Breaking Bad's Walter White reciting "Ozymandias"

Nailed to the Sky

I love the intensity of this poem by the writer Robert Warrington ...

Nailed to the Sky

If only I had any idea what you did

on hot blue Saturdays

If I knew where you were likely to be

I could create the conditions

to run in to you by accident

Not knowing

not even being able to guess

I walk from the suburbs of purgatory

to the bus terminus from hell

hoping for a miracle glimpse

of your skittering, jittery shadow

on latter-day pavements

with medieval beginnings

or that the crowd

drifting towards the shopping centre

with the stained glass windows

will part and reveal you

standing like an icon

in the exact spot

where hawkers and peddlers

once sold splinters of the true cross

But there are no places

marked with the X

of your sainted bones

only the X

of my petrified hopes

and calcified desires

You’re somewhere else

moving on glittering heels

through someone else’s summer
leaving mine

to visions of high street vendors

with onion ring halos

and no one’s selling anything

that can fill the you-shaped hole

Even the council begonias

become instruments of torture

Their stems are nails

Their petals nail-heads

You hammer them in by being elsewhere

You hammer them in without meaning to

All summer long

I hang above the town

nailed to the sky

suspended

in a clear solution

as acrid as alchemist’s

sulphurous clouds

You put me here

and only you can get me down

Only your cool

claw hammer fingers

can pull out these nails

that open and flower

(by Robert Warrington)

You Are The Sun

My homage to Billy Collins' "Litany"

YOU ARE THE SUN

You are the sun. You are the sky.
You are the stars that shine
With the midday moon.
You are the sun. You are always the sun.
You are beautiful.

You are the clouds that dance
With the wind. You are the wind.
You are the never-ending silence
Of the storm sky
Before it breaks the rain.
You are the sound
Of thunder.

You are the earth. You are the sky.
You are the colour of flowers.
You are the first glance
In the crowd
When lovers meet.
You are the stars.
You are definitely the stars.
I am the moon.

You are the teardrop -
The lingering sadness
Of the half-forgotten moon.
You are the morning’s first light.
You are all the sunsets.
You are the fire. You are the flames.
You are the storm.

You are the sun I am the moon.
You are the last thought
Before I close my eyes.
You are the sun. You are the stars.
You are the night and I am the moon.

by Jean-Michel K.

Maybe Your Magic is Working

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.

A Community of the Spirit (by Rumi)

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."

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