Rehearsing Nietzsche:

During the millennium gap year: that year when we didn't really know if we were already in the twenty first century or mopping up the back end of the twentieth, I embarked on two separate but ultimately intertwined experiences.

The first resulted from a decision to write a piece of poetry daily for the entire year. That was the only requirement of my plan: length one word onwards, form: whatever I felt like; and no matter how many poems I wrote in any one day the next day I had to write another. From time to time I imposed rules, like: for the next few days I would only write haiku's, for instance. I also never made a rule to write a sonnet, and so there are no sonnets in this collection.

The reasons for the poem-a-day thing are not germane. The result was 826 pieces of writing most of which was garbage [in retrospect], but then my rule did not extend to judgements'�I simply wrote something about whatever took my fancy and it was a challenging exercise.

And then secondly, a month into the year I was invited by the organisers to read the part of the late poet philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, for a centrepiece production based on his life to be performed at the Centennial International Nietzsche Convention, that took place at Pretoria University in 2000, the centenary of his death.

What started as a workshop play-reading involving a small group of enthusiasts became a complex production embracing Nietzsche's key philosophic developments: from his devastating critique of western philosophy as being 'founded on a conjecture'�, to his equally devastating denouncement of the concept of 'god' in arguably his most powerful and ultimately influential work 'Thus spake Zarathustra'�. We embraced too his more romantic poetry and his catastrophic personal life. In the way of a Method-trained actor by the time we finished I had become Nietzsche and I the poet drank at a hitherto unimagined alter. The exhilaration was electric.

I feel him still sneaking around after me in retrospective moments and I am discovering that he is all around us. That world he described for us in which we live shorn of its falsity and illusion is all there is. Everything else is hope, blind faith, and crass stupidity overlaid with marketing hype. Each moment is the one that matters: pursue the mission by all means but it is the moment-by-moment achievements that are the only reason for doing anything. Ultimately this is his position so reminiscent of the old Zen masters.

Yet for all that his position is ultimately that we cannot uplift ourselves, other than over millennia and that ultimately we begin again, and again, and again'�times without number as we have done over millennia past. Each generation repeats the promises of the one preceding, playing the same tunes endlessly to a constantly moving backdrop'�and should we be fortunate and particularly attentive we may grasp an insight, in an unguarded moment, that reveals all the secrets of the universe.

Playing Nietzsche was for me a continuous dejavu as, piece-by-piece, we slowly and with painstaking intensity 'unpacked' the scenes we had chosen. We'd started with hundreds of scenes from everything he'd ever written, and we read everything the Internet could deliver written about everything he wrote: taking scenes and playing them, reading the most erudite interpretations and some less erudite too. Interpretations: what did he mean here when he said that. Eventually it became all consuming, eating up fifteen to twenty hours a day and ultimately finding and confirming that chink in his super rationalist armour'�the fantastical and terrifying idea of eternal recurrence. And through all this each day I had set myself the task to write at least one piece of completed work.

Part of the joy of being a performing poet is the process of becoming that which one plays.

I eventually had a sense of why Nietzsche [N] went mad. [If indeed he did go mad] such honesty was not made for our world. A particularly profound statement [for me] by N was his assertion to his friend and collaborator [and my co performer, Gäst, played by Sam Sleiman, philosopher and storyteller.] 'My ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book'�what everyone else does not say in a book.'�

And then of course the years raced on. 9/11 and all that: Afghanistan and Iraq, a world suddenly at war again denying Fukayama's 'end of history'� theory and loading us down with liberation language of an unaccustomed kind, as the resurgent forces of conservatism outweighed the degenerating forces of progression.

It has also been a time of financial scandals and public trials. And then mention too, the generally cool and absorbing razz-ma-tazz, in the form of gladiatorial sports events and major movie releases all part of the super globalising endless marketing exercise cycles that constitute modern living. Suddenly it was five years after Nietzsche and a gap appeared and this collection said it was time for an airing.

Some of the pieces in here are what my family like to call 'weird'� and I don't profess to understand some of what's in them. I'm not even certain that I wrote them other than in the technical sense of being scribe to some remote intelligence or perhaps, experience'�they were pieces that came from somewhere in the depths of whatever it is that we do when we sleep: go on adventures, travel in other dimensions of that multiverse predicted by quantum science: have nightmares. Sometimes they arrive from nowhere in the midst of wakefulness and demand to be recorded. Yet they are there in counterpoint to the Nihilistic world predicted and so accurately described by Friedrich N on the very threshold of the modern era.

Other pieces were of a routine 'okay its poem writing time of day'� because I had set myself something to do as one of that year's 'things'� to do. These seem more prosaic and in some senses historical. In a similar way other selected pieces from outside of that millennium gap year were more compulsive: such as the surreal effect of watching the Second Gulf War on television, or the more realistically prosaic, trivial and often-random violent events of a stereotypical day.

And then of course there were those pieces that were written by the Nietzsche I became during rehearsals for Nietzsche during that same epochal year that has become buried in post 9/11 rhetoric.

It is part of my nature to be optimistic about the general trends of the multiverse. Nonetheless another part of my nature is my inherited Celtic gloom from my Celto-Welsh [sic] immediate ancestor, who, bless her heart, is seldom happiest than when she is profoundly gloomy. Everything else disturbs her so she's modified the Koan: that idea that one's instant of happiness is simultaneously a time of greatest sorrow.

I suspect that suppressed Celtic influences bursts through in my poetry, overlaid with the mysterious optimistic fatalism [sic] that pervades Afrika, the place that has been my environment. Ultimately environment impacts with genes, as thesis and anti-thesis, to form renewal. One part sees the road ahead opulently orchestrated with glamorous cavalcades; the other sees the lurking hijacker waiting for opportunity to present itself.

Poetry is a literary form that apparently appeals to fewer and fewer people even though there are more and more people writing it. The paradox of growing Alliteracy in a mass educated world. This means that as a reader of this poetry [or any other's] you are amongst a tiny elite at the cutting edge of paradox.

It is not essential that you like or love my work it is enough that I wrote it...the rest be outside of my control.

.NiK[05]

About the Poet.

Nicholas Williamson'�NiK[00] has been writing and publishing poetry for more than three decades. His first published collection, Maze appeared in 1978 and his second collection 'Random notes of a marginalised man'� is published on his weblog www.Williamsonreport.co.za. He does also write other things but his business card describes him as a poet, which as he says makes his business card an oxymoron.

This third collection includes some seventy-five pieces, with the oldest dating to 1979 [Winter], and the most recent 2005 [Never kick a man until he's down] [a dualist issue] and [Good day to ya Mr Excellent]. As you will find each piece carries the appended designation .NiK [year written]

A considerable part of the collection is dated [00] indicating that it was written during 2000 when the poet set out on an objective to record the millennium year day by day in poetic form. This was a prolific period and resulted in more than 800 pieces of work. 'Good poetry'� whatever that is, is perhaps though infrequently made '�to order'�. And so maybe 40 of the pieces are worth a second read, of which 30 were chosen for this collection, including the title piece for 'Rehearsing Nietzsche'� [Rehearsing lines from N'�.]

Because the work of Frederick Nietzsche [N'�] coincidentally comes to centre stage in the poets theatrical life during 2000 some extracts from N'�'s work are included where they seemed appropriate, with due apologies to any copyright holder from who's property the poet may have made his selection'�He doesn't remember where any of it came from, since, he said, he didn't select the vast cornucopia of words he simply ingested them, became them; and then presented them to an audience of aficionados who roared approval and called for more.

Some of this work may well also be called trauma poetry, for some pieces, e.g.: Song of Victory, Reading some earnest undergraduate poetry, Twelve September, were written following a horrific and tragic incident during the second half of 1994, which changed the poet and sent him off in a completely different direction to that he was following before.

Williamson says his philosophy as a writer is founded on Derrida's premise that 'all the words have been written' and the best we can do is to rearrange them in different forms and guises according to the rhetoric of the time, and then '�they have to be aimed somewhere'�. He has no philosophy as a poet, he says, 'the things keep happening and then plague me, smashing at the door 'till I write them down and dispose of them.'� This collection is what he says anyway and who am I to gainsay this.
Editor.
Acknowledgements

In his introduction to my own venerable Viking edition of the Portable Nietzsche [1968] edition, Walter Kaufman tells us that what we gain from Nietzsche 'may be vaguely proportionate to the sustained attention one accords him.'� That was certainly a statement we discovered to be valid and so we say thank you to Walter Kaufman and his Viking edition. I must also thank my friends Vassili and Ava Papatheophilou for involving me in their remarkable, life-altering mission to demonstrate that Nietzsche had a Greek soul. Thanks too to the collegiate members of the Greek South African Cultural Interaction Association team and in particular, team leader Professor John Gerecke of Pretoria University, who all debated with us, my co-player and me, long into many nights around the Nietzschean conundrum. And thanks too of course to Pretoria University for hosting the International Centennial Nietzsche convention in 2000.

It was a prodigious journey and my thanks go too to Sam Sleiman, my partner in that venture for his many astute and finely observed insights and congenial company. Thanks too to Diane, Dael Donna and Siobhan for their understanding and support over 'forever'�. And Thank you to my many colleagues and business associates who have accepted my obsessions over the years with polite and often bemused tolerance. To the nameless ones who have provided inspiration and material daily for decades thank you for your words and processes whoever you were.

To the vast horde of un-named scribes and Nietzsche aficionados who proliferate over the web and elsewhere and whose words we chewed over on our journey thank you and I hope I haven't inadvertently collected some of your word structures amongst my gathered leaves, which is always possible when bulk ingesting from such a glorious cornucopia of resources. If I have let me know so you get credit in the next edition.

Finally to Dagmar Hansen and Natalie Alexander thank you for reading the draft and finding all the typos and spelling glitches and inconsistencies and plain poorly drafted constructs.

To all of you, may the grand forces of the multiverse be forever surfing your way.

Nicholas aka .NiK
If you desire peace of soul and happiness
Then believe.
If you would be a disciple of truth then
Inquire.

