The Heritage
I think of those incredible men
who lived out legendary lives
and with a whip, horse and oxen
a rifle or two and the black book in the haversack
crossed the wild plains, mountains and rivers
and conquered lions, buffalo and all savage beasts
and made their houses in the wilderness,
developing farms, towns and cities
and even faced deadly enemies in war
and wanted a life and nothing more,
but now they pass into the remembering,
becoming a piece of ancient history
and yet again we are facing savage men,
a self obsessed government
that inflicts unfair laws
and the power of that black book
stays eternally with us
and our families
and we are driven to our knees
having to trust and believe
that the almighty Lord is with us still
like our fathers did.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Related quotes
Savage
Words of power are killing me
While the sun displays its teeth.
All mockery is laughing
All violence is cheap.
She said...
"These are my guns
These are my furs
This is my living room."
"You can play with me there sometimes
If you catch me in the mood."
Savage
Savage
Savage
You savage...
She said...
"I have this unhappiness
To wear around my neck."
"It's a pretty piece of jewellery
To show what I protect."
She said...
"Everything is fiction
All cynic to the bone."
"So don't ask me to stay with you
Don't ask to see me home."
Savage
Savage
Savage
You savage...
song performed by by Eurythmics from Revenge
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Book Of Black Holes
You be on yourside
I'll be on my side
In between there is a book
the book of Black Holes
You sling your arrows
I'll dodge the harrows
And then I'll record it
In the book of Black Holes
There be many pages
that goes through many stages
In the end you may find it
In the book of Black Holes
If it's a five or ten
Even a zero I win
And I have recorded it
In the book of Black Holes
Your comments cryptic
Your words haze, eliptic
And like I said goes down
In the book of Black Holes
Your choice to be insipid
Your dreams are timid
Compared to what's collected
In my book of Black Holes
poem by Midnights Voice
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Supersavage
I hunt only when I’m hungry
Once full, my belly, I leave
The remnants for the beasts sundry
Neither I crave, nor I save
For morrow; that’s not in my diary
Bipods alas! Call me savage
To them killing is a joy crazy
For currency, power and prestige
Outrageous this is! Oh Almighty
Give us too some language
To fight out this nasty publicity
Let lions create a new adage
To end this mean human supremacy
That “human means super-savage”
poem by Sathya Narayana
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Mountain View
after the night of love
i sit on the bamboo stair
facing the wide expanse of
mountains before me
beyond the horizon of fog
and smoke from the tiny
houses five hills away
and down the plains the
winding river taking the
usual routes of least resistance
i have seen wild carabaos grazing
white horses running with the
winds and the black birds
flying high seeking their prey
of chicks unprotected by hens.
i am amazed by this macrocosm.
How can some be so greedy amidst
these bounty? Can his hands hold
all the mountains? Can his mouth
drink all the rivers? Can he catch
all the black birds and put them
inside his cage? I know he can't but
i know he will. And that is the reason
why we are here hiding in the bellies
of these big mountains, siding with the
shades of the trees, taking inspiration
from all the stars, the moon and the
boundless sea.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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What is a Horse?
What is a horse?
A horse has eyes as dainty as a mink.
The grace is interrupted merely by a blink.
A horse is beauty.
What is a horse?
A horse is a tree in a storm that never goes down.
A horse is a weathered rock that stays around.
A horse is ancient.
What is a horse?
A horse waltzes like breeze over rivers.
She curvets and leaps like rain shivers.
A horse is a marionette.
What is a horse?
A horse is determination, that never stops flowing.
A horse is fondness, that never stops growing.
A horse is poetic power.
poem by Lily Whittaker
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What Do You Really Expect?
what do you really expect
from the horse that you have
seen accidentally on the
wilderness? it is black and
wild and has no name to call
as master, and it runs as
fast as the wind, and lives
on top of cliffs and grazes
only on secret places where
the grasses are thick and
so green,
it knows the secrets of the
earth and knows where to
find water and food in abundance,
you expect to catch it
and caress it with your hands?
it is impossible! this black horse
is one of the horses of Zeus
and takes orders only from him.
tomorrow the black horse shall
be gone forever, and you
mortal one shall not forget
the griefs on the casualties
of the war in Troy.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Savage Earth Heart
Ooooh!
