Oranges and Lemons

My ears pricked as the shrill pierced my 2 year old innocence.

"You're a chop off the old block"! Carina Reynecke was the master of wrangling.
Her husband Ferdinand - a rooibos tea grower - was too princely.

“Come Brown” he gently prompted,
a reminder of how much he adored my eyes.

I walked beside him along the Cypress lane as he relived past moments –
The demon slugs hung about in villainous fervour.

Mr "Old Brown Sherry" Reynecke had pissed and pooped his pants again;
mumbling into his alcohol infused puke.
20 year old Ferdinand slung his father before the onlookers then footslogged.
The old man’s expletives echoed through the cypress trees and raised its aggression to  beat the ground, where the armadillo sat in silence
Ferdi doubled over at the torturous memory.Shame glazed his hot skin.

Even now, 10 years later his tears are like freshly squeezed lemon;
Fleshy splayed bits like Jackson Pollock’s No 5 -a gradient artistic creation articulated in a hybrid of dark, bright and bitter.
Carina Reynecke was beautiful and cruel.

She stirred in her sleep as Ferdi lightly
touched her bruised eye.
"forgive me".
He wept like a young broken boy who carried his drunken father before the eyes of the world.
He was fast becoming “a chip off the old block”.
Carina's toxic tease cut through the bone.
It punctured every ounce of control and reserve;
pummelling at his tolerance and glooms.

He loved his wife.

Elvis Presley blurted, "Are you lonesome tonight.
The tuner ventured Bohemian Rapsody
but Ferdinand Reynecke fixed his attention on the road ahead.
The Nivarra grumbled through the Cedarberg mountains,
one of South Africa’s most exquisite countryside sceneries.

I am an old man now but I still
watch over him as I did in the Cedarberg peaks.

My bones heat up as I stretch towards the fireplace that lies engraved inside a cave of old-fangled feuds.
A Crypt where “Brown and Sherry” have become a man’s best friend
and where the comely portrait of Carina glares in harsh judgement –

It is a dog’s life.

© Jambiya Kai