Nietzsche








Contents Page

1. A dualist issue 6
2. A Statement solicited from the poet'� 6
3. Slipping on the road to Shangri la: 6
4. Never kick a man until he's down 7-9
5. Of Rubicon's and rubrics 9
6. Winter 10
7. An old woman muses on her role as dogfood. 11
8. Notes on an incident in a yuppie-drinking establishment. 12-13
9. The lament of a Brackendowns man. 14
10. A comment on a girl: murdered by her lover. 14
11. Brian's song on leaving. 15
12. Zimbabwe Day ' The year of the People. 16
13. On reading some earnest undergraduate poetry: 17-18
14. February four: the Wolfman returns to his lair. 19-23
15. The gardener who sweeps after debris'� 24
16. Abseiling to an east rand monkey's wedding 24
17. Fragment 25
18. The man who practiced reflexology 26
19. Stormwater connect'�ions 27-28
20. In memory of Derek Tarpey 29-30
21. Sunday bloody Sunday 31
22. Durban beachfront on a winter evening'� 31-32
23. Words drawn on the role of the innocent'� 32
24. Baker beats boss with broken broom handle. 33-34
25. The times they have changed 35
26. Rehearsing Nietzsche: part one 35
27. Ubuntu rulz 36
28. 19500 36
29. CNBC 37
30. Yes or No: do this; do nothing. 38
31. Breathing out 38
32. Matters of booze 39
33. A response to moral rightness 40-41
34. Twelve September: on being murdered. 42
35. Collecting random empty nothing 43
36. Cluster of cliché thoughts 44
37. I wandered lonely as a crowd. 44
38. Quantum shift 45
39. Falling for the dance 46
40. Mistral Wind by Friedrich Nietzsche* 47
41. Good day to ya Mr Excellent 48
42. Malapropism. 48
43. Jacob Zuma speaks'�markets crash. 49
44. On first reading JM Coetzee's disgrace. 50-52
45. It rained a while'� 52
46. Dreamcatcher fragment'� 52
47. A journey remembered 53
48. Friday payroll day 54
49. Taxing Macbeth 55
50. Spike's gone 56
51. On market piranhas 56
52. Grasping at fragments of the rational 57
53. A weekend on the long road'� 57
54. Certainties 58
55. On losing the radio 58
56. The butchers of Bali 59-62
57. Song of Victory 63
58. After Bond 63
59. Those elusive levers of power. 64
60. Conschmiracy 64
61. Rehearsing Nietzsche'� 65-66
62. Running on auto. 67
63. On race. 68
64. Topographic lowlights 69
65. Sam says: mediocrity rules. 70
66. A fine right fellow. 71
67. Dilemma story. 71
68. Internet frustration. 71
69. Another war another wasteland. 31/3/03 72-75
70. Human shield explains why. 75-77
71. State of the Nation 2005 78
72. Mine shutdown. 78
73. Postscript: So who is this fellow Nietzsche anyway? 79-80













The Madman.

Whither is God?
I shall tell you. We have
killed him ' You and I. All of us are his
murderers.
God is dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers
of all murderers, comfort ourselves? What was
holiest and
powerful of all that the world has yet owned
has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood of us? What
water is there for us to clean
ourselves? What festivals
of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to
invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too
great
for us? Must not we ourselves become gods
simply to seem worthy of it?

There has never been a greater deed
and whoever will be born
after us-
for the sake of this deed
will be part of a higher history
than all history hitherto.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The Joyous Science

From all mountains I look out
For fatherlands and motherlands, but
Home
I found nowhere.

Nietzsche


A dualist issue

When you seek outside yourself
For exuberance and joy
You miss the moment
When it visits you
And you are not at home.

.NiK[05]


A Statement solicited from the Poet
on surviving a stereotypical
suburban street shoot-out

For an instant
I escaped our
post-modern,
oversaturated,
image-loaded simulations
of day to day uncertainty
for a dose of the real thing:
and was
for that brief moment
alive'�.

.NiK (1995)


Slipping on the road to Shangri la

There was a man
who ran a business
selling time from out of clocks:

sold it by
the minute
and the hour.

If you had an
ancient
moment
that you'd
treasured
for some time,

you could pawn it
by the minute
for an hour.

.NiK[1991]

Never kick a man until he's down

It's amazing how a cliché can come to life
In front of your eyes and instantly
You
Have both validation
And confirmation
That a horror you
Had previously always
Anticipated;
Or believed to be true, and forgotten,
Its meaning sandwiched between lunch and dinner:
Remains true and active: not
Misbegotten.

So the cliché'�the forgotten noun
Always kick a man when he's down.

The venue was an open air
Public drinking
Bash
Of note
With 'more than 20,000 people'�, who all could vote,
In a park in our city.

The party was held by
The local
Operating division
Of an offshore intellectual enhancement movement
Dedicated to advance the
Cogitative
Skills
Of local young humans: drilled without pity.

Once a year they party in a beer drenched 'fest'
Joyous and hearty; a ritual mime
That few decline:
To bask
And debauch and 'do their best'�
In monogrammed vests under
Glorious scorched vaults
Of azure May sky.

It's a party 'to die for'�. Slavering hordes
part with a buck, run
amuck guzzling
eisbein and bursting on
Bratwurst
Washed down with flagons of
A fond foaming brew.

The thrash runs all day
Then ends
Sharp by the way
At eighteen hundred hours: when the uniformed
Constabulary
Glowers, and orders
The taps all be closed
The moment
The licence expires.

By then the party is rowdy with noise ebullient
Some of the crowd
Spoiling with effluent, searching for
Action as drunk tempers fraction:
Guess why the 'day'� ends at nightfall;
When the temperature plunges like a fast falling wall:
Degrees
by
The minutes;
And revellers dressed thoughtless
For the skin searing burn
Of a high autumn day.
Feel the onset of winter as they suddenly
Learn to
Freeze.

At that moment when the sun begins to slip behind
The distant edge and the hard chill
Of winter
Rushes to replace the joy and the fun,
The blistering heat,
The blazing sun
The festive joy starts to run.
Blooding the urge to stay
And perform
Desperate now to regain the warm
Taste
It is losing.
It is then: that's the way'�

The fight exploded
Abruptly: a spontaneous expulsion of
Loud shouting: voices loaded
With rage: a beating of fists: an instant onstage.

A prime aggressor raised his hands
A toreador, to the rhythm of the bands
Facing off across the 'floor' on a shorter, squared off fellow,
Stripped to the waist no longer mellow
With a flourishing score
Not waiting for gore:
A bull pawing the ground, head muscle-bound.
The tattooed
Fighter trembled,
Anticipating, glistening; flexing, his
Creatine steroid loaded,
Laced, muscle, definition, display.
His proclamation
In finale to the bold matinee.

The bull rushed in
And a blow was flung and the bull went to ground as the crowd
Surged around in an exhaled bound
Some in panic sensing doom leapt about seeking room across
The tables
Where the beer was served all unnerved. Picadors grabbed Matador
held him back from taking the floor: held him hard while
He roared
Defiance to the mob...lifting his head to the universe:
Fuck you all! '�He was heard to curse.

In the gap where the crowd was thin'�
Lay a figure and within
An instant as they all swept back toward
That struggle vortex
A hail of feet filled boots and running shoes
And high-heeled spikes held tight with screws
And hiking shoes hard laced with booze rained down on
That recumbent lump
Thump, thump,
Crash: fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck You!
Fuck!
Fuck!
Fuck!
FUCK!
They answered back and formed a ruck
For the rough hard taste of flesh:
Attack
The mesh of an upturned back;
Allowed the surge to rent and hack and hack'�.

When the crowd settled
The bull was gone; the toreador too
Lost his mettle:
Vanished before Security came
Trooping their colours threading through
To the place hunting for blame.

Waiters pouring beer from portable barrels: like sacks
Dragged
All day on their banner shrouded backs
Rushed in to replenish the thirsty hacks
Filled up all the upturned glasses
Lest the grand thirst passes'�by.
.NiK[05]


Of rubicons and rubrics

I pledge to
Remain
Like the hooligan
On the bus
Waiting for the sixes
To stand.

I shall repeat the oath of
Allegiance
To the time of
Waiting
For a chance to chant
Together:
Striving to live
Up to the values
Of a disrespectful crowd.

.NiK[1998]





Winter

A break of light
Against the wall
Reveals the bar
'tween me and you.

And here to keep me from you
A cross to bar the night
To share the quiet solemnity;
Our unimagined hope, held tight.

Beyond the squares
The bare fleshed veins
Etch out nature's child
Stark with naked pain
And stroked with evening's chill.

A howl across the darkness
Of a moment
Echoes off the
Barren seeds
Marked out be season's change.

Now is the time
When warmth has gone
Our peace is held restricted
To the square yard of our mind.

.NiK[1979]

An old woman muses on her role as dogfood

She said that she had
acquired
a special container
for the dogfood
and the lid
was not
tightened
down.

She also had
a piece
of wood
that tilted it
at an angle.

It all seemed to him to
be
innocuous
until she said
that the dogs should get the food
before they should decide
to eat her.

She said that she should
hate
them to
start eating her.

He: taken by surprise.
eating you? Checking
out the corgi
and the ageing cocker
spaniel.

Then he giggled, inanely, perhaps
thinking
that if she'd hate them to start then
she would
be paranoid
if they finished.

She said that
it happened'�you know.
after all there was
no one checking up on her, daily'�
Quick sidelong glance; stabbing of guilt,
stabbing of guilt.
And she wouldn't expect it'�would she?
Bravely.
So she could be dead
for a while
before anyone noticed'�and
they'd get hungry.

I'd hate them to eat me.

.NiK[1991]

Notes on an incident in
a yuppie drinking establishment

It was the
Nodding
That did it, he
Thought
Afterwards
That pissed
snarling face
pressed against
his;
The butterfly shades'�
A scream of abuse.

Those poisonous words
Plugged into
Him
Pushed at a node,
Plugged into him.

What was her case?
An angry uitlander *

Accosting him,
Plunging
Her
Hate
Right into his side.

He'd felt the
Hot
Power
Tug at his belly
Dragging him down as it blasted
him up.
Consciousness slipped for a fragmented beat.

She'd glared at the page
Her focus
Of rage.

