Maybe
your words fell
among the amethyst
quartz and jasper
finding life beneath the soil
under the moss
sending roots
to cedar wood
walnut and maple
Maybe your words
drifted on the wind
to be mouthed by ghosts
in sounds silent
among the clouds
Maybe they melted
with the rain and
dappled fountains
danced with inkdrops
before the backlash
when my heart gave in
and the seconds stopped
Maybe, just maybe
your magic is working
by Jean-Michel K.
Thursday, 18 April 2013
Saturday, 13 April 2013
A Community of the Spirit (by Rumi)
A Community of the Spirit
There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street,
and being the noise.
Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.
Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.
Open your hands,
if you want to be held.
Sit down in this circle.
Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd’s love filling you.
At night, your beloved wanders.
Don’t accept consolations.
Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.
You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.”
Twenty more will come.
Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison
When the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.
(translated by Coleman Barks)
There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street,
and being the noise.
Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.
Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.
Open your hands,
if you want to be held.
Sit down in this circle.
Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd’s love filling you.
At night, your beloved wanders.
Don’t accept consolations.
Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.
You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.”
Twenty more will come.
Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison
When the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.
(translated by Coleman Barks)
The poetry of Hafiz, the Persian Shakespeare
"Open my grave when I am dead, and thou shalt see a cloud of smoke rising out from it; then shalt thou know that the fire still burns in my dead heart -- yea, it has set my very winding-sheet alight."
"If the scent of her hair were to blow across my dust when I had been dead a hundred years, my smouldering bones would rise and come dancing out of the tomb."
"I have estimated the influence of Reason upon Love and found that it is like that of a raindrop upon the ocean, which makes one little mark upon the water's face and disappears."
"If the scent of her hair were to blow across my dust when I had been dead a hundred years, my smouldering bones would rise and come dancing out of the tomb."
"I have estimated the influence of Reason upon Love and found that it is like that of a raindrop upon the ocean, which makes one little mark upon the water's face and disappears."
Thursday, 14 March 2013
Seeking Imaginative Investment
An article I wrote for the Wry Republic website on the dearth of risk capital in South Africa:
An open letter to Elon Musk and South Africa's investment community
An open letter to Elon Musk and South Africa's investment community
Monday, 31 December 2012
Ride the Lightening
It’s 1:45 am and I’ve sat down with a cup of coffee to sort out my personal admin, something I’ve neglected to do for the last two months, and now with a pile of unopened bills and other paraphernalia, I feel like I ought to sort everything out before the year ends. But that’s boring work, so I decided to read some poetry instead.
Looking back over 2012, as one is prone to do around this time of year, I was thinking about what significant non-work related moments occurred during the year that will stay with me for some time, and of course poetry has its place.
For years I wanted to go to the Burning Man festival in the Black Rock desert of Nevada, so when a friend of mine invited me to join them at the local AfrikaBurn event held in Tankwa Karoo I was super excited to go and join the Space Cowboys collective that created the awesome rhino installation and put on the very best party every night.
In the spirit of gifting I decided to hand out my poetry. The night before we left, I randomly selected a couple poems and created many copies of them to hand out to anyone who wanted one. I didn’t think anything more of it.
Words can be powerful things. I write my poems for an audience of one - specifically for someone or at least inspired by someone. I like to keep my poems simple and minimalist and find inspiration everywhere, often on the internet, where I stumble upon words, people, or events that spark my imagination.
AfrikaBurn is a place where anything can happen and everything does. I knew this when on the first night there, I saw an unassuming girl standing alone in the corner of our party tent. I was surprised to recognise her as a Cape Town-based sculptor, whose first collection - Maybe Your Magic is Working - inspired a poem of mine with the same name a month earlier.
I wasn’t sure how she would respond to “Hey, thanks for coming by, I saw your stuff on the internet and here’s a poem I wrote about it”. Experience has taught me people are either very flattered or totally creeped out by this. I chatted to her for a bit trying to gauge where on the spectrum she’d fall and in the end I thought she’d be totally freaked-out and decided not to give her the poem. Still, it was cool to get a feel for the person behind the art whose work inspired something in me.
As it happens I started to hand out my poetry and was taken aback by some of the reactions - some people started crying. Not all my poems are “happy” poems, so first I tried to sort out the happy poems from the darker ones, but this became an impossible task and I abandoned the effort. I simply stopped handing them out as I didn’t want to upset anyone.
