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