'You fuck'�king Afrikaner! **
You fascist, racist
Pig'�'� She'd screamed out at him.

He didn't know her;
Had stood at
The bar; ordered a beer
Idly
glanced at a discarded
page from the Beeld*** on the bar

What news is bad news
A killing or two
A rape and a mugging a
War over there over
Here
And some shed a tear
Whilst others drink beer
And
Articulate nothing at all.

She'd sidled up then
Tour guide
By hand.
She was seeking out thrills
Reeking
Of grills
And bottles of wine.
She was playing 'their song'�
From Apartheid's grape vine.

Coming from someplace to
Hammer the point
Missing the point
Drinking the point;
Dumping
The Taximan, coming in here
Searching for beer
And someone to tear
Rolling on high
Ready to
Fly
Into rage
To engage
With a representative in a cage
Loaded with hate
Not pausing
To wait
Finding some male she could
Castigate:

For the sins of their fathers
Their mothers'
And sisters
She poured it at him'�'till he hit her.

. NiK [1992]

*Uitlander: Afrikaans: lit: Outlander, a stranger. One who doesn't know how we do things around here. An outsider: to be treated with caution and possible disdain.
**Afrikaner: South African tribal group. Originally of Dutch stock; returnees to land of ancient ancestry. Former despised ruling class in SA. Formalised the evil Apartheid system as self defence mechanism against pending engulfment by darker skinned returnees and displaced indigenes. It failed. During their reign of terror were known as aggressive people with high propensities for violence. Have become generally more pleasant since losing power.
***Beeld: Afr. Lit'�Image. A leading Afrikaner newspaper.
The Lament of a Brackendowns man


Are you an
Officer an a gentlemen
Sir? He said.

Or perhaps a gentleman
And a scholar
Quite well read?

Yet he alack who
Questioned thus and claimed to travel
But by local bus

For all that
That he's three score and more
Turned out to be the
Man of straw.

.NiK[1992]


A comment on a girl murdered by her lover


Did you favour the grand parade girl?
Did you fancy a walk in the park?
Did you know what you were going to do girl
When that man came from out of the dark?

He juggled his temper with care you know.
He planted no seed of false doubt
He smouldered for days on rumours, you know
Plotting what they were about

He said he had captured your soul, didn't he?
When you thought it was games of the heart.
Then he came to collect on the debt, didn't he?
The promise that you'd never part.

But you favoured the grand parade, yes,
A stroll with a man from the dark.
Now the child stands by in the shade, yes,
While your names are etched on a plaque.

.NiK[1984]

For Michelle, then aged 9, whose parents were murdered by her mother's lover.


Brian's song on leaving*

Farewell to Rileys
And tasty young women
With choirs that all sang
In their best faded linen.

Some left by choice,
Others just stayed
Each one in time huddled
And prayed,

For an end to the days
Of booze, coke and carp,
And those places we fucked at
Under the tarp.

The dart givers came
Bent over with age,
To plunder the feeling
Left out in a cage.

And as far as we knew it
Was all said in vain
Said to help dampen
and weaken the pain

Of entry, of entering,
Of cleansing the channel
Of cleansing the soul
Coalescing the cabal'�.

.NiK[1994]



'� One of the most puzzling pieces I have ever 'written'. Brian was a man I barely knew: our daughters were in the same class at the local primary school and I'd spoken to him once or twice at children's parties. I had a dream one night after a great deal of rum in which he appeared and sang me this song. He was dancing to a backdrop of an industrial park during one of our mega Highveld thunderstorms and singing this song.
'� I woke up at 2 in the morning with this song in my head and scribbled it down by torchlight in a hut at a fishing resort called Charters creek at St Lucia where I was on a fishing trip with my brother, who was most amazed to wake up and find me scribbling. Fortunately he didn't speak to me.
'� When I returned to Jozi [as we fondly call our city] later that week and told my family over dinner about my strange dream and the 'song' that I had written, they became 'weird' and told me that Brian had committed suicide. Apparently he shot himself two hours before I had the dream.
'� Most of the 'poem'� puzzled me but the 'Rileys'� puzzled me most of all. I had no idea what 'Rileys'� were and thought perhaps it referred to a once famous roadside pub of that name in Botswana. Years later I discovered by accident that his father had been an agent for the Riley motorcar before that particular marque went out of business. He'd given his son a 'babe catching'� Riley sports car for his eighteenth birthday and the man had been one for the ladies ever after: culminating in some sordid affair over which he apparently killed himself.
'� I used the poem as a motif in the novel The Ashanti Raider.
'� It put me off rum.

Zimbabwe Day- The Year of the People

And then
as the past died
and everything we'd built
passed with solemn
irrevocability into insignificance,
the moment filled up with
futility.

Reality stopped
and we paused in the growing masquerade
to watch
the changing flood of lies,
and old deceits,
grow slowly different;
presaging perhaps
an age to come
steeped in new fantasies
and historic scenes
of mythic emptiness.

So we washed away
whatever sense of purpose
we never had,
and watched the end
of all our vacillations
tidy themselves
into little scurried heaps
of reconciliations.

And we hover
waiting for the final word
of thankless silence.

Then later
through the still,
quiet sound of darkness
i called the dogs
and heard my call
come howling on the night
chased by sounds of laughter.

And as my echo died away
the no longer distant drumming
rose
to roar amongst the voices
of the now absolute
mass

Their struggle won
they celebrate
their tide that rose against their night
and as i stood and listened
to the sounds of revelation
i heard the ugly blast
of bombs
The screams
and off-hand silence. .NiK[1980]

On reading some earnest Undergraduate poetry: [written by this or that person]

Reading an earnest
poetic
balancing
act; wordonwordthroughhall
marked family portraits
etched in affirmations.
I am overwhelmed by
recollections
of my post-adolescent childhood.

For myself I
wrote
not
a word
then,
before my quarter century,
beyond illiterary
essays
and examination answers;
some godzillions
of news reports
and speeches by the tumbrel.

Spoke only words that others
spoke
or blessed that
they may be written
thus Plagiarised
my soul with Keats
Eliot and Agamemnon.

No polite
poetic
construct to celebrate
that first fuck
perhaps none
to celebrate
the
last.

But now some
left brained
moment
calls on me to search out a right brained
thought
some passage
to
circumnavigate
incomprehension;
to stake out
what I am, in that pause
when the pain from the Parabellum
no longer
gropes, and lusts with me.

Helmut hanged himself; and
Peter passed on
in a peristaltic
paroxysm
after his heart blew up.

And I shall write these few
words
thinking about then
and
now.

.NiK[Nov1994]





February Four:
The Wolfman returns to his lair.


Friday is hellday
In Gauteng*.
Phalanxes
Of slender fish
In stagnant pools
Of lazy traffic
Blister gently in a February heat wave;
Grinding without forbearance, irrevocably
On parched slender umbilicals, stretched between two former foes.

Riding the N..one'�no né '�N1! No one
Friday hot pee emm day
Trembling along the ridge between two myopic lenses
Slowly clearing at the double edges
Of polarising shadows
Corroding where the knife could not cut: squeezed by oozings,
Slide by slide along an edge of concrete logjams.

The traffic stopped. The
Afternoon late sun, sum distended to full
Bursting
ripeness*
The gauge crept closer to the ceiling.

I found a pleasant spot alongside a place
Within which I
Was locked immobile,
and holed
up
for
an hour or so with the latest
Mail & Guardian.

The letters page had smeared to
a simulated
ice cream
melted page:
could be barely
read
in the shadow of a padded
visorturned
againstthelow
down
western sun.



The red parts though
could all be read and the dark
parts
too.
The lightest moments were those faint
Intelligibilities
Amongst incomprehensible illegibility where all words had smeared
And the ink had gone out to dine,
Save a faint impression, barely an indentation
Which, I reasoned, with increasing incredulity
Concerned the award of a
Darwinian survival boobie of the year prize to some deceased fool
For failing in his genes; electrocuted
Masturbating
Himself
to death
jammed between a pair of
old electric
sanders ['with the sandpaper removed'�]* through a drilled out hole
in what may have
been
his loofah or perhaps his sofa.

Some police drove past and asked if
'Everything was okay?'�
'The engine was getting hot'� I said.
'I maintain my car in a high state
of disapproval
and thought it should rest awhile and pasture here before
I had to push it home.'�
'Okay,'� he said and drove right on
alongside
all those others
inching up the hill: smiling now in
self-
deprecation,
laughing
and waving to me as I
read
about another world.

Taking
at last
a drive
through the woods'�in that last piece
of light
before the day goes
using
a wild card
alternate route, I
in
ad
vert
ently
found me
at the edge of a battered
cemetery
on the fringes of auld Tembisa;


on the eastern
midriff
of a decayed north
south hot-bed of anger and
resentment.


And all around me signs
promoting guns,
and death,
and taxis'�
death and taxis.

I
swung
down
in
to
a shallow sharp edged valley; buttressed up
ahead, in front of me'�
terraces'�embrasures
carved out
from the ve
ry slope
it seemed
consol
idated here
to bricks
and corrugated
iron.

The sun blasts across the bonnet
Smashes up against
My filth encrusted
Windscreen
Mirrored off
the lenses of
my dirty Rayban glasses.

I slid along a broken motorway
Down graffiti stricken streets
Camouflaged with rampant, viral
Hoarding signs
And home made fuck-you hieroglyphics
Lined up on every flat or level place
Of summary execution
Reversed
up
with
an
orchestrated cast of looming extras. I slid
between
them
all.
They never noticed me.



I saw dirt burned cottages clustered
In amongst burnished yellow sunstained
Brick
And
Sunset
Dappled
Roofs
Bank on bank of yellowed banks
All bleeding at the edges
Integ
Ra
Ting
Into sepia-run-on-darkness-head
Lights-and-the-smoke-of-
Seething-dust.

I bore west along what
Seemed
The
Better
Route: the houses marginally larger; the corr
Ug
Ated
Shacks
Con
Fine
D
Beyond
The corrugated tracks.

I saw me following
The largest
Feeding
Blocks of 'sharp'
Red
Winking
Eyeballs
Lurking from the glooming, spread out all about me.