At AfrikaBurn I met some of the most amazing people. One afternoon a group of us went cycling around the camp and two of the girls were having problems with their bikes. I went back to help them and eventually we got separated from the others as we went exploring the craziness of AfrikaBurn together. In the end, the two girls joined our camp.
I left the event a day early and the next day, one of the girls passed away after suffering an aneurysm of the heart.
I was shocked, and to be coming back from an event that essentially celebrates life to be faced with the cold reality of death took some adjustment. But, one of my poems had found a home in the most unimaginable way. Here is the story …
... “Ohhhh, you're travelling too!! Hope this is not too late !! Here goes the true, 'our universe works in mysterious ways' story of your original poetry:
Mad, happening space cowboy dance floor. Spot your gift bag of original poetry attached to you, you in your awesome purple top hat (the shadow in the pic of me and XXX on the binnekring). Dip into bag asking (in my heart) for the universe to gift just the right one. I pick one.
Decide that it's not the time to read its wisdom. Put it in my trashion bubblewrap coat pocket. Pocket breaks hours later and I find it empty of contents. I figure poem most likely lost along with the red LED blinky heart it shared the space with while stopping to lie in the binnekring to oohh and ahh at the karoo stars. Sad.
Wanted my original poem. Wake up the next morning and decided to do right by my space cowboys and clean the mess of the dance floor tent. All by my lonesome... luckily! Lucky me because... amongst the rubbish, loose articles of clothing, I find my poem. How do i know? I folded it in this particular way when putting it into my trashion pocket.
I'm overjoyed. Do a little lost and found happy dance. AND still decide this is not the right time to read it. Stuff it into AB toiletry bag. Fast forward... XXX dies. I get home to Jozi, have friends unpack me because I'm useless. Make it thru a tough week with the memorial. Find comfort in signs and wise words that ease the grief. Start trying to make peace with the loss. Less than 24 hours after the memorial I have to fly to the US. I need to pack. I tackle packing my toiletry bag.
I find your poem. Decide it's the right time. Sitting on my marble bathroom floor, reading your gift, sunshine streaming through the window, I cry and cry reading the most beautiful, fitting words. Just right. Peace. Amazing. I do think, like others have shared, there was a wiser knowing about her passing. Thank you!”...
This is the power of words. The poem she received was a poem I wrote in 2008 for New Years. It was the only poem I’ve written without someone in mind. Till now. Here it is:
Looking back over 2012, as one is prone to do around this time of year, I was thinking about what significant non-work related moments occurred during the year that will stay with me for some time, and of course poetry has its place.
For years I wanted to go to the Burning Man festival in the Black Rock desert of Nevada, so when a friend of mine invited me to join them at the local AfrikaBurn event held in Tankwa Karoo I was super excited to go and join the Space Cowboys collective that created the awesome rhino installation and put on the very best party every night.
In the spirit of gifting I decided to hand out my poetry. The night before we left, I randomly selected a couple poems and created many copies of them to hand out to anyone who wanted one. I didn’t think anything more of it.
Words can be powerful things. I write my poems for an audience of one - specifically for someone or at least inspired by someone. I like to keep my poems simple and minimalist and find inspiration everywhere, often on the internet, where I stumble upon words, people, or events that spark my imagination.
AfrikaBurn is a place where anything can happen and everything does. I knew this when on the first night there, I saw an unassuming girl standing alone in the corner of our party tent. I was surprised to recognise her as a Cape Town-based sculptor, whose first collection - Maybe Your Magic is Working - inspired a poem of mine with the same name a month earlier.
I wasn’t sure how she would respond to “Hey, thanks for coming by, I saw your stuff on the internet and here’s a poem I wrote about it”. Experience has taught me people are either very flattered or totally creeped out by this. I chatted to her for a bit trying to gauge where on the spectrum she’d fall and in the end I thought she’d be totally freaked-out and decided not to give her the poem. Still, it was cool to get a feel for the person behind the art whose work inspired something in me.
As it happens I started to hand out my poetry and was taken aback by some of the reactions - some people started crying. Not all my poems are “happy” poems, so first I tried to sort out the happy poems from the darker ones, but this became an impossible task and I abandoned the effort. I simply stopped handing them out as I didn’t want to upset anyone.
