My Pen My Pal
for Khanyi, Phillippa & Lebogang

places I go, deep waters I enter,
boiling rapids

in addition to physically dangerous,
the morally as well as spiritually
dangerous places I enter, I leap into

but I have pens I get free
from British Colonial Hilton
to hold onto, to hold me up,
otherwise, I’d have gone under long ago

these pens like staff, like oar,
like lever in a car for shifting gears
and so very many gears
at other times pen is foil, is sword
or bat to play or fight with

in the kitchen, I cook with pens,
meals against starvation, soups,
my big spoons in cake batter

an English man who was once a soldier,
who had been to war,
unable to find anything at all
in the staff room to stir tea,
dumped sugar in, stuck his pen in,
swirled it about, upended the cup
to his heart’s content

my pen, my wand, allows me to go about,
in and out of danger
when I’m lucky, like Aladdin upon a carper,
a pen permits magic

like the racket of Billy Jean King
it has carried me, it will carry me
across the globe, around the world


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2007
3:29 p.m. 15/09/07