My evening plight was balmy:
The thirty two
degrees
at six o clock slid down to twenty
six
at seven thirty:
my tanned
arm
on the window sill
coolness ruffling through my hair, intermittent
music
off the streets
drifting with the air.


I rode for miles then, on
A
Way
I felt
To
Be
The only way by foll
O
Wing
The setting sun
And talking to the sky.
Until at last with acrid breath
I sensed the fallen stench
of Modder'
and I knew I could sniff my way now
right
back
into
my
lair'�
and the clutch of'�
sweet
Frangelica.

.NiK[00]

'� Gauteng aka Zone One. An urban province in Azania [Afrika].
'� Mail & Guardian 4/2/00
'� Modder': Modderfontein dynamite factory. North east of South central zone one Gives off bad pollution and bad smells





The Gardener who sweeps after debris
From the trees.

The gardener
sweeps up leaves
with firm ferocity: even though I
told him
that they fell there to
regenerate the soil.

And
that
they
should
be
left
just
where they were.

But
he was trained to tidiness.

.NiK[1998]

Abseiling to an East Rand monkey's wedding*

He arrived
before the taxi came
and i
being still so
insubstantial
deferred to his greater skill
and showed him the way
back to heaven.

There had been
It seemed
A quarrel between the deities;
And the meter
Had stopped
Counting out the seconds to eternity.

Let us revel now,
he said
let us go and drink the silence,
before the clock
begins to toll
time-out.

.NiK[1991]

* Monkey's Wedding: a phenomenon whereby it is simultaneously pouring with rain and the sun is shining. During such an event the poet skidded in his vehicle on loose gravel into an intersection, where the warning yield signs had been vandalised, and was hit by a passing bus.
* He climbed out of the wreck, following a bang and an interminable silence before the vehicle was crushed into a perimeter wall. The poem 'happened'� during that silence and he wrote it down before rescuers arrived.



Fragment

What does it mean?
The empty bed
Do you grieve for a child
You never had?

Do you grieve for
A love
That is lost
Or is dead.

What is this that hides
From your door
What are these shapes that lie on
Your floor?

Now you stare at the mirror
Or is it
The wall: an empty bed
Some cloth for a pall.

.NiK[ 1986]



Dream sequence: The man who practiced reflexology

I met a man
the other day
who practiced
reflexology.
He asked if he
could see
my feet;
said he'd rub
right
where toe
met meat.

He had this way
he said to me;
stretched his toes
and stepped away, to
circle 'round
with arcane cry
flung his arms and screamed out:
'Why?'�

To move the humours
was what he said:
a way of seeing the toes
were bled.

And as he kneaded, pressed and prodded
I could feel the anguish robbéd
from out my soles
from out my soul.


'til on a peak
of ecstasy
with heaving cry
and fussing fuss
he leapt off from
the pavement side
into the path of
a Putco bus,
that took him
away
to some other bliss
affixed to the front
in a cloud of piss.

And my toes
still tingled yet
to the feel of a man
who was now quite wet


.NiK[1996]




Stormwater Connect'�. ions Leaving the North Central Zone One headquarters of some important uniformed people I took a leisurely drive through pouring rain across edge town country to my lair on the South side of the middle: South Central Zone One*.
Jozi. I came to a place where once I ran rather than drove in soaking pelting rain. A cross country run, military cloth, shaved skull under freezing winter head we ran in the rain; before this highway pain we had pain in the rain hiding again from those bullying thugs in their starched anti-civilian gear. We, a rebel pair, were pursued along this stretch of open land now fed with tarmac: our route, illegal our cross country runaflagrantviolationoftherules andcomebackhere! An irate Sergeant called us back and when we ran right on was filled with wholesome vengeance- we were cheating'�and we were from South Central We were the enemy, he shouted and accompanied by a maniac one eyed Korporaal they set off after us convinced their righteousness would tame our basic training broken bodies and burst the vital buckslust from our souls. A lucky double side step sent the junior one plunging to the bog offside the path We hurdled the barbed strands that crossed the land and the sergeant baulked and we being indistinguishable cheated on in gleeful anonymity. As I enjoyed this reverie sliding downhill on a slope to Centurion two shapes came hurtling down the hill. Methought at first: two NCOs. Both moved fast through the pelting rain, dicing our dare in the pouring rain. They exploded like thunder out of the curtain drawn down all round me: all
around there. One slew past on my right edge; the slap of wind against my door, buffeted me, pushed me right along with water cascades on my now submerged periscope and drenched my forward sight The other shot by; not on my right, where he was wont to be, but to the left, to the shoulder side where the ground was broken, stones were pried. I saw the shape momentarily: a Conquest I thought; The Conquest of Centurion, I thought. and then it was gone, and the curtain closed as though it had never been. .NiK (00)


'� Over the past decade as predicted in the Buffalo Hunters all the names of almost everywhere we've always known have been changed to suit a new political agenda. To sustain our consciousness we call the place Jozi. Eventually the entire province will be called Jozi for ease of communication:

'Then we came to a place we had known
And knew it not.
We could see signs we had always seen
And could no longer read them'�
The road to our destination we were told
Began right where we stood
So let this then be a marker'�'�

The Book of Shadrack
Part One The First Prelude.
The Buffalo Hunters
Nicholas Williamson ['96]



For Derek*

'Heaven's mourning breaks'� said the Preacherman
'We were touched:
Our lives, by his life,
Our lives by his death'�

He went on, 'Live in the moment;
Do what must be done
Now,'�
And he did that, this man who left so soon.

And then the Preacher spoke words
Of comfort for the living
Who remain
Unaware of the truth;
Of the mystery within which we live,
Shaken now by this
Event: Are we
Supposed to think? Better sure
The polished gloss of words to stretch and gently massage
All our pain away.
He spoke of the Irish road;
Light words that skimmed across
The warm wet surface of
Our tears. And he continued,
His well rehearsed words of comfort
Tossing words upon further words
Which we all barely heard
So lost were we
In contemplation of the
Place where he was not.

The flag hung limp
Obscuring for me that
Professed man of god
Who spoke of journeys without end...
And so the tributes likewise
Who spoke of what he'd done. Short, sharp,
Pithy tight to bind the tears, which hung
In sorrow on each added word.

'What you saw
Was what you got'�
And we all got an awful lot
For the changing of the world

Then, when the choir sang'� 'Tula
Mama'�.'� Their intoned cadence
Reaching out:
Soothing us, while
The praise singer sang out
Evocations
Which thundered 'round the crowded
Quad. Then,
The wind blew strong and the half-hung flags
Flew briskly in the late noon sun.

We felt our catharsis
Start then,
As the boys expressed their
Grief.
They sent away their leader
With a cry that shook
The leaf, still huddled deep inside
The barest winter trees'�
Their war cry from the deepest past.

'A rum tum tum
A rum tum tum.'�

Then, to rage at darest death and
Shake its claw away'�
'A rum tum tum'�
A rum tum tum'�'�

We shuddered, we who stayed behind.
Took heart again from
What he'd done, and we knew then
As the ancients did
The hollowness of death
That takes from us at random: reminding
Us of certainty and but for what
Go i.

Then, having heard from Whitman
We preferred to hear the boys, gathered
From a dozen
Distinct originations
Linked arms
Into a shield against the universe and
All
Its blasted tricks;

'A rum tum tum'�.
A rum tum tum'�'�

The birds upon the parapet
Launched themselves in fright.
The half-mast flag that had hung limp now
Stretched out for the light.

'A rum tum tum'�
A rum tum tum'�'�

We stood awhile
`Till all the rest was silent.

.NiK(2002)

**My friend Derek Tarpey died unexpectedly in his sleep. He was also my wife's boss: Head person, alternately, Headmaster, of a Monastic boys school in our city: 'The school with a soul, '� as it is often called.

He had been there a dozen years; and in his time there he took part in the changing of our country and was a hero of the Transformation: knowing it was a process and his was but a part.


July 21st Sunday Bloody Sunday

Sunday
Bloody Sunday was the name of a day like this
One
Wasn't it

Sitting on the edge of the world
On a Sunday
That should
Be Funday
But is simply a break for a drink
And catch up with the process
Of aging today
Speculating on
A world where
Nobody died and nothing happened
Beyond the ordinary tragedies
Which unfold whether we
Ignore them or not. Bombs bullets
And bad ways to die.

So we turned off the media,
Bought no news with its fantasy spins
It was chill-down time
Bru and
The one with the most booze wins.
.NiK(2002)

Durban Beachfront on a winter evening. --------

Being accosted by a whore
Is always tricky, their soft seductive insinuations
Slip through slick co-
Ordinated deft defences.
To be accosted though by a whore
With snot heaving in her
Nasal passages
Insinuating itself into her
Sales pitch is a no-sell deluxe.

I looked at her: she was a waif; sores
About her mouth, with an un
Developed chest and
Near undeveloped body: such promised
The casual kit that hung on her
Like sacking on a bedraggled scarecrow.

We don't have to do anything she said, we could go to the bar,
You can buy me the drink
That she needed and we can talk.

Ah'�so you are the philosopher's whore, are you?
What would we talk about?
What wisdom could you not import as a person functioning
In a seedy vacuum?

Could she philosophise, and explain the meaning
Of life?

The meaning of life is
To fuck, she replied; and sometimes to have a drink.

. NiK(2002)



Words drawn on the role of the innocent
In the inevitable holocaust of self recrimination
That follows being harassed and attacked by bullies.

It wasn't your
Fault; you did
Not do this thing.
The problem is theirs: you
Are left with their rage
And their impotence
Which fuels frustration
And despair: stops your thoughts.

Do not look to the
Past ' to that one event
For that is the
Place of the furies
And bitter regret.

You did the most
Important thing
You survived a hailstorm
Of unprecedented
Ferocity.

That purpose that
Drove your
Survival is
Where your
Focus must be

Breathe deep
From far down
Reach down to
Your feet and below. Lift
The lightest froth
Of air
And
Let it go.

.NiK[05]







17/5/00 Baker beats Boss with Broken Broom Handle.

Eight o clock and all is
not well
at the Buy Rite store
where I have gone
to fetch a breakfast snack for the starving hounds
who guard my hell.
Ambulance and more.
Paramedics.
Policemen
Armed Response personnel and
Batoned guards
cordoned off the entrance to the tightly
barréd door.

