Women

They've always been a mystery to me.
Women.
Young, in-between or old,
hot towards me, indifferent, or cold.
I could never see
exactly what it is that I see
in women. Always
a mystery. A holy
mystery; a puzzle,
conundrum, enigma,
curiosity that I could not avoid
even if I had wanted to.
We all, after all, have mothers.

But the others,
the thin, svelte, broad, tall, fat,
beautiful-ugly
women.
Those.
What to do about those?
As a boy
I discovered they were everywhere;
as a man
I wanted everywhere to discover them.
Women.
An excitement, a stimulant, an enticement, a drug.
My present future and my present past.
Love me, love you;
like me, like you;
we all love to be loved
and we like to be liked;
and we men
like women;
we men love women.
We can't understand them,
but that's all right. In fact, I think that's best.
A holy mystery. That's a fact.
The sacred enigma.
Women.

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Bar Women

There are three kinds of women
you can find in a bar.
The first kind are
there by mistake
so we'll pretend they aren't there.

That leaves the other two,
the PPDs and bo-tinkhundla.
They know you,
'cos they've been watching;
they've got a plan
that they've been hatching;
they know what to do
and you're target number one.

PPDs are there for the night
and it's all about being tight:
tight jeans
tight tops
and drinking from dusk till dawn.
Like a Hoover
this mover
will suck money from your pockets
before you even know it's gone.
It's all in their game,
hence their name:
the Professional Pocket Drainers.

They're strictly no-brainers,
but you won't resist
you can't resist
you don't want to resist.

The bo-tinkhundla, though, are
in for the long haul;
they look for a car,
a credit card,
a home
and at least two phones to call.

They'll pretend for a while,
that's their style;
they'll woo you
to win you
then hook you
and screw you
with bills to pay
school fees
transport, lunches and groceries.

So be forewarned and forearmed;
and if you visit a bar
hit the ground running.

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Men--Two Poems

Men

When I was young, I used to
Watch behind the curtains
As men walked up and down the street. Wino men, old men.
Young men sharp as mustard.
See them. Men are always
Going somewhere.
They knew I was there. Fifteen
Years old and starving for them.
Under my window, they would pause,
Their shoulders high like the
Breasts of a young girl,
Jacket tails slapping over
Those behinds,
Men.

One day they hold you in the
Palms of their hands, gentle, as if you
Were the last raw egg in the world. Then
They tighten up. Just a little. The
First squeeze is nice. A quick hug.
Soft into your defenselessness. A little
More. The hurt begins. Wrench out a
Smile that slides around the fear. When the
Air disappears,
Your mind pops, exploding fiercely, briefly,
Like the head of a kitchen match. Shattered.
It is your juice
That runs down their legs. Staining their shoes.
When the earth rights itself again,
And taste tries to return to the tongue,
Your body has slammed shut. Forever.
No keys exist.

Then the window draws full upon
Your mind. There, just beyond
The sway of curtains, men walk.
Knowing something.
Going someplace.
But this time, I will simply
Stand and watch.

Maybe.

[Maya Angelou]

Bloody men

Bloody men are like bloody buses
You wait for about a year
And as soon as one approaches your stop
Two or three others appear.

You look at them flashing their indicators,
Offering you a ride.
You're trying to read the destinations,
You haven't much time to decide.

If you make a mistake, there is no turning back.
Jump off, and you'll stand there and gaze
While the cars and the taxis and lorries go by
And the minutes, the hours, the days.

[Wendy Cope]

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Foolish wit?

Foolish wit or witty fool?
Sometimes it's not wise
to give your all; a fool
for love
will often fall
for love
rather than the man or lady;
it's the love, you see,
not who you see
that hooks you in;
in short (or tall
or fat or thin),
love of this all-embracing kind
is a kind of malady,
a madness
most exquisite
but a madness sure enough.

For what's a lover?
What does he devise
from the fume of sighs?
A sonnet or rap
or foolish crap
he writes, inspired
by a lady's eyes.

What's a lover?
What is wit?
You pay your money
and make your choice:
choose madman, saint,
or fool.

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Machine Music

Most people these days realise that much of what passes for pop music is machine-made: synthesisers, drum-machines, and so on; there is nothing wrong with this, for machine music is still music... 8~) But how many realise that modern rhythms are so often the rhythms of machines--that is, the music is machine music in more than one sense.
   Music has always mimicked the environment of its creators: in the early 18th Century, composers like Vivaldi used violins to imitate birdsong; Beethoven wrote a 'pastoral' symphony that included the sound of rivers; in the age of steam, the music changed to reflect the new sounds; the coming of the train is all over Jazz, Blues, and Rock, and there are thousands of train songs.
   Now we have machine music. This morning, during a school assembly, some students played a House-derived track on a computer, and I was struck by the similarity between the sound of that track and the sound I first heard many years ago inside a large factory in what was then England's Industrial North (Blake's "Dark Satanic mills"). Ten minutes later, I was in the school's staff-room and I heard that exact sound again coming from a photocopier earnestly running off a hundred copies of an exam on A4 paper. Machine Music.

