Another Metaphor

I don’t expect much – just play the game with
me, when something is absurd or like a pretty
fairy, don’t tell me the facts – reality is clear &
I need no information on it - if a sharp sewing
needle went right through my finger – as it did
this morning, I say like  Sleeping Beauty I’ll be
out for a hundred years; don’t tell me it wasn’t
a spinning wheel, saying three drops of blood
lead to an injury-at-work-compensation claim
form, don’t lecture me on what claims entail –

Don’t belabour the point; can’t you allow irony,
sarcasm and absurdity a place, will you even
correct Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock &
Molière’s Le Malade Imaginaire & what about
Ilse Aichinger & Kafka’s Das Schloss, not to
mention Terry Pratchett; now you’ve got me
doing it too, belabouring a point also – what
about the joy of symbolism - everything I see
can be a symbol of a beautiful thing it evokes
in my mind, in make-believe the needle was

from a spinning wheel, capice? Can’t you let
your guard down and play along? When I say
I’m donning a Peruvian skirt or now I’ll be the
fairy Dewdrop, it’s MAKE-BELIEVE, no lesson
on reality needed, no derogatory remarks will
stop me from playing as if, there’s such scope
for the imagination in the great bureaucracies
of modern civilisation & by the way, I’m a sky
elf and Irish goblin combined today due to my
blue blouse and green sleeveless top, I won’t

be the same thing continuously, when wearing
black T-shirt - I’m a pirate - don’t you ever sing
and jump up and down with joy, feel your heart
blossom into a perfect love which encircles the
universe, why protest when a dreamy twist will
colour the fabric of reality as if trying to stop all
lovely dreams from taking off by growing wings
and starting a merry-go-round of fun to turn for
all eternity? “The Windmills Of My Mind” -Frida
Boccara doesn’t literally have mindmills in her

Head & saying the Cathedral of MY MIND with
its sacred silence, it’s is a figure of speech - a
metaphor, no tautology required, just enjoy an
image in the bioscope of your mind; oops, this
is another metaphor, I must stop before really
great hyperboles lead to nervous ticks in some
of my esteemed colleagues…

Even If…[Rev]

I am confused tho’ I’m sort of in tune with what
I’m doing - before falling into an Alzheimers &
dementia hole - and as I correct my translation
I can’ trecall which page came first and where
the original is - I’m definitely in need of the

Mysterious ICP protocol to restore my mind or
I must fast-forward to eternity through death by
default as the electrons in my head spin out of
control; the repetitive words in my text give rise
to a variety of almost-right renditions - but I

Know the clever word analytics can shred it and
rewrite in a better way which will make life seem
smaller, more contained, less open to innovation,
and completely closed to infinity exactly as they
think it should be - as we never get to see the

Dimensions of Eternal Thoughts floating around
for evermore according to modern spiritualists -
who believe that hallucinations offer portals to
these places but I wish the fog in my head would
clear since it feels as if I’m falling into a whirlpool

Turning prayer wheels, winding out time before
turning back to catch the slack & preserve time
again yet with no chance to get to mental feet
as life swirls in these transcendental pinwheels
converging wherever we human beings come

Together - a flickering behind my eyelids indicate
it’s time to break & drink yak-butter soup, my only
link to Lobsang Rampa’s spiritual Tibetan world,
even if the butter didn’t originate from a yak…

A False Promise

The Times of Israel as well as the Catholic
online site use religious connotations for the
purpose of selling, requesting contributions
as if the immediate environment of readers
does not count at all - must be neglected in
favour of their HIGHER religious causes

Payment demanded to learn Hebrew – I
could not even if you paid me, much less
paying YOU for unwanted lessons – and
the Catholic online selling books & beauty
products, the sale video takes hours on
brainwashing readers into believing they

Must buy secret cures for an Alzheimer’s
patient with starving brain cells – sounds
like some more fraudulent Scientology –
after listening till I was going mad with
irritation, the selling point is that the ICT
protocol must be bought, no sharing

The secret with sufferers who already lost
their money by forgetting, this technique
is followed by all marketing strategists and
leaves the reader in a murderous mood -
peppered by nonsensical fictitious case
studies just to be told BUY THE BOOK

It’s cheap - hah! - accompanied by the
wonder cure in 2 different bottles - pay
a king’s ransom for a false promise life
will be better - and it will - dying earlier
from financial distress after throwing all
money away like this will lead to earlier

Passing over to the other side to become
consciousness in a new form, safe from
this world’s quacks and charlatans; what
an improvement, freedom from marketing
makes life after death heaven indeed! –
but where salespeople go, they will keep

Forcing false products on each other and
exist in marketing hell until deciding they
had enough, time to move, do something
else – hopefully repenting in sackcloth &
ashes for all the pain they caused the still
innocent and the already suffering…

[Tuesday 5 July 2016, Pretoria]

Dancing Dewdrop (R)