Then. Stretcher in.
Afterwards'�workers filter through a partially
opened door'�a crack no more'� with sombre tread
and wary head.

We fear the worst: a robbery delayed some months
before now burst
upon them in furore
so the rumours went.
I am pleased that we delayed
for a second cup of coffee
before
going to the store.

The shopkeeper was brought out on
A stretcher; a bloodied hulk, gasping for life through
oxygen pumped straight
into his face
beneath the pumping wounds.

Clusters of new small mouths
demanded to be fed
then vomited instead
spewing copious kilolitres shed, with
some blunt stabbing
utensil.

The guards stood by to let him through
stark in their spotless profanity
spat in their spit polished
crisp uniformity and murmured words of comfort
to overwrought staff and the flotsam
of the city.


Inside; amongst the vegetables, where the light
is somehow dim,
Between two banks of counters,
A girl sobs: young, pretty, adult.
She sobs erect, as though with pride,
Certainly, with beauty.
My cashier and others located tight
Within their tills
Stared at her
With
Implacability: united in their shock
And yet
Withdrawn from her.

Was she a daughter, I wondered; an
Affectionate employee,
Perhaps some other, desired by another,
With an old man some
How in the way.

What if, I think?
There
Is a jealous
Lover, disguising motive'�how
Dare an old man harbour
Thoughts of '� Perhaps he believes that
He owns. Either own. Or own.

What if this idea of a plot is only
A form of denial.
What if rather, those brutal wounds I witnessed
were once
again
a testament to that
implacable
resistance: the hatred that seems
unstoppable,
short of death.

These are feral beings
With whom we stay.
And we are they.

dot.NiK(00)





18500

The Times they have changed

The Supreme Being for those of
a western disposition
was one called Nietzsche;
who was chained to a horse and
then
crucified upon
a swastika after he discovered
that he was the
universe.

Among the pantheons of the
further beings
those who came to the aid
of No-consciousness
were the Grandpersons of Zen
who had mostly starved themselves to
no-thingness pursuing no-consciousness
in remote mountain caves.

The 'sacred games' of the new order of times are
stock index participation derivatives
and the brutal business of business
with its promise of
now ever after.

For the rest'�what were they expecting?

dot.NiK(00)


Rehearsing Nietzsche: part one

You will be glad to know that
making friends
is as hard
as learning Nietzsche.

dot.NiK(00)



'The death of God! An awful
yet exhilarating thought! Awful because we feel
abandoned
by our former protector, yet exhilarating because
suddenly our world opens to infinity.
Anything is now possible.

Nietzsche
Ubuntu Rulz

There are watchers lurking always
at the gate;
people who walk past and openly evaluate
your every extra item compared to what they have.

There are no longer any
smiling faces and other things,
which were once abnormally
normal.

In a democracy Ubuntu is a way
of generating obligation: an idea which is
contrary to the
concept of democracy; equality and freedom
and the absence of obligation.

To the extent that obligation exists
liberty does not.

dot.NiK(00)





Disempowered empowerment

It is probable
that being empowered
is ultimately
disempowering.

to be empowered
without transformation is to
disempower
empowerment.

dot.Nik(19500)







18/12/00

CNBC

Raise the bar, he said.
Drive mediocrity out of the business.
It is not about participating.
It's about winning. These bold words
pronounced on a business channel
on a television satellite
facility were spoken in perfectly modulated
tones'�the voice of a Winner;
who may after the Take return to
the unemployment
queue. Sincere, earnest, confident
without arrogance'�purporting to be the man
perhaps an actor hired for the day
to play
the part of a winner:
or the media glossy representation of
what a winner
should sound and look like. He appeared in an
in an
expensive suit, which in all
probability was
hired by the actor'�perhaps at his own expense.

And in his role as 'Executive'� with his
well prepared brief he
has produced a gloriously modulated simulacrum
of the image
which we the audience
comprising successful people (aren't we'�
to have DSTV)
would aspire to: an actor's performance.

The actor in turn would be the one who won
The job.
Selected '�the winner, after 467
auditions screened out from the 78ooo
unemployed actors on the books
of the local union.
Backstage
frontstage:
which side reality?

.NiK(00)













Yes or No: Do this; do nothing

I believe at best in me
And that I am surfing the universe
Ferrying my flock
Whom I somehow begot
As
An act of
Volition ' a choice: - do
This, now, not then
And when to do
That which still must come.

'How do you decide that? Ms
Knobling asked. Why that, or this and
Not some other choice?

So I told her what you said Robert,
There is the obvious choice
The comfortable choice: the choice of least resistance; and
There is the other, where the route
Is but a glimmer in the park.
Your heart hangs between them.

.NiK(00)



Breathing out

So
Silence. Practise silence.
Speak less
Say more.

.NiK(00)





19800

Matters of Booze.

The working of alcohol
On an entire cluster of
Receptor areas
Oh gaba gaba including
Glutamate, endorphins,
Seratonin and dopa
Mined tenacity is a reason
Why
Alcohol works for those
Who believe
It works.

What happens to the receptors
Of people
Who are never exposed to alcohol
At
All?

Do (artificially) unstimulated
Receptor areas
Stimulate themselves
Or do
They
Settle
Into
Comfortable rhythms
Masquerading
As certainty?

Nicholas(2000)


A response to Moral Rightness

The idea propounded by a correspondent
To a daily rag that the
Employment Equity Act is morally
Right reveals no more
Than that the
Said correspondent
Is an economic defective
Along with those who
Introduced the law
In the first place.

The fact is that 'job reservation'�
And the accumulated incoherent
Clutter of the evils of the
Apartheid
Era
Was wrong;
And collectively destroyed
Our chance of
Viable economic growth during the period 1948
To 1994.
This is well established
And irrefutable (to those of such
Opinion).

To therefore argue that the EEA will rectify this
Is equivalent to
Proposing that
Someone
Who has had one
Leg maliciously broken in
Order to deliberately
Impede their
Mobility
Will be better balanced and placed
On a sound footing by having the
Other leg equally badly
Broken along with the legs of
Those having to carry the cripple.

Oh Duh'�like that is so lank uncool.

Even to argue that one
Good leg should carry the bad
For life or a time
'till the bad one improves
or gets better disre-
gards
the damage done to
the good one
by the effort.

Globalisation is already some
Thing of a three legged
Obstacle
Race.
For many
Of the participants.
To declare EEA
Our exclusive moral posture
In a world that has redefined morality
To be that which is most
Expedient
Now,
Is to take our crippled runner and then,
To get us all through these quicksand's
Of development,
Demand too,
A ball and chain.

.NiK (28/11/2000)
'� The press and radio phone-in media are regularly inundated with self-serving correspondence promoting the 'moral fairness'� of the SA government's 'affirmative action'� battery of neo-racist legislation. For me [or anyone else] to even suggest that this legislation is racist will bring forth a hail of reflexive counter-accusations of racism in defence of the indefensible. Past wrongs justify present redress. The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon their children and so forth. Revenge is a justification and should be recognised as such so that everyone can move on.
'� I do however find it too confusing and had hoped that the idea of the new society [in SA] was to create a fair place with massive help for those hindered in the past rather than what seems to be an unfair place with massive help for selected past victims and most past victims being ignored. The idea of 'handicapping'� as in horseracing, suggested by a reader to the daily press seemed okay until you realise that in a horse race the handicapping only creates the illusion of competition...it isn't real. Humans don't live in horse races.
















If horses had feelings and voices
To share them would they
Sing their joy
At running more slowly than they
Could?

.NiK[05]



Twelve September
On being murdered

It was with a sudden
Jolt
This morning
When I heard mention
On the news
About Steve Biko that I
Remembered what I had
Conveniently forgotten for
The first time
Since it happened:
That Monday 11th of September
Was not only the twenty third anniversary
Of Biko's murder
But the
Sixth anniversary of my own.

That awesome instant
When I stretched out
Between my falling
Corpse
And my
Escaping ghost. And
Then
Came back
Again

Denial or deletion?
The corpse felt no
Pain
The ghost felt
The same
And we partied
On 'till
Judgement came.
Then I returned
And had now
Forgotten.

.NiK(2000)


'� In my poem Satori [in the collection 'Marginalised man'�] I spoke of a 'gathering of angels'�
to describe the inexplicable experience of finding myself staring at myself during a life and death struggle, and the awesome sense of strength and power that accompanied that 'vision'� still haunts me.

Some years later I had cause to read a police transcript of an interview with a witness to the incident in which the witness stated that: 'they thought they were attacking a 'mugu'* and then they found that they had attacked a 'tagate'**'�one who could be in two places at the same time.'� This compounded my original sense which until that time I had considered to be an hallucination caused by adrenaline shock.

In 2000 I forgot about the incident on its anniversary, for the first time. The following year the date was hijacked by the infamous events of 9/11 and the pleasure of forgetting has now been denied indefinitely.

I am still unable to explain the inexplicable, I can only describe it.

*Mugu: slang: old fool
**Tagate. Local Sotho: wizard.





Collecting random empty nothing
From a bout of invigilation.

Listening to the sounds of silence
In the otherwise noise soaked
Room.

The children writing their texts
Are silent: scrunched up, within their warm cocoon
Which is how they have made 'their'� room,
Adorned to what interests them, not me and mine.

The room is theirs I come and go rarely talking
Of Michaelangelo.
There are pictures of leopards and beautiful Brittany.
The girl next door
And Christian Dior.
Cool rulz the room covered so soon
With Matrix and Aragon,
Arwen 'n
Popstars and beautiful men
And young glossy girls adorn products that warn us then
About bowling for Columbine from gardens of Zen.

Not a glossy for Maths
Nor physics
Nor Stats
No functions of finance
Verbs, nouns, or romance
But King Arthur, I Robot
With Will Smith 'n all
As the outcomes advance to take
Over the wall
Reveal the things that we learn
That help us grow tall are
Barely the rage while working offstage'�.

Then a cellphone rings sharp'�and the class disengage.

.NiK[2005]




'The youth.

At first they will be more ignorant
than the educated men
of the present, for they will have unlearnt
much
and will have lost any desire even to discuss what those
educated men
especially wish to know.

