The Highveld (Is A Shit Place To Be In Winter)

the highveld is a big road flanked by roads and towns and cities and smoking chimneys and empty grasslands which are always burnt for our pleasure
I’m always in a car hands stuck in a cubby-hole fingers in a tape deck clothes to my seat dust and smoke the endless flavour of winter
frozen dogshit in the suburbs where the mornings start white and frosty and the afternoons end white and crusty with streetlamps and Egoli
I panic when I can’t see the stars I panic when the sun is a central smog and my direction is a stoned pigeon wrapped in a map
there’s tea and milktart from relatives in cages good people who sigh in their homes and lock their toilets and hide their doormats under their keys
in the flat parts of the Free State the weavers flock aimlessly under dimmed lights build their nests dangling from concrete silos and steel pylons
even in the marshes the reeds bend and break on their own under a heavy low sky waiting for the slime dam to sweep them into definition
farming here is an endless wait for December rains an endless locking of gates to keep the cattle in and the locusts out and the violence in the paper
little kids buy ice-cream and Niknaks from the One Stop and their stuffed cheeks full of sharp teeth clatter and glisten and laugh at roadkill
Florida and Philadelphia and Virginia are in the states Monte Video the capital of Paraguay or Uruguay so why the fuck also on the highveld
the people here are ugly in their cars and pretty in their bars where hands are for counting money changing gears throwing signs and clenching fists
life becomes a fiddling for frequencies in between disruptive factories for foreigners and the retracing of daily steps to AllBran Flakes and uncomfortable sex
you’re never on solid ground there are people everywhere digging out gold and hiding places and finding bad lungs and unexpected sinkholes in bathtubs
people think of murder when they eat in restaurants consider rape when they go for a jog while Golden Retrievers lounge in Northcliff and think of Alaska
the city is littered with untidy people who look at hands on the corners of tables and buildings with the reflection of a cloud framed by a neon triangle
the open veld is rare and littered with derelict pigfarms and sootfilled sunflower fields with only remote aspirations of becoming Floro margarine
the cement is a passive smoker with filters growing on it like disorganised ticks and the red dust mixes with smoke at sunset to become sentimental gravel
I’m never here because I want to I’m a co-pilot a navigator a shotgun-sitter measuring the miles between historical sites and toilets for my mom
if you sit still for long enough they’ll steal your kidneys and while a friendly nod can kill you a playful wink can cost you a weekend
if I stay here for too long I’ll become an active abuser a topflight loser a succesful gimmick or a professional skunk with labels and a mean piss

the Highveld is a shit place to be in winter