Mind Contracting

No sleep, brain awake under an unknown chemical and now
I’m an eighty-year old with severe dementia, the only concept
of strength is sleep seeking oblivion, I fumble at my desk and
can’t lift my head, waves of fatigue washing over me & I drink
coffee just to understand all my colleagues’ cheerful bantering

Hallucinating I jump up in acute embarrassment, hastily I pour
coffee in my frozen drink before trying to track down Maverick
bus-driver who kept my purse for me, to hand him a promised
cool-drink in thanks - while knowing I might have to walk eight
blocks to another stop if his bus doesn’t come – compressed

My brain contains no joy I can’t escape this suffering - mind
contracting till the pressure is unbearable - still this moment
in time continues unabatedly as my ability to escape myself
is destroyed by lack of serotonin - how does one overcome
when there’s nothing one can do to pass the time &change

The grid of lightning pain contracting in one’s head, and how
does one remain calm when one’s mind’s exploding in white
hot lava spurting from one’s head, leaving nothing but stupid
regression in its wake?

[Tuesday 26 March 2019]

Peace And Joy I Crave

The Lord and Master of the Crocodile Castle turned
his back on reality - can’t accept he’s not in control,
wisdom is to bend to the inevitable but it’s foreign to
his autocratic mind as he tries to manage me & the
crocodile kids, but we’re human beings which means

our minds are gossamer strands without governing &
thus the Lord’s going mad without anybody stopping
him; our attempts to make him see reason’s doomed
even before we begin, life’s turning in a circle while
my life is shrunk to a bus driver being on time - and

translations done correctly, for the rest I discovered
Vampire Dairies, the numbing effect of imagination
creating a surreal world draining all feeling from the
real world without offering solutions as vampires of
the mind drain reality & release the reading victims

without help, without explanation how to live life in
a different way - it simply shows fantasy remains
boundless & thus I decide to cultivate my mind to
survive life day-to-day by dreaming of the peace
and joy I crave…

[Monday 25 March 2019]

State Of Dreariness [Revised]

A guru claims there’ll always be pleasure in your mind -
yet some people have so little left we need escapism, or
hallucination to fill it’s pleasure deficit - today I’m calling
on Mozart to fill the blanks in my empty mind as I swing

between black outlines of reality, no colour or texture to
give meaning to what is happening with me - this lonely
office protagonist with just a boring list, & no company -
nobody to banter with & listen as I carp upon existence

Marie Antoinette permanently on the war-path means a
friendly pastor’s wife can’t be her kind-self, a Sword of
Separation poised over my head as Kissed-by-the-Sun
Fairy Sonnekus leaves in July, & thus I shall be left with

the querulous Queen and Hermien; already March & an
autumn-cool in noon & morning brings nostalgia - even
before the sad event - thus a sheen of sadness forms a
soft covering over everything, the world seems bleak &

unforgiving, happiness so fleeting, it deems a sacrilege
to give in to joy, & being cheerful to jolly people always
seems a charade offering the only respite from an inner
state of dreariness…

[Monday 25 March 2019]

Time To Go Home

The chillers came on in time to be too late: the heat was gone;
it’s raining and the oppressed in the office illegally switched on
heaters as I dug out my blanket, aircon repairs perfectly timed
to meet autumn’s cooler air head-on after an all-summer-long

break-down in an inverse correlation between cooling chillers
and cold weather - as supernatural as an orchestrated occult
phenomenon; babbling voices relate weekend events - a car
crash added to last week’s accidents and working in gardens,

washing cupboards & I also brag about laundering bathroom
rugs; Mme Pompadour didn’t come to the office as she has a
gash in her car, Marie Antoinette returned from leave relating
she helped her Sun King acquire a new painting; soon it’ll be

time to go home and I haven’t reached any translation goals:
looking forward to the brief enchantment of Pratchett’s Death
drinking alcohol as princess Keli is trying to sleep before her
coronation in an Elizabethan dress worn by English royalty

Though I achieved nothing today spending office-time sharing
life’s cameos was great fun - now if the bus would kindly be on
time I can sink into the travails of “Mort”, Death’s assistant - &
this day would become one more line in My Life’s Song…

Monday 11 March 2019

Elizabethan dress worn by princess Keli at her coronation

Chillers Not Working

“Dear Colleagues, We [who’s “WE”?] are aware the building
is extremely hot [has been for two month now, YOU make it
sound as if it’s been hot only since yesterday!]

“Chillers not working, aircon is off [chillers NEVER work when
it’s hot, only when it’s cool outside] “Technicians on site [saw
them, since they started on Monday the problem grew worse,
isn’t that just most remarkable and wonderful?]

“Please note once problem has been fixed, it takes 2-3 hours
for building to cool down [It will be cool for about one day - if
at all, before the chilled Children of Africa BLOCK the aircon
outlets then chillers immediately break down again]

Why don’t you build a nice big round hut with a big fire in the
centre so the Children of Africa can have their computers on
the periphery in a nice big circle - to stay warm while chatting
and living a happy life? - Then we idiots who feel the warmth

Of Africa as HEAT can have another round hut with an aircon
in the middle with chillers working, cool behind our computers
chatting and enjoying our workaday life?] - “We would like to
apologise for the discomfort and inconvenience.” [So get on

With it, this message doesn’t constitute an apology at all, we
are stuck in the heat losing consciousness from time to time,
no oxygen, no work satisfaction because we can’t think - no
fulfilment, living “sleeping sickness” in African time]

[Van Wyk Louw Building camouflaged as Sechaba House,
Madiba Street in Tshwane-Pretoria-Dingaanstad, Azania,
Mzanzi, erstwhile South Africa]

[Friday 8 February 2019]

My Only Fun [Revised]

I’m privileged, don’t have any real problems, sitting
in a dim office where lighting creates heat because
air-con doesn’t work & with a dim computer screen,
complaining about a bus not arriving while trying to
type long numeric lists - but time is standing still &
colleagues come & go: I know how lucky I am to

Be healthy and reasonably sane, passably rational
& to have almost enough common sense - so why
am I so dissatisfied? Ah, the answer is eating pop-
corn and butter chicken; being allergic those foods
put my brain out of whack - and now I am a wreck
and the damage is in my head, my mind’s a blank

My only fun is to visualise Judge Judy on TV with
an automatic assault rifle; when those idiots lie &
claim they’d no responsibility - I would don Judge
Judy’s garb and open fire on all refusing to admit
the truth of their guilt and wrong-doing; and I also
imagine being Father Brown sweetly extracting a

Long knife from my cassock to strike down every
hostile policeman, & Bishop, who dared call me a
meddling sleuth who must stay out of these crime
scene in the TV series - I see myself pedalling to
charge down the street on Father Brown’s bicycle
leaving just a lightning streak - but no, here I am

List waiting to appear on my computer screen and
popcorn stuck between my teeth - boredom is the
word to define this time-privileged moment I am in
but a better way to be is living a short but exciting
life - this long drawn-out repetitive routine is such
a bore today…