Nietzsche.







Cluster of cliché thoughts noted in a hospital waiting room.

The idea is to balance perception and reality
Whatever those two words mean.
When life is perceived as purposeless
The resulting mindset
Brings disaster.
'The map is not the territory'�
Tune in to the instant:
The purpose is now.

.NiK[00]






I wandered lonely as a crowd*

Do we need friends to prove
To ourselves that we exist: that
We are not certain?

.NiK(00)

* With apologies to Willy W.


16/11/00 Quantum Shift

A man sits down in an accustomed
Restaurant to eat a meal
With an old friend.

The friend gets up and goes to the
Toilet
Leaving his
Small leather handbag
On the table. Keep an eye on my
Bag, he asks the man.

When he returns
The man has vanished,
So has his part of the meal
His bottle of Windhoek Lager
Gone.
The bag remains as it was left.

The man's enquiries arouse
Puzzled politeness. He thinks
Perhaps he was wrong?
He pays for a meal for one.
And becomes aware of many differences
In the place he had only
Recently entered, he is puzzled, has a sense of déjà vu
Hairs prickle at the back of his neck
As though touched by a breeze of a different
Temperature.
He remembers for a fragment that, something'�?
His brief recollection is interrupted by the
Sharp squalling of a distant child
At the far side of the room.
He remembers nothing.
He leaves.

.NiK(00)




Falling for the dance*

Dionysus* creeps across the loins
Of gathered applause
The determination
To draw
The line
At the starting point
Of all our interactions:
To play the games
That bring us closer to
The vales and crevices
Of unspeakable
Desire, encompassed by the
Clenching thrust of psychic energy,
Escaping with the soul
For a brief ecstatic
Instant:
And takes us back,
Revived.

dot.NiK(00)


* Friederich Nietzsche's 'Mistral Wind'� written at the time when he was 'involved'� with the enigmatic Lou Salome directly inspired this piece. When I had this insight I had been 'playing'� Nietzsche for about six months. As a Stanislavskian type trained actor who's purpose in life was to create the person played, I came to believe that 'Mistral Wind'� redefined what we have always believed about that relationship: that it was unconsummated.

Since this is not an 'easy'� poem to find and is not included in most standard texts dealing with Nietzsche, I am printing it below for reader convenience [to whoever has the rights: if you are unhappy I'll take it out, otherwise let me know and I'll cite your reference.] It is my poet's opinion that this poem deals with a glorious sexual encounter that may or may not have been with another human. It is, for me, a lascivious and inspiring piece of work.















Mistral wind

You rain cloud leaper
Sadness killer
Heaven
Sweeper,
How I love you when you roar
Two for one
Inside the same womb
Predestined now for
Evermore

Here on slippery rocky
I dance into your embraces
Dancing as you wing and whistle:
You that shipless,
Do not halt,
Freedom's freest brother
Vault over raging seas,
A missile.

Barely waked,
I heard your calling,
Stormed to where the rocks
Are sprawling,
To the gold wall by the sea '
When you came
Like swiftly dashing
River rapids, diamond-
Splashing, from the peaks triumphantly.

Dance on myriad backs a season,
Billow's backs and billows
Treason '

Let us chase the shadow lovers,
World defamers, rain-cloud shovers '
Let us brighten up the sky!
All free spirit's, let us thunder, since I met you,
Like a tempest roars my joy.

And forever to attest /
Such great joy, take its bequest,
take this wreath
With you up there!
Toss it higher, gladder, storm up on the heaven's ladder,
Hang it up ' upon a star

by Nietzsche





Good day to ya Mr Excellent.


I pretend to be happy.

When someone asks how I am
I say excellent, with loud enthusiastic heartiness
Mr Excellent they say
How can you be excellent?
Every time?

I fake it.
Yes'�I fake it.

Each time I meet someone I make
A choice
I demonstrate to myself each time that I am not a victim of my
Moods
Or circumstance
I choose to fake it ' say I'm excellent or first class
Not 'fine' or 'okay' or
'Not bad'.

I fake it.
I choose excellence everytime
The alternatives are uncongenial
And so by lying about me i push the wheel a
Way
I feel better'�
Uplifted even
Forget that it's fake.

Troublesome but true.

.NiK[05]







Malapropism [?] spotted in a classified ad

May love, light and prosperity
Eliminate their
Future path.

.NiK[00]




Jacob Zuma speaks'�markets crash.

Shame, poor Jacob
Bowled over and de-energised.

Who will stay a little longer?
Said the poor man
to the thief
knowing that we could
be winners
and choosing not to be.
The truth is out revealed
Again:
as often
by what we do not
say,
as in the manner of our saying.

.NiK[00]


What happens so often affects the subtexts of all we pretend are not there.

The above piece written in a year of writing some poetic construct daily was taken from 13/10/00. I have no note or recollection of what happened on that day other than this piece of writing, which had a reverberating echo nearly five years later when the subject was summarily fired from his job as the deputy president of our country, Southern Azania [SA]

Who says earthquakes don't carry aftershocks.



















Verily you could wear no better
Masks, you men of today, than your own
Faces! Who could possibly
Find
You
Out?

Nietzsche
On first reading JM Coetzee's Disgrace.

I have just ricocheted from
Reading a section of this Disgrace.
Recoiled from the horror of
Professor Lurie's search
For truth; an unintelligible search
As most searches of this nature tend to be.

The search has immobilised him
He has become a voyeur of his own life,
Watched in slow motion. He is immobilized
In a way reminiscent of Camus' Outsider'�'�Mother died today. Or, maybe
Yesterday; I can't be sure.'�

This man's passive response to the urgings of his nature
As opposed to his intellect
May simply be a rejection
Of the endless repetition of the
Routine events in his
Apparently dreary day.

An empty man inhabiting
The sterile confines of Appolonia*: Cape Town:
The place where life is an illusion
Modelled on a concept.

Sex severs his connection: bad sex severs it badly
'Disgraced'�
He retreats from his intellectual void to
Our archaic dark origins rep-
Resented
By the Eastern Cape ' a metaphorical place of
Struggle.
A place of wildest
Nature and societal absence.

There he experiences the Dionysian* divine madness, coming
Face to face with his karma
As his burning body transforms him into a
Physical outcast to mirror his
Inner disgrace.

He seems though to be as unaffected by this trauma as he
Was by the one which exiled him to this place
Where the fruits of acquisition are being redistributed
Amongst the newly victorious objects
Of his dispassionate scrutiny.

The death of the Apollonian 'nightmare' and
The return to vulgar, brutish,
Primitivism,
Is Coetzee's vision of the New Southern Azanian
Dreamtime era:
A shadowy downside
To all he never acknowledged while he could.

Rape is the deed that reflects
An absence of society: society in decay in Cape Town
Society fizzling about in violence and disarray in the Eastern Cape.
The absence of society brings out the dogs in man.

In Coetzee's vision Society must not
Be confused with Community, they may be different.

Coetzee's Community is Patrilineal.
Petrus becomes a metaphor for the aboriginal Azanian chief presiding over his subjects,
Whom he can apparently order
To be fucked at will.

The Eastern Cape represents [to Coetzee] that return to African despotism
Which is our [Anglo-European/Returnee/Koloniste] sole knowledge
Of pre-colonial feudal Africa'�There is no democracy
Where selected men have the right to be born
A king.

In his flight from the weighty care-
Lessness of civilized
Living our protagonist must pay obeisance to the
New gods of liberation'�his guilt'�a trivial fuck. Not a grand fuck:
Basically a fuckless fuck; for never does
A man fuck with less enthusiasm than does the abstract professor.

In his state of dispassion he is most passionate about a prostitute.
The student Melanie is his over-age Lolita with spots
And stained underwear. He has 'congress'� whatever that is
With a veterinarian, who 'succours' him.

The man is dead. He
Studies, desultorily, the life
Of a dead romantic poet, Byron, who famously went
Off to die in a fit of ennui.

An abstract intellectual he has seen through the superfluity
Of Apollonian western society and like a virgin
Who believed in father Charismas and the truth of the universe
He sulks at his own revelation and sets out to spoil the illusion.

Coetzee's Barbarians are now within
The walls'�their ways those of the dark primal night
Underground and in the full grip of
Nature.
They shoot the raging dogs, fuck* w-ite lesbians, impregnate them and turn them into subservient vassals.

Lurie's sole response to all the chaos about him
Is to prep the corpses of dogs for burial: commoditising
death in a most brutal
Of its manifestations.
This postscript to his otherwise tedious life
Suggests that
We are all vassals of a sort: true freedom is impossible
Because we are trapped inescapably
By our return to the primitive
Rule of force.
And so Lurie too becomes a vassal.

.NiK(00)

*Apollonian: after the Greek god of reason: Apollo. The rational world of Apollo is an harmonious one characterised by respect for intellect, social symmetry, poetry, music and discourse of the highest order.
* Dionysus: a.k.a. Baccus. Greek deity associated with wine, and wild dissolute behaviour. This often involved the ripping to pieces of wild animals in counterpoint to Luries dog disposal activity.
*Fuck: here refers to the contentious idea presented by the late Andrea Dworkin that all sex is rape
.NiK.

'The price of fruitfulness is to be rich in internal opposition; one remains young
only as long as the soul does not stretch itself and desire peace.'�

Nietzsche


11/10/00

It rained a while and cooled things down.
Better for me
Who wrote nothing
Today
Except this
And a bit of
That.

.NiK[00]






13/10/00

Dreamcatcher Fragment'�

Loss and kisses.
Stealing kisses
From the prompt who couldn't
Find the lines
When we started to rehearse
When the cast were outside waiting
When the play would not begin to play
When the major support cast
Were late on the day
When we could not find our place
Then we all began to race
To the last page on the script
Under rehearsed and under performed'�.

.NiK[00]




A Journey Remembered*

What if there are lurking
Dudes
In the
Darkness?
It is inevitable: They will be there.

The light however draws me in
suffusing all.
No beam of light tunnel
in the dark void together with
SFX:

I see people activating my chest
and upper torso.
In my drifting state I imagined it
to be an electric saw:
having no experience of shock therapy'�perhaps'�
peace is uppermost now
in
my
list of priorities illusively scampering off into
conscious
unconsciousness.

