Blood is the New Currency

Blood is the new currency.
Five hundred thousand Rand
a head
a shot.
This is easier than coke.
Cheaper than nukes.
And they will come.

The life blood is the animals now.
They are more than feeding.
They are life- the blood is the life.
And the guns.

The guns come from Mozambique.
But that must change.
Everything is changing now.
The Afrikaners are out.
The sanctions are out.
The secret is out.

It’s a market after all.
And there is supply.
And there is demand.

The “why not?" comes
upon you slowly
you suddenly realize
you are plotting
you are scheming
in the dance of the predator
and prey.

How you got there does not matter
now that you can see the heart
beating
in the chest of the mark.
It is simply a matter of when…













This is not an animal rights poem. This is not a hunting rights poem. This is not a judgment about any regime in South Africa. This is about irony, about predation as economics. This is self analysis, nothing more.

My Shameless Lion Pareto

He woke me last night
from outside the perimeter-
the repeated decrescendo
of roaring
of reifying
of his repeatedly realizing
the predator’s
Pareto principle.

He struck me
with his proclivity
for parsing Pangea,
and reinforcing
the sustained
survival
of his species
in the sum of his
slashing
severing
shameless
privation.

This anti-Aslan
his eyes and heart of darkness
roaming the voodoo veldt
of global capital
and trade
will not
lie down
with lambs
yet he sees
with eyes
of angels
into the deepest
anarchic
abyss
tail stretching back to Africa
whiskers
sensing
the alchemy
of order
and myth.
.

Beatrice

Ah! The soothing
of that whispered name-
inaudible, nearly...
yet shrouded in familiarity-
fanning the child-heart.

Yes, the wooing
of that angelic flame-
deliver us, swiftly
from this the darkest night
swaddled in your crimson cloth.