fight wars any more

Yes I was this Englishman growing up scared

At the things my ancestors had done

We chopped down the biggest trees upon the earth

For masts for our ships to carry soldiers and guns

Men left the darkness of Victorian England

To spread “morality” to “heathens on heat”

But what nobody talked about in London town

Was the masses of women who were walking the streets

By the time that I reached teenhood

Besides the Falklands all the glory was gone

Britannia’s fury was turned on the miners and women

Who tried to turn us away from the bomb

Most of us were glued to the telly

My team was always the Scots or the French

But when it came to standing tall in the face of it all

My shame and me, we sat on the fence

There was money and wealth in abundance

So we smiled through the pain inside

Till I got on a plane, never looked back again

At a land in which I felt no pride

 

Here in the true Motherland of humanity

I found division and racial fear

And all over the world where such hatred remains

You will usually find that the British were there

Whatever happened to the vision of Shakespeare

Embracing everybody under the sun

Now the only thing it seems the English care about

Is which minor celebrity’s at number one

I’m in awe of those who have chosen to stay grounded

In the shadow of those dark Satanic mills

Unceasing from your Mental Fight to build Jerusalem

On that island of social and spiritual ills

But now I’ve gratitude for what I received there

For the poets and the rebels and the seers

I have finally found pride in the land of my birth

In those who came before me with their hands in the earth

Because I know my forefathers could dance

And I know my foremothers could sing

I know that they loved as they worked and they prayed

And gave thanks to the land that brought them everything

So I’ll pour out my heart in this song that I sing

With all the power of an Englishman

I’ll paint my face blue and I’ll stand for what’s true

And I’ll march out for peace once again

A peace not enforced by policemen

But born within the depths of our souls

That spreads love and warmth to the whole human race

No matter what creed or what colour of face

With intuitive wisdom a million years old

The warrior spirit of England can rise

To the sound of the fiddle and drum

And help like St George heal the weak by giving them

Strength to shine their light in the sun

I dream of a world without nations

Where all human beings are one

Dancing together like dolphins do

Loving ourselves and letting more love through

So wherever you trace your roots too

Give thanks for the wounds and the gifts and the rage

But choose to be free like I choose to be me

And pray for the dawning of a bright new age

I said I’d tell you a story

It was the ballad of this Englishman

And if you want to see how much my heart has grown

You’ll find me somewhere on this planet that I call my home

[Billy Bragg, the UK's most Politically Correct pop icon in my teenage years. Though I was more into Sting myself...]

-------------------
Here's a few more poems that were published in my 2009 book, Flying on the Lucid Fringe. a few copies are also still available from me. Afterwards is a little rationale I wrote at the time of the launch for why people should even consider buying a poetry book...

ABOVE KALK BAY

Forever she moans
Together he croaks
Chewing fynbos in a fantasy
Of lost love and tender proteas
Whose protection they fight for
With the eagerness of swollen souls
Their eyes swell in the mists of
Lurid fresh forests, high and carefree and
Lost. Years. Cycle. Past.

Through the yellowwood grove comes
The saw and the helmet and the
Heavy thick moustache of the Tree-hunter
And his deadly team who with masterful
Determination help to end the elves place
Alienating and exterminating
The sole San souls who sought a bridge
Through the rainbows to the light of
Dark love and the plunging yearning
Virility of the mountain’s true trees

Guardians off guard, wasted by a
Culture whose crassness caused
A desolate Web, while hope spins
Eternal in her forever moans
Eternal in his together gropes

Ropes pull the rainbows back
Helmets lift the veils of cryptic aeons
To flights of seeking speaking
Creaking on the boardwalks of Time
Crafted with hardened hands
Learning once more to touch.

