Synapse. Antjie Krog
1.
the pants are unbuttoned, the erection thrusts,
Lady Justice lies on the floor pinned down
by men who dig around stubbornly in the squalid loam
of their consciences trying to verbalise
that she was looking for it, yes she provoked them:
thus lust pushes justifiably
through the President’s doublekeeled
swindlehead. but behind this tableau lies of course
another: one foot firmly planted on gold, the other
athwart the land while one hand takes
the other claws from the unbuttoned fly
dangle Baron Boerdick, Viscount Saltdick
and their mate the Duke of Acorndick
in this tableau the worst has already happened: blood stains
under the thighs of Lady Justice her eyes glazed
nobody helps her up – between Lady Justice’s
silence here on the floor and Lady Justice’s
blindness lingers more than the injustice of three centuries
and the recipe works like this:
2.
one does not know who one is one
feels in a constant state of
restlessness of nervous distress one
feels forever weighed and found wanting
one feels too insignificant to be
worthy the reason for this one does not know
therefore one feels how even less human
worth is added to one’s dehumanisation
after a time one adopts bravado and
avoidance because wherever one turns
that White Eye watches that White Eye
judges that one is so nothing, so nobody’s
somewhere in one’s deepest trampled self
only scrapings of one’s hopeless
hurtlessness and spacious fury move
unquenchably one thirsts for a purifying deed:
something bulletclean-freesinging something un-
touchably cuttingloose something so
ravishingly violent that the white-jabbering
Eye can only shit out its fear
if one beats with an iron pipe until
blood spatters the roof one will
call the police oneself: look, I
have dealt with the Number One Boer myself
3.
between Lady Justice and Lady Justice’s historical
blindness the Men of Great Nations play
(corrupt of head rapaciously pituitary aflame
with self-seeking covetous power neuroses: pornographically
staking claims to everything) to keep what they’ve
stolen while reminding themselves to steal again
from those places they’ve sucked dry before
between Lady Justice and Lady Justice’s silence
row the Russian kleptocracy, the netherworld of
the Ukraine the carefree historical virus of German
corruption and an American president completely at
ease with his stolen election handcuffing the rest of us
with monopolies exploitation consumerism
wars and spy-systems for the day of vengeance
4.
the lack of moral imagination
feathers forth in smug first-world
delusions: we deserve so much
because we work so outstandingly
hard. in the midst of their structural
violence they set up courts and give
shocked interviews about the South’s
sloth, impunity, their Law
and Disorder, Profit and Plunder
their Casino Capitalism
their Bogus Democracies
their False Labels Fetish
the Typecasting Politics of Phantom
States the Bulging Bellied
Dictators with their
Queen Elizabeth-cloned
Fake Dreams men who have never
even planted a seed in the earth
race around insolently with heavy weapons
ray-bans and rotten cocks
5.
let’s use the pronoun ‘we’ for a change, become part
of the world’s negating vocabulary for us because you are also
us, us with the ethnic testicles and unemployed youth trekking like
a plague of locusts it’s our representatives who leave behind rusted railway lines
crumbling roads and the ruined infrastructure of towns yes we vote
for the ones with the international salaries national syndicates but who can’t
audit a foyer pot plant correctly or draw up a balance sheet
6.
how does one breathe in the midst of all this violence
killing corruption rape the open and outward
festering of hate in this country
the searing and tearing apart of children – in-
human the poverty the poverty the dehumanisation
of it the grandmothers with their pensions
and sparkle of children the phalanxes of youth
bored and scabrous fed with ancestral
sacrifices who hold up absurdities as tradition
how does one live amongst this how does one live
in honourable balance how do you keep your
integrity amidst so much daily violation?
7.
between Lady Justice and Lady Justice First World
attention is constantly diverted from
the true locus of our deformed world:
Lady Justice has long since stopped focusing on justice
and turned instead to the law while poverty is not a given
but the blemish of deliberate un-
equalising through the systematic deprivation of others
the law sleeps unwillingly in the beds of
the poor. all our pants are unbuttoned
all our erections are visible Lady Justice lies
with