I May Have Lost But You Don't Have To

Two escape artists from my younger self announcing a new Substack

The first poem I wrote was as a volunteer in the South African Air Force in 1990/1991. It was terrible, but at least it was about dictators.

Paul Wharton, a national service sufferee, educated me to The Cure. They became the first band I loved. Their album, 'Pornography', was as dark as my poetry would become whilst I travelled through Generation X, searching for the cure to myself.

“Conversations are cemented with lies
I’m the Outcast, wettened with truth

My passage is silent to gods and pigs
I don’t need the sun when I’m proud with matches
There’s tragedy in the presentiment of souvenirs
Sweets should never be sharpened

I stab my tongue through the lips of this world
whilst armies whisper inside of me."

I got to where I could be drunk and sit on the pavement, my feet in the gutter, with the occasional girl from the Monk's Inn pub sitting with me as I nerdily scribbled my personal frustrations. Try imagine that situation with Generation WTF.

I was never a Poet. When I matured, and didn't need poetry to vent, the ink was killed by default - I couldn't find rhyme nor meter within me.

However, there were rare moments in terrible years later where a few words escaped me. One was at the futility of the common man versus politics. The other was more hopeful, a reason why I was fighting for Knysna, one of the prettiest towns in the world.

Over a decade, the politicians crushed me with court cases, propaganda and other threats. As it was with poetry, I stopped exposing corruption, stopped writing articles... until I couldn't stand the lies killing Ukrainians as pawns in NATO's war.

Poetry remains ghostly but I return to those two little escape artists in the hope that you can relate to them. For the political one, switch the DA and ANC to the parties of your choice in your country e.g., Tory and Labour, Democrats and Republicans. For the other, if you love where you live, ask yourself what are you're willing to do to preserve and perpetuate that love. I may have lost but you don't have to.

SALUTING YOU (THE SMALL BUSINESS OWNER)
Electricity surges like only electricity can
Rates make a date with Government…
like only Government can
The ANC and DA fight in a way
that makes no difference
to my brother’s drug addiction,
my daughter’s primary school fees,
my matriculating son’s future
or my stressed spouse’s opinion of me
Yet I open the doors
to my business everyday…
plotting revised adverts and word-of-mouth specials
to locals in the same position as me,
Which staff member will I have to let go next,
probably someone worse off than me?
I open my doors
because survival is better than failure
and courage more human than depression
I open the doors with the determination to be me
…in the company of many, like me,
just wanting to Be…
…to be free.

EVEN HUMANS EXPLODE!
I fell into the sky
of Knysna
when it opened
I love being wet
and, for a while,
being part of this town;
cold yet safe,
in vacuum yet liberated,
one part of its 80,000
…surprisingly alive!
I'm a cloud taxiing
on the runway
of the Garden Route
I'm the clarity
in consciousness
because I know
where I’ll be next
I'm just a raindrop
waiting quietly to explode…
…at home.

I've got ancient creativity, good and awful, that I'm going to post once or twice per week on another Substack (because it has no place with the politics here). If you made it to this sentence without puking, please visit WICKED MIKE’S GHOSTS for movies, music, short stories and poetry. Yep, new subscribers, you now know my old nickname :)

A view over the Knysna Estuary to the Outeniqua Mountains