What I Do

What I Do

What I do is write about
the things I cannot change.
You might say it’s a
flag of convenience
sitting on my arse
banging at a keyboard
and you’re entitled to your view,
but I say I am a witness
to the present and the past
and lay it down as best I can.

It’s simply what I do.

Sometimes I get inspiration
in the dark
and wake disturbed,
sleep’s back broken
by a reflux of memories,
regurgitations rolling
round my restless mouth,
a burning taste I can’t spit out.
Demons on my back
thrust images
before my peeled back eyes
and so I rise and write them down.

Once I smelt the stink of
burning flesh and petrol fumes
from ‘Soweto necklaces’
and tasted the
skin stretched back
from melted faces,
feeling at their
unhealed scars and
futures wasted,
abandoned in a wasteland,
corrugated and windowless,
a playground of broken glass
for shoeless children,
ancient in their weariness,
eyes inured to suffering
while queuing quietly
for Kalashnikovs.

Like mothers baring empty breasts
for starving children,
I cannot alter their or my regrets,
and so

I simply write,
and try to do my best.