I
When my landlord is a slumlord
The sermons also mock God
"There but for Grace go I"
Helps see a plank in my eye
II
Here, no exposing of hypocrisy
Makes a difference to men, women, me:
Sex and money, sex for food -- for lazy
Is the South African -- post-Mandela's day**
Note**
27 April 1994 was the first democratic election in South Africa, RSA, making winner Nelson Mandela both president & freedom's icon. 28 years on, people sometimes prefer welfare, begging, crime - while immigrants run many small businesses, even in remote towns. Easy money has ruined Mandela's nation (it is mine, too, as I am native South African). If one Google's/ searches "loadshedding, RSA" or/AND "minimal Utilities," the declines are given another slant. Power brownouts on New Year's day, also.
Once on Cecil Place
fledgling flagstones freckled
like summer faces
in Septembers of taut cypress.
Now neglected planters are urns
for my young ashes,
crypts gaping silent screams.
Blistered doors do not divulge
past secrets,
gravure images are gravel
on a eroding drives.
Fissured streets
are cracked mirrors
reflecting shards of selves.
Time is a slumlord
its seconds a legion
of termites.
I'm a pillar of salt;
I should not have looked.
6/1/17
He Once Wrote
How quickly the vanishing
Where once shone the sun
Now only skyscraper shade
Horse drawn wagons
Once parked below tenement smiles
As rope baskets lowered with coins
Sent back with apples and grapes
Knife sharpening push carts
Their grinding wheels
Ever turning razor sharp edges
Making cheap meat cut special
Tilted fedoras tipped
By cashmere-draped gangsters
Greeted numbers-hungry tenants
While knickered children
Ran their errands for pennies
Warning shop owners
They needed protection
Then...
Came post-war-family-building
Turning wanton streets alive
Baby strollers passed
Job hungry veterans passing
No Help Wanted signs
In slumlord heaven
How precarious his street became
Teetering between shelter and commerce
Preservation and extinction
Wrecking ball and obstinacy
Finally...
Housing Department placed him elsewhere
Nice
He guessed
Missed the old stairs though
Squeaks
Creaks
Scrapes
Sounds and smells
His special friends
Now
Seems little comfort is left
Modern whoosh of elevators
Whirls of air conditioning
Frequent ambulance sirens
Stopping below
Providing the lucky ones
With their last ride
Boredom no more
He once wrote
The sum of what has gone before
Bulldozed throughout a slumlord block,
Evacuated, emptied souls,
Gutted, barrel, lock and stock.
Then ring-fenced in a shield of steel,
Buried in a foreign field,
Protected from the agony,
The savage reap of winter yield.
We ran, in fear, poles apart,
Retreated, hid in separate beds;
Solitaire and servitude
Beneath the sheets with buried heads.
Moving on meant standing still
Whilst superficial love and care
Clipped the tickets torn in two,
No transit takes us anywhere.
The sum of what has gone before
Burgeoned with a black campaign,
Left only sole surviving prayers
That one day we may love again.
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