Getting back into the swing of things after leaving
with a rush of adrenaline, isn’t as easy & obvious
as it seems, the subject ‘water meter reading’ isn’t
the height of delight and the dear complaining lady
attached reams of old statements claiming they’re
all wrong: it’s her good right to do this - but why

did the universe inflict this on me, don’t I carry my
own cross & struggle in my own way, why this when
I only ask a merry yarn by a good conversationalist
or a comedian like Spike Milligan, maybe a moralist
like adorable William Topaz McGonagall, I know the
troubled lady bemoaning the water-reading-mistakes

made to date does not mean harm - but, oh, the bore-
dom of it, tying my mind down while forcing it to note
the reason why she dotes on sending endless letters
to the Office of the Premier and State President, why
doesn’t she know a Zulu King doesn’t care about the
little people out there, only about his big income and

cronyism, many wives and innumerable kids, the ANC
is a dog devouring the country quite innocently as they
think this is what the Europeans did & can’t see where
financial troubles originate as Africa’s rich in diamonds
& gold - arguing the term ‘corruption’ makes no sense
while slaughtering the goose laying the golden eggs &

closing teachers’ colleges, now there are less than the
few left after Apartheid’s evil Nazi pogroms, destroying
hope & morale by scourging the county from all things
African in their hallucinations, luckily culture survived –
but rural communities have even less access to basic
education as Zuma tries to keep people as simple as

possible - to be malleable, he learned from Apartheid,
you see, people imitate their previous masters in order
to also be masterful: ah, back to this letter making me
feel like hara-kiri right here, I must convey her sorrow
to get help with her mounting debts - thus I began by
singing old Dutch hymns going up & down the stairs

to wake up my brain, proving I’ve no dementia as yet,
if only I were the ballerina dancing Dewdrop en pointe
to the Waltz of the Flowers in Tchaikovsky’s heavenly
Nutcracker ballet…

Spinning New Patterns (R)

The titles say it all - Hamburger’s House of Horrors,
A Kettle Full Of Magic, Worlds Apart, The Ghost And
Bertie Baggins, The Emma Dilemma & The TV Time
Travellers; no detective novel with graphic, shocking
descriptions of crimes too gruesome to contemplate
such as delight our translators, books - not crimes

as such; no acclaimed and prescribed prize-winning
novels by prestigious authors without morals whose
attitudes I don’t wish to examine nor experience as I
respect people’s rights to like whatever they want &
honour their decisions to make war, commit crimes,
gossip & be nasty - but I admire beauty and people

scaling new heights… Emotions - curiosity; desire,
anger & hatred land people in exciting, challenging
situations - whereas the laid-back attitudes of calm
philosophers lead to routines & administration, so I
prefer stories for kids that strengthen faith in – and
attract – goodness: reading indiscriminately led

me to sad times & places - I adore fantasy books
spinning new patterns with shining, dancing terms,
never again to be caught in the snares of cynical
authors mocking their readers…

No Personal Feelings

I feel miserable – as bad as the characters in my
book with a headache which firmly puts me in a
medieval torture rack; now the main protagonist
is forced into athletics & maths though he wants
to write stories while his classmate who’s doing
great in sports, is forced into music and reading:
and here I am also ruing the fact of my lacking the
ability to become interested in dry words and drab
descriptions; I so admire my colleagues reaching

A frenzy of pedantic excitement over rewriting a
translation quiz to determine why we translate in
a specific way - my way is to get it over with as my
enthusiasm for parroting other people’s words with-
out freedom to change things, quickly wanes - may
not make a line sing nor conduct a rhythmic dance
of words into a flowing symphony - the screeches
of legal geeks must be conveyed literally, without
improving text or melody – no personal feelings

May be left, nothing to pique interest or invite one
to do one’s best, and all my colleagues put me to
shame - they’re in heaven while I must suppress
a dream of being a dancing princess at the ball of
the King of the Universe - keeping the little alien
in my head occupied by eating and testing every
word, phrase & paragraph against the standard
texts on the Internet - surveying my kingdom in
this work-station with all the flowers bundled into

One corner, dictionaries heaped in the opposite
space, a yellow dishcloth simulating sunbeams
and I, a secret spy, imitating being a translator
while planning to destroy the enemy’s lair across
the street where they lie in wait to blow us up first –
but victory is mine and the explosion destroys their
den in a spectacle of red flames – until I see the
Health Safety document waiting like an obedient
child for my guidance to lead it into expressing

What people should do to export to the Congo…

Jump Like Popcorn [Rev]

After enjoying the beautiful little faces of the genies
Shimmer and Shine, it was time to be enchanted by
my new storybook, No Beasts - No Children by one
Beverley Keller, chosen for a brilliant start in chaos

Launching straight into the most chaotic scene which
is my favourite beginning - when children & animals
are the main characters, I’m perfectly happy, the dad
a psychologist with 3 young kids, a prim housekeeper

Who’s never heard of Mary Poppins, 3 shaggy dogs,
a mule and a mouse and an aunt nobody knows any-
thing about and who destroyed a wedding when her
gift of a portable TV scared the guests out of church

A retired captain and a rich landlord whose only son
is unhappy, no  pets of his own, running away to the
zoo, mud cakes in the first-aid container so wrapping
a cut finger in gift wrap, the captain and aunt getting

Married; dogs slobbering the bride’s sleeves so it’s
dripping at the wedding, a possible - if improbable
parallel universe - where there is space for endless
series of alternatives, giving my mind a break from

Ordered legal sequences too boring to contemplate,
making my thoughts jump like popcorn in a warm pot
coated with scrumptious caramel making me delirious
with its crunchy tastebud-fantasies….