It faded then, there is no other
picture'�I returned
to this karmic
conclusion: refreshed from a journey.

.NiK(00)



*Refers to a so-called 'out of body'� experience during emergency surgery for multiple gunshot wounds







Friday Payroll day

'I was very scared'�, the strained voice of a little
Boy speaks uncertainly to a radio interviewer
This morning. He went on to talk about a robbery at a
Supermarket where he had gone shopping
For more than he had bargained. 'We had to sleep
On the floor'�, he said with earnest solemnity, while robbers searched him
And
His daddy and took their things. So started the day.

The long drawn out essay on the radio
Was constructed, it appeared, to
Fill a soundbite hiccup in the media
State of shock that the Firmian election failed
To finish right on schedule to prearranged
Panoply, pomp and everybody rushing off
To go down on the winner and now
Not knowing who it was and the circumstance being
Unprecedented all planned presentations
Were on hold.
.
Imagine having to hold the bullshit for more than a week: Hey Buddy
There are contracts
Waiting to be signed
And no one knows whom to bribe or pay off or help
To kiss the national bride
And now must resort to
Filling empty
Sound bite instants
In the Firmian post-
Presidential non-election debate inter-
Viewing frightened children.

Later after classes driving down a road through Orange Grove
I slowed at a crowded intersection:
Saw bloodstains on the street, chalk marks etching out
Where human meat had dried dark
In the heat. Saw policemen dusting fingerprints
On a bullet riddled door, while paramedics
Picked up all
The dead: no longer sleeping on the floor.

We don't know any more who
Are the bad guys? 'We never know,
Which way they fall Daddy'�.

.NiK(00)




You are half open gates
at which gravediggers wait. And this is your
reality: 'everything deserves to perish'�.

Nietzsche


Taxing Macbeth


In this room that I guard the children
Write a test
While younger others lurk
Outside, down there,
Where they are blessed
To play Macbeth.

Up here their elders agonise
On death and marketing
Taxes and the cost of
Mortgage bonds
While below their younger peers
Delight in 'Thanes'�.

Here bodies are distorted: shoulders, heads, necks
Ripped aside in concentration and oblivion
Below
A dark young Thane pits his blade against
His visions of our Lady: no not Magdalene,
Macbeth;
Sparks a shout
And his fellows leap about jabbed at the point of
Sword waved in careless pantomime.

The kids writing texts on death and marketing
Saw no approaching blade
From a place where there was shade
But the blood all felt the same
As when the old King
Went insane
And wrecked the party.

.NiK[05]



'I am driven out of fatherlands and motherlands
Thus I now love only my children's land, yet undiscovered, in the farthest sea:
For this I bid my sails search and search.'�

Nietzsche

















Spike's Gone


Hearing a passing eulogy
To the late Spike
I have an insight:
I realise the extent to
Which my consciousness has
Been
Formed
By the 'Goon Show'� which
Converted absurdity into truth and then
Showed that truth to
Be absurd
In turn.

Then, as we groped
For meaning while
Knowing there
Was none
They revealed our imperfections
As a source of laughter

!NiK(28/3/02)
* Refers to the late Spike Milligan, the man who saved the '50's.


On Market Piranhas

A market fundamentalist would be likely
To say that the only real
Truth in the known
Universe is the moving average
On a stock
Market index
Others might argue that there are so many
Variations
On a moving average that nothing matters,
And the idea of truth
Is an illusion.

In close up it lurches
With majestic hard driven velocity.
In repose'�pools of Piranha sweeping
With uniform movement breaking
Up and down: threshing their wake, rippling its spine
Constantly cleansing'� rejuvenating.
A veritable ebb and flow
Warp and weft.

The purest of the pure would call
The index itself
Truth;
That the moving
Gobbling
Average merely predicts the truth: whatever
It may be.

.NiK[02]

Grasping at fragments of the rational


What if the people in the stories in which the committed rapists lived were able to emote at some level like fish that daily
flock
to a feeding place
in search of nourishment'�Does
the 'figment of the
imagination'�
carry with it the
residual information
that caused it to be formed.
Is it accessible?
And so:
when people follow leaders
as shadows
follow owners then all are blind following the virtuous
certainties of faith: a deep
conviction that the certainty is ruled by uncertainty, which is itself
certain.

When shadows meet they
merge
to simple darkness.

.NiK[03]




A weekend on the long road from a business conference.

Sunflowers
Sunset
Rays catch cumulus
Beam down upon a wash
Of yellow heads

A hillside adorned with coruscating golden particles
In subtle shade of shimmering dark edged bas relief

Pylons etch out scientific imposition
Precision
On the boundless course of
Nature. Reach out across the valley: in the distance
Thirty kays away,
Across the realms of sun seeking
Plants, the distant skyline:
Leaping heart.
Joyous place.
Home again.
Jozi.

.NiK(03)


Certainties

Now and then I glimpse
Some idea lurking in
The recesses of my limbic brain
A prelude of some undiscovered
Clarity

My attention drifts to something prosaic
For a moment
And the glimpse is gone
And I am left as from a dream
With a sad nostalgia
For that lost instant.

How can I retrace a random
Course
It must be caught at the moment
Or forever gone

And why should it be
Caught
At all

Am I doing this for you?
Or for me?
And if for me, surely there
Are other ways
More useful to me
Than this oblique reference to the merely glimpsed?

.NiK(03)




On losing the radio

Does your radio play a role
In your life?
Did your radio station suddenly change
Its signature
Leaving you lost and without a rudder?
Then go station surfing
In stereo through static
laced air-waves until
You find your true soul somewhere on short wave.

.NiK(03)


Weblog 17/10/02

The Butchers of Bali


'What we obtain too cheaply we value too lightly'�

I read these lines of Thomas Paine, American
Revolutionary, and secular pamphleteer
as I heard
The news on the Television
About the horror attack on happy
Young
Human
Beings
At play in Bali.

Once again the world of unreason
Has intersected with that
Of the rational.
Democracy and human ingenuity versus the
Nature of the human at its worst
This struggle between the forces of reason
And unreason, millennia old
Has persisted in force now for 500 years: is it finally
Showdown time.

How does one react to a barbaric act?

What could motivate a human being to
Deliberately plan and then execute
Such an horrendous crime
Against ordinary people.

What war are these people fighting
That makes it possible to demonise a room full of children
So completely that their destruction leaves them cold?

Is this the true face of evil
Acting in defence of some irrational good?

In this strange war between the
Secular forces of progress, the law,
The democratic process and the frequent flaw
Of reason
Against the insidious poison of
Unreason how does one define the
Line
Between good and evil
Other than to extend beyond
Both.

Is it the taking of life itself that is evil?
Should evil be fought with evil?
Should we argue that an eye deserves an eye?
Or would it be more certain to argue
That an eye deserves the entire body when
Those who preach and then practice bloody murder
Perpetrate such acts in defence of the indefensible.
If we gave this behaviour any other motivation than religion then we should call
Those people madmen
And we should incarcerate them in a place of safety
For both themselves and us, for they
Act on behalf of a conjecture
Raised to a fantasy.

If evil lies in ignorance then
How is one to judge
A creed that holds an unbeliever to be
Evil
And pursuit of their own creed
To be the only truth.

Is it then truth?
To live in blissful
Ignorance
Of the real nature of death and the illusion of the life
Ever after

Is this not substantiating one evil by recourse to another?
And is this not in conflict with the law?

At best it is deceptive advertising.

So what Now?

Firstly it is beyond obvious that we are engaged in a circumstance Mao
Tse Tung once defined as the
'�War of the Flea.'�
The scratch, scratch, scratch has already made its mark
Upon us
In the form of sagging, markets, declining
Productivity and terrorised citizens.
Airlines have collapsed and millions have had their lives
Disrupted, many terminally, by this scratch
Scratch
Scratch.

This 'War'�'� is being motivated and prompted by
Unreasoning fanatics who hate the world
As it is, or even as it could be, probably because liberated citizens have no need
Of fantastical nostrums to leaven the horror of their
Lives.
No these unreasoning fanatics seek nothing less
Than a return to
A more congenial form of Stone Age: where inequality
May be rationalised
Through invocation of some of other
Sacred message justifying the inequality of human beings.

For the Secularists of the world
The way forward is terrifyingly apparent.

We are under siege by people, who it seems believe in ghosts and goblins
And in their desperate search for
Simplicity
Seek a future more deeply rooted in the 8th century than in the 21st.

It is an essential ingredient
Of the democratic viewpoint that
Those strange human beings who are terrified of the
Dark and seek solace in strange antediluvian
Philosophies and pastimes are entitled to those beliefs and practices
Provided they remain
Private and personal.

When those beliefs transcend their correct place in moderating
Private behaviour then, as they say, the buck must stop.

Any system of belief that condones
The butchery of citizens
Whether in Bali, New York or the remotest villages of
Algeria or wherever else this pestilential
Terror has struck over the past decades of increasing horror,
Has to be evaluated in terms of
Its final objective, which is to enslave the mind
And shackle it to darkness.

This layman and secularist has to
Interpret that desired outcome of the Fundamentalist
(Of whatever creed)
Using the objective evidence
Presented by those places which have succumbed to the terror
Of religious oppression.

Away with this horror
Down with all the priests of darkness with their infernal cargo cults.

What priests and other brainwashed acolytes may choose to believe in the sanctity of their heads in private places
Is their right.

It is not their right
To demand that if the rest of us do not share their onanistic
Obsession that we must die.
This is both barbaric and absurd.

To put it more simply their position is the metaphysical equivalent of
Claiming that all those
Who will not drive, say, a Mercedes Benz
Should be put to death for failing to drive the 'true motorcar'�
Or failing to achieve 'the true driving experience'�.

We see this
As absurd. Why is it that the marketers of
Soul food should expect us to see their musings as being any different or
Subject to alternative rules just because
The product they sell
Is more intangible than
Life assurance or the sales of advertising space?
At best they sell a conjecture at worst they peddle
Lies.

