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    Umlungu: The White Scum That Floats in the Surf
    Umlungu: The White Scum That Floats in the Surf
    Umlungu: The White Scum That Floats in the Surf
    Ebook241 pages55 minutes

    Umlungu: The White Scum That Floats in the Surf

    By D. L. Forbes

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    About this ebook

    Here one sprawl in the symbolic surf of life, emblematic one might say, bobbing about with the flotsam of one-hundred perhaps amusing, weird, poem-like erections and excrescences, jetsam sodden on paper.
    These poetic leakages span a period of over thirty years and are not cast chronologically or on merit, but taken roughly at random as a drifting sampler from my notebooks and journals; poems that drew my interest or particular remembrance.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateJun 1, 2018
    ISBN9781543932805
    Umlungu: The White Scum That Floats in the Surf

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      Book preview

      Umlungu - D. L. Forbes

      1.

      Poem’s Lament

      We poems do not write ourselves, you know

      If only we could

      I am a poem and so I know what I am talking about

      We poems have to scrape along as best we can

      Living in the shadows

      In the back of people’s minds

      Waiting for our host of golden tulips moment

      Which are rare occurrences indeed, let me tell thee, fore sooth.

      Then even if we are given rude awakening

      Few if anyone gives a tinker’s hoot

      The lumber of libraries sitting sad and seldom seen

      Untouched tomes save the duster’s gentle feather

      Poetry finally given to pulp 100% recycled pure ignominy

      Such is the birth, life, and death of most poems

      Especially for one such as I

      Lower-middleclass unmetered and a much-unloved poem.

      2.

      Self Publish and – Wait?

      No, No, No! guided the friendly people in the know

      "You have the whole concept ass-backwards.

      When you complete your books and volumes of poems

      That is not the end of it,

      That is only the beginning!

      Now your real work begins – Getting the creature read!

      Getting your work out-there by all means and many,

      Finding your audience and creating a stir!"

      Oh, I hope those in the know did not think me blasé or rude

      As I nervously stifled a fictional author yawn

      I know they are right.

      Yet fear myself incapable of entering the whirl

      The hustle and bustle of worldwide marketing

      "Could I not just quietly slip my works onto bookstore shelves?

      Wait for discovery by some famous critic

      Then sit back and watch my coffers fill?"

      Ha, Ha, Ha! the friendly people in the know encouraged

      "How you do jest with yourself!

      No, you need to pull your finger out and get a move on!

      Your windows of opportunity lays limited

      Unless you wish to witness your works of ineffable genius

      Flushed away down the pan of life and out into the void

      To join the work of other lazy yet hopeful would-be-knowns

      Finger embedded where many a talent comfortably resides."

      3.

      Marcel and I

      How Proust can destroy your life?

      He can blast your head off with irritation is how

      He can scramble your brain in frustration.

      In my late teens, I made myself read volume one –

      Swann’s Way and Within a Budding Grove

      I thought I would go mad, or even madder.

      His 1,404, 975 words, 3,275-page novel

      I often savagely bit and flung at walls

      Not held within, a budding Proustaphobe.

      In my early twenties, I forced myself to do volume two –

      The Guermantes Way and Cities of the Plain

      To prove I would not die.

      In my late twenties, I did volume three –

      The Captive, The Fugitive and Time Regained.

      If Proust alive I would grasp his hand and smack his head.

      Then, I wrote Saxonford volumes one and two

      My own 351,000 word, 1000 page novel

      Which no one, including my own mother, will attempt.

      Now I hate everyone I know and those I do not

      Who have not bothered to read my novels

      And with still more to go, Proustily so.

      4.

      Umlungu – the white scum that floats in the surf

      (Zulu name for white people)

      Yes, I am a Honky

      I am Paleface

      The Gwai-lo

      The Gai-jin

      The Bak Guiy

      Goyim

      Farang

      Buckra

      Gringo

      Dholia

      Bai Tou

      Umlungu

      I am these and a hundred other epithets

      Yet, I am so much more,

      Yet, again, I am . . . so, so much less.

      5.

      The Night You Farted on My Head in Marina Safeway

      When in prankish puerile fun

      You pressed your anus against my skull

      As I squatted, reaching for the Rosarita Frijoles Refritos – always on the lower

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