At AfrikaBurn I met some of the most amazing people. One afternoon a group of us went cycling around the camp and two of the girls were having problems with their bikes. I went back to help them and eventually we got separated from the others as we went exploring the craziness of AfrikaBurn together. In the end, the two girls joined our camp.
I left the event a day early and the next day, one of the girls passed away after suffering an aneurysm of the heart.
I was shocked, and to be coming back from an event that essentially celebrates life to be faced with the cold reality of death took some adjustment. But, one of my poems had found a home in the most unimaginable way. Here is the story …
... “Ohhhh, you're travelling too!! Hope this is not too late !! Here goes the true, 'our universe works in mysterious ways' story of your original poetry:
Mad, happening space cowboy dance floor. Spot your gift bag of original poetry attached to you, you in your awesome purple top hat (the shadow in the pic of me and XXX on the binnekring). Dip into bag asking (in my heart) for the universe to gift just the right one. I pick one.
Decide that it's not the time to read its wisdom. Put it in my trashion bubblewrap coat pocket. Pocket breaks hours later and I find it empty of contents. I figure poem most likely lost along with the red LED blinky heart it shared the space with while stopping to lie in the binnekring to oohh and ahh at the karoo stars. Sad.
Wanted my original poem. Wake up the next morning and decided to do right by my space cowboys and clean the mess of the dance floor tent. All by my lonesome... luckily! Lucky me because... amongst the rubbish, loose articles of clothing, I find my poem. How do i know? I folded it in this particular way when putting it into my trashion pocket.
I'm overjoyed. Do a little lost and found happy dance. AND still decide this is not the right time to read it. Stuff it into AB toiletry bag. Fast forward... XXX dies. I get home to Jozi, have friends unpack me because I'm useless. Make it thru a tough week with the memorial. Find comfort in signs and wise words that ease the grief. Start trying to make peace with the loss. Less than 24 hours after the memorial I have to fly to the US. I need to pack. I tackle packing my toiletry bag.
I find your poem. Decide it's the right time. Sitting on my marble bathroom floor, reading your gift, sunshine streaming through the window, I cry and cry reading the most beautiful, fitting words. Just right. Peace. Amazing. I do think, like others have shared, there was a wiser knowing about her passing. Thank you!”...
This is the power of words. The poem she received was a poem I wrote in 2008 for New Years. It was the only poem I’ve written without someone in mind. Till now. Here it is:
Auld lang syne
Pack away the past
Shake off the mourning
Turn the page
Close the book
Forgive
Let go
Take the time to forget
It’s over now
Be free
Tomorrow
Is almost here
You can see it
In the distance
Where scattered trees
Draw silhouettes
In the sunset
Sunday, 30 December 2012
Energetic Work
An awesome poem for the new year by the great Persian poet, Sinai
Energetic Work (translated by Coleman Barks)
If you want the pearl,
leave the inland desert,
and wander by the sea.
Even if you don’t find it,
at least you’ve been
near the water.
Be a warrior! Desire something
powerfully! Saddle your horse
and get ready for the quest.
Don’t accept a crown
made of this visible sky.
Wait for what Gabriel brings.
Be energetic in the work
that takes you to God!
The weak and the sickly only think
about surrender. Lie down before
the door you long to go through.
Open your loving completely.
Only a dog sits idly
licking a bone.
Energetic Work (translated by Coleman Barks)
If you want the pearl,
leave the inland desert,
and wander by the sea.
Even if you don’t find it,
at least you’ve been
near the water.
Be a warrior! Desire something
powerfully! Saddle your horse
and get ready for the quest.
Don’t accept a crown
made of this visible sky.
Wait for what Gabriel brings.
Be energetic in the work
that takes you to God!
The weak and the sickly only think
about surrender. Lie down before
the door you long to go through.
Open your loving completely.
Only a dog sits idly
licking a bone.
Sunday, 23 December 2012
This is how you recite poetry ...
Tom Hanks reciting Edgar Allan Poe's beautiful To Helen in the Coen brothers' film The Ladykillers
And this scene from that great movie always makes me laugh ...
And this scene from that great movie always makes me laugh ...
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