...let me see the savage
I want to see the savage coming
Crashing through your face
I want to be there
When the savage comes
I want to be there
When the savage comes
When your savage earth heart
Cuts through
I wanna be a witness
Or a victim to your spell
Crackling in lightening
Dressed in shadows
Red like a carousel
I want to be there
When the savage comes
I want to be there
When the savage comes
When your savage earth heart
...cuts through
Will you lay all of your
Deepest wildest secrets bare?
Will you let all of those
Rumbling old gods take rage?
I want to be there
When the savage comes
I want to be there
When the savage comes
When your savage earth heart
Cuts through!
Then I was taken smoothly
By the vulture of the soul
That hideous strength
That numbs the tongue
And he led me like a cinder
Through the fields of hell
To doubt my friends and to hate myself
But when my savage earth heart
...cuts through
When my savage earth heart
Cuts through
Then my savage earth heart
...cuts through
And the culture of the soul laid waste
song performed by by Waterboys
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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God of our fathers
With their eyes set on the distance
our fathers
trekked into their promised land
as children of the God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
After the murders on Piet Retief and his men
our fathers made a holy covenant
with the almighty God
to rescue them in their laager at Blood River
against a very big army
of about twenty thousand Zulus.
With their victory
they did not go forth
to wipe out every single Zulu,
rather with the Bible in the hand
they wanted to teach
other people about God.
When the Xhosas slaughtered
almost all their livestock,
were burning their own harvests
believing the medium Nonqawuse
that ancestral spirits
will rise to wipe out the white man
and thousands of them
were dying from starvation
our fathers reached out their hands
and in neighbourly love gave food to those people,
doing what they could
to try and save them.
When droughts, illness of the livestock,
locusts were ravaging, even when the British Empire
came to take the mineral treasures,
were burning down farms and towns,
were murdering women and children
in concentration camps
our fathers went on their knees,
placing their destiny in the hands
of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
knowing that his shadow was falling over them,
that He keeps account
was folding His Godly hand over them
l’Envoi
and now that thousands of farmers
are being killed on their farms
are being tortured, murdered and robbed
Afrikaners with qualifications
and experience, even artisans
are unemployed on the street,
people in cities
are hijacked, robbed and raped
I am praying to the God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
to keep His hand over us,
to draws His laager
around the lives and property
of everyone that comes to Him,
to free us from this oppression.
poem by Gert Strydom
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Book Of Life
Is my name written there on those pages bright and fair
Is my name written in the book of life
If you want to be up there then down here you must prepare
And your name must be in the book of life
Get down on your knees and pray you from sin must turn away
Or your name won't be in the book of life
If you'll turn to Jesus now at his feet just humbly bow
Then your name will be in the book of life
Don't you know that Christ was sent that from sin you could repent
So your name could be in the book of life
You will have a great surprise if you fell to recognize
That your name must be in the book of life
Get down on your knees and pray you from sin must turn away
Or your name won't be in the book of life
Don't delay and don't forget that from sin you could repent
Then your name will be in the book of life
Is my name written in the book of life
song performed by by Dolly Parton
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Little Black Book
There was a time you and I were everything
Youll never know the days and nights
I spend imagining
Yesterday is the only place
Well ever know oh oh
In my little black book
Theres someone I used to know
Day by day time slips away
Where did our love go
In my little black book
Youre always there to remind me
It wasnt just a dream
And baby in my heart you will always be
Picked up the phone
Didnt know
What I was gonna do
I heard your voice
I had no choice
I hang up on you
Yesterday is the only place
Well ever know oh oh
In my little black book
Theres someone I used to know
Day by day time slips away
Where did our love go
In my little black book
Youre always there to remind me
How it used to be
But baby in my heart
Youre still a part of me
Theres no future living in the past
You can dream but you can never go back
Oh no you will always be there
In my little black ... in my little black book
Theres someone I used to know
Day by day time slips away
Where did our love go
In my little black book
Youre always there to remind me
It wasnt just a dream
Were worlds apart
Youre in my heart
And there youll always be
In my little black book
Theres someone I used to know
Day by day time slips away
Where did our love go
In my little black book
Youll always be
A part of me
You always be
In my little black book
song performed by by Belinda Carlisle
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Pretoria (in answer to Mongale Serote)
You are like a father to me,
and probably I will not find
a more honourable father
than that which I have in you
where you stand strong, with well-planned streets,
great learning at your schools and universities
filled with churches, with God loving people
with a holy place
on the hill, commemorating the struggle
of a nation, against nature,
against savage human beings
and even the British Empire
and the salvation by the hand
of the almighty God
and with the statue
of fearless uncle Paul Kruger
still facing north.
