In Cape Town I watched a woman explain that stress is underrated.
But you don’t need to be told that, do you?
City panting by the sea like a cornered animal
Pressed between unforgiving rock and frigid waters full of teeth
On the flight over I watched a movie about Berlin in 1989
The throbbing intensity of a city at the end of the world.
I am still vibrating from you, the anxious tremor of your streets
Toes tapping nervously, apprehensive, excited, tensed.
Fight, flee or fuck: the biologists say it’s all just arousal.
And so you swarm to Loop and Long with electric-fence nerves
With your dynamo hearts, load-shedding until sunrise
Late one night Jo’burg leans over the hotel railing with me
And tells me none of this is real.
Another night you invite me for braai in a sanctuary garden
While you count down, six days until this could all be taken
The Portuguese landed here seeking a route to spice
And on stage the woman says that a stressful life is a meaningful life
And so this what I will nestle in my suitcase when I leave:
A reminder that tension is a gateway to tasting life.
Some lines about Cape Town
