Green Architecture
Poem 2008

From the highway, I’ve been watching a building go green –
First, it suppurated and turned white –
Overflowed its bathroom windows – a sort of soapy vomit
Which, when joined with other human oozings, dried to black.

Now, in the recent rains, this black velvet façade of running shit
Has bloomed a violent mossy green…
The lurid lime of a ferny forest floor, or
A 10 storey field…
And sewerage fed, a tree rises from the roof
A bushveld tree – 3m high and umbrella-ing rapidly –
… a kind of kiepersol, or a weed?

Hanging gardens, breathing buildings, and oh –
A vertical farmland:
Funny how the stuff of contemporary discourse
Could be said to
Claim a special niche in Joburg’s vicious cracks…

We are crumbling into green…
City shops sell candles, paraffin and blankets.

The other day I noticed a tiny plant
Growing in my shower.