My military service and my second job
and most of my employment
was knotted to you
and you determined my destiny
in the halls of government
and now father, you frighten me
with syndicates of foreign criminals,
making you their domain,
with drugs and prostitution
offered on your streets
and you wear expressions that brings fear
and threat to me,
being driven from my job
by new laws,
where through affirmative action
you see other people as your own,
even black foreigners from other lands
and now to you I am nonexistent
and now I have left you, have gone from you
to try and make a living
and yet like all father’s
I cannot replace you
and long to be at your side.
[Reference: Alexandra by Mongale Serote.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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The Chornicles of a Dark Heart Part 16 The open book's monologue
Red what is it to you black the color of death? maybe maybe not? anyone here play video games? FOR CHAOS? ring any bells help spread the taint more quickly? what might an open book write
what would a open book draw
what would an open book think
open books are predictable
so predict what the picture means
why is black black? why is red O infused? what is the meaning only you know maybe only me...
(added years later)
Maybe I'm the book, and maybe you're the reader
but who is you? is it not everyone
since I'm open, for all to point at laugh at, out of malice or for fun
because they know my thoughts, they know i love her? !
what did i do?
i never said i love you! ! !
how can they know?
how did i reap what i did now sow? !
The worst part
about being an open book,
is an open book can't close itself, can't have a heart
anyone can know all from just one look
there seems to be something wrong with being too open and honest
but it's too late a book can't close itself
can't move by its own accord to a shelf
an open book can never rest
so now I'm the book, so since im there just read
just read.... and watch my heart, my purpose, my soul, my life, me
watch.... watch them bleed
poem by David Knox
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0014 From the Koran, Sura 29
Remembering as first and foremost, Allah,
who knows of all your actions in His name,
be courteous to all Children of the Book; for
Arab, Christian, Jew, this Book's the same:
They share with you, God's spoken revelation;
whose God and your God are but ever one;
in Adam, Abraham, Moses, all one nation;
and unto Him all men, as one, return.
He gives the infidels their painful burden,
the faithful and the good He will reward,
for life on earth is but a sport and pass-time;
the true life lives, with mercy, in the Lord.
Surrender to the one God, in His Name:
His heaven and earth for all men is the same.