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Quotable quote

"Crimes against womanhood are as old as sin. From the day that the serpent beguiled Eve by his craftiness until now, there have been few days or nights when some daughter of Eve has not been deceived or forced into an evil life by some serpent or other."

from 'Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls', a Project Gutenberg eBook

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Everyone finds someone

It is an intriguing thing, but always, despite prevailing body fashions, everyone seems able eventually to find someone to love. If we only went by the figures and faces that adorn magazine covers and parade on fashion and beauty-contest walkways, then a large part of common humanity would be guaranteed to lose out on the game of love and never achieve a dream of happiness; but it isn't so: everyone finds someone.

Hymn 17

'All things bright and beautiful
all creatures slim and tall
all things wide and booty-full
the Lord God made them all.'

from The Boys' High School Hymnal, revised edition

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An Advertisement For Poetry

Shakespeare's sonnet 23 is an advertisement for poetry:

As an unperfect actor on the stage

Who with his fear is put besides his part,

Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,

Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart.

So I, for fear of trust, forget to say

The perfect ceremony of love's rite,

And in mine own love's strength seem to decay,

O'ercharged with burden of mine own love's might.

O, let my books be then the eloquence

And dumb presagers of my speaking breast,

Who plead for love and look for recompense

More than that tongue that more hath more express'd.

O, learn to read what silent love hath writ:

To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.

When it comes to love, it's easy for us to foul it up. Meeting someone face-to-face we can say the wrong things or nothing at all; we can do the wrong things or nothing at all, overwhelmed by our own passion. Writing, though is a considered art and perhaps a surer one; and poets spend much of their art considering love. For poets, love is "not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience" (Arendt); sonnet 23, properly understood, is therefore a key to unlocking all of Shakespeare's art: even those sonnets that aren't specifically about love dwell on the living intensity of human experience, the practice of 'living in the moment'.
   In his closing couplet, the poet reminds us that eyes can 'hear'; poets also know that face-to-face eyes can do other things too:

                                                      15th March


                                         
                                          When I left that building

                                          I didn't expect to see you

                                          sitting outside on the wall.



                                          Our eyes continued the interest

                                          they've shown for some weeks now.



                                          We talked.



                                          Friends noticed us talking.

                                          We talked.



                                          Friends commented on our talking.

                                          We talked.



                                          And our eyes began to kiss.

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a slave's biography

Amongst the many books available now for free download on the net are the harrowing biographies/ autobiographies of slaves published during the 19th Century. The following is from the autobiography of a woman:

"children were exhibited on a table, that they might be seen by the company, which was very large. There could not have been a finer subject for an able painter than this unhappy group. The tears, the anxiety, the anguish of the mother, while she met the gaze of the multitude, eyed the different countenances of the bidders, or cast a heart-rending look upon the children; and the simplicity and touching sorrow of the young ones, while they clung to their distracted parent, wiping their eyes, and half concealing their faces,--contrasted with the marked insensibility and jocular countenances of the spectators and purchasers,--furnished a striking commentary on the miseries of slavery, and its debasing effects upon the hearts of its abettors. While the woman was in this distressed situation she was asked, 'Can you feed sheep?' Her reply was so indistinct that it escaped me; but it was probably in the negative, for her purchaser rejoined, in a loud and harsh voice, 'Then I will teach you with the sjamboc,'."

The appearance of an Afrikaans word ('sjamboc') in this narrative is striking (pun not intended); the complete book is available from manybooks.net: 'The History of Mary Prince by Mary Prince'.

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True love

The characteristics of true love are outlined in sonnet 116; the poet declares true love to be constant, unafraid of the present or the future, a guide, and not subject to time.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

I remember well the hour that my mother died. She was sixty years old, in a hospice, and for some time had been daily losing her fight against cancer. I arrived at the hospice perhaps 10 minutes after she died, and embraced my father. He looked at me, with tears in his eyes, and said, 'I loved that girl.' The words struck me: sixty years old, and still a girl: indeed love 'alters not... even to the edge of doom'.

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The Head and the Heart

The war between the head and the heart is the concern of Shakespeare's sonnet 141. Does being in love make sense? Does love make you happy? The poet, in his clear-headed moments, doesn't even like the lady but, sick with desire, he is obsessed with her. Once again, love is a 'plague', a fever, an illness that brings 'pain'. He is in fact so sick that the pain itself has become a pleasure.

In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,

For they in thee a thousand errors note;

But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,

Who in despite of view is pleased to dote;

Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted,

Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone,

Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited

To any sensual feast with thee alone:

But my five wits nor my five senses can

Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,

Who leaves unsway'd the likeness of a man,

Thy proud hearts slave and vassal wretch to be:

Only my plague thus far I count my gain,

That she that makes me sin awards me pain.

I was in a bar recently with a friend who was complaining that he didn't want to spend much money and that he was 'on a mission' to control his spending. Ten minutes later, a well-endowed and deliberately under-dressed pretty young woman entered the bar and caught the attention of my friend.
   'This will cost you,' I said.
   'And I'll regret it,' he replied.
During the next two hours or so my friend emptied his pockets for her and the following day he did indeed regret it. There it was, right there--the war between the head and the heart.

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