BOYHOOD’S HEART (Memories of 1981)

With Baggy Madness Trousers on the stereo
we prepared the middle school stage
felt the thrill of orchestral satisfaction
Little Drummer Boy on a music stand page

crowning of a year begun with loving, raucous fun
from Mr Spinks who labelled my trombone case a coffin
who hung Ricky from the rafters and stood Daniel on a chair
to perform his Donald Duck voice while the class laughed and stared

Daniel who blew gum bubbles and hung fishing nets in rivers
and told me my first dirty joke one night, but
I found a forest of books about boats
on the Broads and boys and witches’ cats

we all left the city for a Boys’ Brigade camp
a sleeping bag and a lilo and a martial blue hat
and James’s strip show for the girls to the vicar’s surprise
and the boredom of cancelled outings while Charles married Di
and disbelief at Noah’s age and porridge with a fork
and whoopee cushions and sneezing powder
and – just once – going to church to earn points
and the ninth birthday present of learning meditation
and the freedom and the stillness of the patterns in my mind

rowed to an island in a Yugoslav lake
ate soft veal and bought a real souvenir
spent a day in Italy astonished at the lire’s value
drove too fast in an Austrian’s Mercedes Benz
past tall fields of corn to a village museum of
ancient simple peasant houses
saw indulgent riverside chateaux and
huge chess pieces in a Klagenfurt park
climbed the whole day up a white stone path
to a ledge over the scree
and even into Yugoslavia again
somewhere, below the fog

perhaps I pondered questions of nations and history
but Botham’s cricket victories impressed me more
along with Peggy’s rounders hits and my balancing on a bike
or a quarter pound of sherbet lemons after school
or the red Mini Metro that shaped my cake
or the pebbles that were Sheringham’s beach
or Pete’s Dragon in three reels on the school projector
or mum, frying flat door-delivered Friday fish.

AFRICAN MOUNTAIN HYMN

seeping in resin-sticky moments
rubber cracks in the sky force memories through
wailing incantations incarnate from the time-trunk of fear
carnivorous carnival
across a continent with the scars to show
matchlock burnt-black monarchs
selling bodies to the caravels
and their sweet sugar slavery

as the train hoots through the vlei I recall
the blood in the rivers of humanity’s homeland
the rancid fame of knighted cream cannibals
crimson-reeking caramel
in every nut-brown melting mouthful
wrapped conveniently in history-hiding plastic

before we pale wanderers returned from our
hundred-thousand year journeys
copper was the African metal of choice
now decaying mines poison our water
in the City of Gold and buchu alone will
not heal all the scars in the night sky

Ha! Welcome the ancestral voices (light the mpepu)
Pass around their naïve vices and sluk a little mampoer
Uncurl from the deep-set whiplashed shape of old
Or from the daily bent-back trowel-tasks of the office chair
Find the daily wail that lies within and calls for the
Lifting of out-of-Africa-amnesia and a
Global shake-down with the spirits streaming in our veins
Unveiling our cracking seams and streams

Today, this is my song –
I declare solidarity with my soul-siblings from
The lives where I chose deeper tannins to colour my flesh
And I declare freedom from the gnawing guilt of six violent centuries
And I declare freedom to spiral out from the epicentre of a new storm
In epic centredness

From the heart of our granite-bound ground
With palms caught in heavenly crossfire
Throbbing with the juice of forgiving mountains
Where the herbs grow taller than the frogs jump
And trains are but the distant toys of children

I declare that integrated incantations will enthuse us
Leaping like salmons to the source of a
Fluid rock-power which seeps soft and healing
In resin-sticky moments of fresh milkwood joy.

"Flying on the Lucid Fringe retails at R90, with 10% of profits going to eco-charities, and is printed on recycled paper.

BUT: Why on earth should you buy a poetry book?

Well, picture if you will an imaginary (but perhaps typical) bookshelf

There are rows of Danielle Steele and Wilbur Smith and Spud 1/2/3

There are a few dusty classics, Olive Schreiners, Dickens and the like, a small Afrikaans section...

And just maybe a volume of poetry (Blake?) that is largely undisturbed

because people think poetry books are like novels and manuals and biographies and travelogues and have to be picked up and read from the beginning to the end.
This would give most people indigestion at least and probably have smoke pouring out of their ears.

In fact, the best place for poetry books (if they must live in something as mundane as a typical bookshelf) is in the reference section. Right there, next to the Cape Town map and the Jamie Oliver recipe book and the dictionary and the what to do in an emergency type book. Where you can pull it out and intuitively (with a little help from the angels) turn to the right page to:

    *      inspire your dreams with a poem before bed or your day with a poem after bed
    *      hit a deeper note with your dinner guests
    *      share some words for your spouse's birthday or for your granny to dance to
    *      take you beyond the daily playback routine while waiting for that train
    *      find the real news that you won't find on CNN or even Facebook"