poem by Michael Shepherd
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Black City
Riding, crashing, charging
Run to the wrong side in the night
Bastard, savage prowler
Whip the engine for more power
Fast winds, highway, hell song
Feel the fog in the black storm
Darkness, black walls, shadows
Can't see the light on the road
Alone in a haunted
concrete fondation
Abandonned and possessed
In a ghostly mansion
Desert, ghost town, bare land
Dark street, create a fear
Closed lamps, curfews
Dead leaves
The black cat awaits the witch
Don't stay in black city
Your soul will catch the spell
song performed by by Voivod
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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One Blue Buffalo (Sestina)
Snow swirled and blew over the plain
the minutes melted into hours
the frosted buffalo stood still
solid against the breath of time
it faced life and death with scotch
colored eyes, affected by nothing and no one
each winter struggle the buffalo won
illustrated mastery of blue sky and plain—
wicked winds and flying ice could not scotch
survival that desperately depended on each hour
it was the buffalo’s time—the natives’ time
and without hesitation it remained still
history remembers lost time, still
it is accepted by most and accurate to no one
misrepresentations are drawn by this time—
what happened on the buffalo’s plain
or in the blue of each pond, each hour
history changes—reality is scotched
wicked truths, told through fifths of Scotch
through the gaze of the present hold time still,
moments disregard the buffalo to becomes ours,
the blue past of many is unwillingly chained to one—
ancient sunsets over purple and yellow plains
are prisoners of industry, technology, history and time
ancient senses remain unaffected by lavender, sage or thyme
they cannot revive what books have done to scotch
the blue buffalo that dotted the wicked plain
the petrified past is bound to remain still,
years, days, faces, herds, species become one—
books have the inability to retrieve a single hour
or a history that is the buffalo’s, the natives’, ours
when books are replaced by computers, in time,
history will be reborn, all of our days will become one
technology will distort this time, scotch
our truths, a hundred thousand sunsets will remain still
billions of blue lives will paint a picture that’s plain
our truths and a past we’ll never know become scotched
time is irrelevant when lives mesh to singular sights—everything’s still
one blue buffalo stands on a museum wall in the whirl of winter winds, silent against time’s plain
poem by Jane L. Carman
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The Voortrekker (in answer to Tony Harrison)
A track from a kraal
goes direct into the veldt
decked in blood
from the remains of cattle.
The sick Boer walks alone,
now abandoned of dog,
children, farm labourers
with a.303 rifle wavering in his hands.
Somewhere in dense green bushes
in front of him to the right
lions roar and at speed
one, two and three more
appear with tails flashing like whips.
The rifle is still wavering in his hands
but an expert eye finds the sight
with the trigger at his finger tip,
the exploding sound of bullet after bullet
are followed by a whack and some great roars
and the lions are no more
and like his fathers protected in God’s hand,
although outnumbered many times
by natives and wild beasts
stand a lonely believing man.
[Reference: Voortrekker by Tony Harrison.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Gold Rush Brides
[ buck/merchant ]
[ harmonica: charles fleischer ]
Follow the typical signs, the hand-painted lines, down prairie roads.
Pass the lone church spire.
Pass the talking wire from where to who knows?
Theres no way to divide the beauty of the sky from the wild western plains.
Where a man could drift, in legendary myth, by roaming over spaces.
The land was free and the price was right.
Dakota on the wall is a white-robed woman, broad yet maidenly.
Such power in her hand as she hails the wagon mans family.
I see indians that crawl through this mural that recalls our history.
Who were the homestead wives?
Who were the gold rush brides?
Does anybody know?
Do their works survive their yellow fever lives in the pages they wrote?
The land was free, yet it cost their lives.
In miners lust for gold.
A familys house was bought and sold, piece by piece.
A widow staked her claim on a dollar and his name, so painfully.
In letters mailed back home her eastern sisters they would moan
As they would read accounts of madness, childbirth, loneliness and grief.
song performed by by 10000 Maniacs
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Psalm 107 last part
Colonies planted; or, Nations blessed and punished.
A Psalm for New England.
When God, provoked with daring crimes,
Scourges the madness of the times,
He turns their fields to barren sand,
And dries the rivers from the land.
His word can raise the springs again,
And make the withered mountains green;
Send showery blessings from the skies,
And harvests in the desert rise.
[Where nothing dwelt but beasts of prey,
Or men as fierce and wild as they,
He bids th' oppressed and poor repair,
And builds them towns and cities there.
They sow the fields, and trees they plant,
Whose yearly fruit supplies their want;
Their race grows up from fruitful stocks,
Their wealth increases with their flocks.
