Washed By Slow Wakes

by

Frank Valentyn

Daily shows!
mouldering sign painting their fate:
Chimps, Snakes, Seals - Daily shows!
popcorn and telephoto lenses
throng of scudding bags and beercans

>From within his solitary confinement
sodden floor and rust-flaking bars
one of them cannot contain his sentence
his soul already adequately soiled
throwing his own excrement at the yammer, glimmer and glee
his only remaining effective defense
and contemptuous appeal

Ducked anger and scattering amusement
handbags and cameras in inertial arcs
following their owners
I find myself wanting - I would have stood there
even closer
advocate of my race in penitence
contrition
attempting desperate and hopeless restitution
with my own hair and tears
at least manage to reduce my pace
to a fast walk
hoping that somehow I will not be sensed
as part of the receding target
his screaming unabated but fading endlessly

Head and neck of a carved giraffe are thrust
through our open car window
a whole herd of them in the roadside dust
traffic slowing in the queue
stopping for the dark one-way tunnel
strong grip on the legs outside my perspective
stained age-gray tee-shirt and the smell of sweat
he will never invest in a crash-course in public relations
I shake my head and the unseeing caricature withdraws
I fear they have all been bought and sold already

There used to be a farm here
before they flooded it
and called it Hartebeestpoort Dam
in the drier years, you can see bits of the farmhouse still
diminutively central
washed by the slow wakes
snarling speedboats
muttering contented progress
dampening waves propagating
through the living carpet of shored water hyacinth
reminding of unseen green depths
and the forgotten that ploughed and birthed there
the Hartebeest do not drink here anymore
although you can still see them, monochrome
heaps of hundreds or more
with a victorious foot placed strategically
here and there
on necks and rumps
but somehow
they never felt that
swamped in slow blind surging

One queue stopping
another starting
into the dark
through the mountain
surmounting the clogging dam
passing spilled popcorn
fading wake
spilling
passing
urging momentum
fleeting last views and screeches
as we enter the one-way tunnel

NEXT?
Why don't you look at Rejoice
by: John William McGrath III
from: Mesa, AZ, US

To visit all of Frank Valentyn's poems, click HERE

Check out these deals at Amazon.com

...the best independent ISP in the Twin Cities

To write us about this page,
contact willy@dreamagic.com (Willy Chaplin)