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To get up in the morning and walk into our daily fear
of AK47's and taxi murder: every day a new rise from the
bed of our defeat and the decay of our bodies,
to peek from our caves, soft duvets and electric blankets,
the hollow of our dark sleep and the softness of feathers
surrounding us, the gods of every day and every place,
mitigating the terror with the pleasures of sex and food.
You can track the disturbance on NNTV:
just turn the picture down
and when the storm is near
the snow comes upon the screen and crackles.
No more news today, no more news today:
The contents of my head are rather chaotic already,
and my brain needs a spring cleaning.
Not to wipe out painful memories, though:
I find that when I don't think about the bad stuff
the good stuff goes into a white haze, into white noise.
That is how the revolution begins: insights,
but cut into two, three, fragments of incomprehensible
shouts, hunger, daydreams and starry eyes,
the slang of those whose day has not yet come,
the language fuzz of brain-dead automata,
senses hidden somewhere in the tangle of slogans.
But why does our face trail across every dawn
this dissatisfaction like a slimy path
along the motorway of the golden sun
coming from the mountains in the East and rushing
towards the mountains in the West.
It is difficult to get an overview, a vision
which would allow you to see it all at once.
One would need a house on Table Mountain
and a powerful telescope to understand
the movement of the masses across the Cape Flats.
I am going to write it all down anyway
I am going to write it amidst the confusion
I am going to write and not look at the screen
and not watch the words unfold until I am done.
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