Thus they are blessed; but if they sin,
He lets the heathen nations in;
A savage crew invades their lands,
Their princes die by barb'rous hands.
Their captive sons, exposed to scorn,
Wander unpitied and forlorn;
The country lies unfenced, untilled,
And desolation spreads the field.
Yet if the humbled nation mourns,
Again his dreadful hand he turns;
Again he makes their cities thrive,
And bids the dying churches live.]
The righteous, with a joyful sense,
Admire the works of Providence;
And tongues of atheists shall no more
Blaspheme the God that saints adore.
How few with pious care record
These wondrous dealings of the Lord!
But wise observers still shall find
The Lord is holy, just, and kind.
poem by Isaac Watts
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0282 A Necessary Art
There's art history, and there's the history of art.
Art history, you can learn anywhere these days;
the history of art's some other, thrilling thing, a life-blood
pumping its heart intensely as if it were a matter
which it is of course, of life and death..
and who will tell you, except those who lived it through,
who will tell you - except perhaps old men;
while the students yawn, stop taking notes,
and wonder if the chick back there
is up for it?
Who will tell you that the truth is savage,
and the world hard earned,
and art, painting, poetry,
a matter of life and death?
Who will tell you, for instance, how after 1945,
when war ended, and 'peace'
was the threat of nuclear annihilation,
the great French artists, who had made
their various accommodations with the occupying power
brought out near ten years' work the world had never seen?
As if archaeologists, searching for the past,
had found instead, the future?
Picasso, Matisse, Leger, Braque - you know the names...
and how Picasso, who never allowed any other artist
to see him at his work, opened his Paris studio
to hordes of American servicemen? Interviewed
in the great French magazine, Cahiers d'Art, in I think
the late 1940s, he said his art was
'une somme des destructions' - a sum of destructions;
and Wallace Stevens, in a lecture at the Met, in 1951,
remembered the phrase, made it his text, and
told the post-war world that painting, as with poetry,
was man's great chance to seek his self - for each of us
to find out who we really are - in ways, we listening
were to assume, which might not always be heard in churches
or from philosophers' petty squabblings..
now today, this may seem a truism put out by slick PR
from auction houses; who can tell you
what it was like to hear that said?
and by so great a poet man?
There's art history, and the history of art.
Who will tell you that the truth is savage
and the world hard earned,
and art, painting, poetry,
a matter of life and death?
poem by Michael Shepherd
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The Menagerie
The rejected word 'peace'
At the beginning of an outraged era;
A church lamp in a grotto
And the air of mountain lands
An ether we did not want to,
Or would not breathe.
Again, with a goat-voice,
The shaggy reed-pipes sing.
While sheep and oxen grazed
On fertile pastures,
And friendly eagles perched
On the shoulders of sleepy crags --
A German reared an eagle,
A lion submitted to a Briton,
And a Gallic comb appeared
From a rooster's crest.
But now the savage has captured
The sacred mace of Heracles,
The black earth has dried up,
Ungrateful, as before.
I will get the withered wand
And draw the fire from it;
Let the startled beasts go away
With me into the deaf night.
The cock, the lion, the dark brown
Eagle, the affectionate bear --
We shall build a chamber for war,
And warm the wild beasts' hides.
But I sing the wine [*] of the times --
The font of Italic speech --
And in a Great-Aryan cradle,
Slavonic and Germanic flax!
Italy, is it really worth
Disturbing the chariots of Rome
For the clucking of a domestic bird
Flying across your fence?
And you, neighbor, don't seek damages;
The eagle bristles in anger.
What if for your sling
A heavy stone is of no use?
While the beasts are in the menagerie,
We will settle down a while,
The Volga stays at high tide,
The Rhine's current grows brighte --
The wise man will unwillingly honor
A foreigner as a demigod
With the revelry of a dance
On the shores of great rivers.
poem by Osip Emilevich Mandelstam
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