Increasingly we citizens of a secular State
View people of such a fanatical disposition (favouring
The world of unreason)
As objects of pity: the lunatics of Bedlam, at best
Sad confused people who seek the certainty in ghost stories, ghost written
For them by countless nameless monks
Who gathered about them nostrums,
Like so much unsophisticated advertising fluff
And public relations hype.

That we should let them kill us
In their despair at our amusement
Is intolerable and may require that we set aside
Our indulgence in the
Interests of our own survival.

.NiK(2002)






































God is a thought that makes cooked all that is straight, and
Makes turn whatever
Stands. How? Should time be gone and all that is
Impermanent a mere lie? '�. Evil I call it and
Misanthropic ' all this teaching of the One and the Plenum
And the Unmoved and the Sated
And the Permanent. All the permanent --- that is only
A parable
And the poets lie too much.

Nietzsche

Song of Victory

I dreamt I was a Moonman*
Flying out up to a star
Playing to get ready
On a country rock guitar

We passed a truck of coffins
On our way to launch the ship
One fell off the back
I saw that it would fit

I knew it was an omen
That would flicker and come back
That I should become famous
in my shiny new straw hat.

Sing a song for flying
Sing a song for joy
Sing a song of happiness
'cause I'm a lucky boy.

I had a trusty shooter
Tucked underneath my arm
Launch men came, i altered it:
Another improved yarn.

We strummed the old guitar
In the veld outside my house
Saw outer space was starry
Quieter than a mouse

Hooray, hooray! Hooray, we sang
The place was filled with glee
Cause we were happy Moonmen
And the team included me.

.NiK[1994]
'� Moonman: early sci-fi movies of the old Flash Gordon genres would often call cosmonauts by the more restrictive, ceiling limited name, 'moonmen'�.
'� The poet calls this a 'Klenzing'� [sic] piece. It followed an horrific incident which the poet survived, albeit badly hurt. This piece, from a dream sequence, came some ten weeks after the event. After reading it a trauma counsellor he was seeing, told him he needn't visit her again. The Klenzing had started, she said.





Haiku for Leigh Matthews: * After Bond.

Sweet child lies here
plucked too early left
cold one winter's night.

.NiK[04]

Student and loved child of distraught parents: abducted at random from the car park of Bond University in Jozi, was ransomed and then murdered. 2004. R.I.P.
Those elusive levers of power.

I want to get my hands on the levers of power, he said with ponderous authority.
I have found them
And now I intend to get my hands on them and then I shall wield a stick and tell all those people that they now have to contend with me.

Gosh, they all thought what is he going to do?
He didn't know this of course, (that they all thought at all) he was locked into his own fantasy, anticipating glory and like everyone else on the planet he could at best be a legend in his own mind.
He hoped 'they' admired him: suspected they despised him
How can you do that? Perhaps
In reality no one knew him
Truly could he rot in his office for days before anyone noticed the smell?
Nonetheless he believed he had his hands on the levers.

What were these levers?

They were illusion, masquerade and
Subterfuge
A smokescreen for an empty space where levers grew; and have now have moved
to some
Other place where we
aren't.
.NiK(03)



'Real we are entirely , and without belief and superstition. You
are walking refutations of all belief and
you break the limbs of all thought.'�

Nietzsche



Conschmiracy

I couldn't find the things I wanted today, they're in
The computer somewhere,
Probably neatly filed in place
Under a name I've given it
And a category I deemed appropriate at the time.

When I read of hackers entering our domain
And looting the contents
Of one's hard drive and thus
Becoming privy to these thoughts
I wonder if they find the things I can't.

Were I a conspiracy theorist I should believe that 'they'
Had taken
My thoughts away
And that is why I can't find them.


.NiK[2002]


18/4/00

Rehearsing lines from Nietzsche and occasional others rearranged
and orchestrated by the poet: for Friederich.

Greeks are intellectual
pessimists
while classicists are windbags, and triflers:
notwithstanding that some of my closest friends and allies are
Classicists and
Philistines.
The Greeks were people who could transform the ordinary
into religion
and fill the world with symbolism.

Why should we despise ourselves is that such a thing to do?
We reject symbolism, is that a problem?
We do our jobs.
and don't fool around with anyone but Jesus.
Nevertheless
(and notwithstanding)
following all these alleged miracles
the people did harden
their hearts
and did seek to kill the
unbelievers

Twisted sacral bigots'�killing each other for words
from a book no one has the capacity to grasp:
an unlimited context

So go with the flow.
Pretend there are shadows on the walls
and that they have meaning.
They have no meaning
I alone have meaning:
you never asked me for guidance,
you made me think that I needed yours.

We celebrate the feast of feasts
and newer noontide sleeps,
piping and singing on
smooth rocky paths.
This insight of ours vies, with that
too devoid, of all that
gives pleasure



The figs are falling from the tree.
They are all fine and sweet:
now I walk around in my student's coat
slap this or that man on the
shoulder.
Sing me
a new song.
The world is transfigured.
What a change. What a change!

I sing you the superman.
I teach you the superman.
Can you conceive a GOD?
How can you create a GOD?
Nobody yet knows'�what is bad'�?
What good?
All that proceeds from weakness.
Behold this gateway: heal
your soul. The world is deeper than
day can
comprehend.

The strongest and most
evil
spirits
have hitherto advanced mankind.
The idea that
I want to preserve myself
for the great
struggle turns
on
every
ascendancy.

In the last resort I would much rather
have been
a professor at Basel
than God:
but I did not dare to carry my private egoism so far as to
neglect the
creation of the world.

Dionysus Lives*.

.NiK(00)


* In the period before his eventual death, and after his famous breakdown Nietzsche regularly signed his work Dionysus. Having played him for nearly a year eventually, I could understand why although I doubt that I could explain it'�maybe it's in here somewhere.




The whole of history is the refutation by experiment of
the principle
of the so-called 'moral world order'�

Nietzsche







6/10/2000

Running on auto.

Any task that takes longer than a few
Seconds already has the
Smell
Of
Death.
Sensing so much
Opportunity we move constantly
Looking for the hit:
Looking for that
Moment
When the gears begin to fit.
The moment will appear
The wheel slip into gear.

We are playing chess with ourselves
In a virtual game simulated to appear real
Setting ourselves obstacles to overcome
Predicting ourselves
How long can we play the game?
How long should we sustain
The thrusting search for what we seek:
To move the universe itself to weep?

.NiK[2000]








'Why did mankind have to
Take seriously the brain afflictions of
Sick web-spinners? They
Have paid dearly for it'�

Twilight of the Idols
Nietzsche
On Race

I'm fully aware that it's around
It's like daytime
Or nighttime
Or the air
That we breathe. It's
There
All the time
In your face.

If you want
It to be
And the only real difference
With this and that
Is we don't
Think about the air
Or
The fact of day
Or night

These are things that just are'�
And they don't really mean anything of
Themselves

So too with race;
Inconsequential
Really.
Immaterial
Really
To the day's final needs:
To live and then die.

.NiK (03)








Topographic lowlights.

And no one cared that they remembered
Or not;
Chose to set aside the wounds
Or
Not
Allowing memory to construct
An edifice
To vainglorious'�
Vainglorious?
Hope?
Telling us the stuff
That we all know already
Spoken
Hearsay
Repeat it every day
Until you forget to remember
What you wont
Remember to forget.

It would be easy to create
A conspiracy
Some hands here: ears to mouths there.
Need to know;
Compartmentalise
Fragments of information,
Hide the picture of the
Territory:
Issue a map of a portion
Of the part which
Is all.

So'�thus'�an old man remembers,
Blinking at the lights
And the all-action cameras,
About a conversation he
Once had with Werner von Braun,
Regarding the 'bad man' and Eva
Not von Braun.

He remembers too
The stories he was fed
Of a demagogue's life: like fragments
Of blotting paper
Soaking up minute infinities
Of a tiny battered segment
Of the usable universe.

She was like a picture on the wall to
him, he said.

.NiK[00]


Sam* says: mediocrity rules.

Sam says that the great
Thing about mediocrity
Is that one is always
At one's best.

If you are not working right at the edge then you are
Taking up too
Much space
Move beyond the margins to the
Liminal
Crevasses where the
Real niches are.

Avoid that world overwhelmed by Kippers
Disguised in human form: Janus faced without backbone.
For in such a place the bad guys thrive because at all times in relationships
Two is less than one.

So it was then at that moment when the old
Retro Pontiac Firebird [circa seventy something]
Perched on ungainly wheels, slid up to
The traffic lights, slotted into place next to
An equally cadaverous
Bright yellow spoon-style-fuck-for-ever Porsche
Complete with sexual accessory.

Third slot went to a millennium coated up
Arsed A four by Audi. The grand arena prescribed today
For intimations of mediocrity: the deserted Booysens road
At the place that beyond its focal point,
Moves to become Klipriver Drive.

Fumes oozed. The roaring blast of engine oil blended discordantly: old valves, clankety
Pistons
Smooth bored performance exhaust tubes by
Practical piping.

Realising that contemporary mediocrity has to prevail
Over rugged buggered individualism'�I said to me in the mirror
That I would put my money on the
A four.

And so they performed for me: their sole
Audience, pottering around in the blast line of multiple noxious fumes
Behind the juggernauts.

Yes. Yes! Yes.

The A four won: no contest.

.NiK[00]


* Sam played Gast, Nietzsche's friend and transcriber of much of his work.


A fine right fellow

I met a Nietzschean
Gynaecologist with hands
Like
Fine
Sprung
Steel
He said he'd greased his
Fingers before he went to feel
The filleted side of beef that
We were braaing on the grill

.NiK[00]

Dilemma story

One of the great problems
Of being attached to an anchor
Is that movement becomes
Relatively restricted.

The more anchored the anchor
The more restricted the movement
No matter the length of the line.

When no one moved much
The world was such
That the process was often effective
And as distances shrink
Cords develop a kink
And become tenuous with opportunity's invective.

So the dilemma grows
How to stay on your toes
While keeping the chain long and taut: stretching the kink
Without stretching the link: have it all.
What a wonderful thought.

.NiK[00]


Internet Frustration

The providers of services
At the premises of service providers
Are such polite and pleasant
Non-peopledisembodiedvoiceswhichseem
Toseeinsideemye