these mountains echo the last kalahari bushman song :: 

            :: a shaman story on the birth of art & consciousness

rhythmically I moved
stomping in a circular dance
clapping my hands & slapping my thighs
clicking my tongue & chanting low humming tones
slipping in & out of a hologram dissolving trance
with a forceful energy
inexplicably electric within me
considering my five day fast preceding
only broken by rubbing Hoodai cactus gel
on my gums & chewing on Buchu leaves

                                ti ǀkhats ta ǂna ǂgao?

I took flight in the camel thorn bonfire smoke
rising out from the cauldron of boiling noru noru tea
drawn from root bulbs of the ferraria glutinosa flowering stems
& with a thick layer of eland & kudu fat 
smeared on my forehead, forearms & shins
I soared above the dunes of the Kalahari desert
my closed eyes mesmerised
by the yellow devil thorn flowers
melting into honeycomb shaped
geometric chevrons & vortices

                                                      !gâi daoba ūhâ re

after a dozen hours the ravenous fire within my belly
began to smolder into a dying ember
& my flight traversing realms of the dead & unborn
animal, alien, half-human & all life forms in between
began descending before landing in a narrow tunnel
within the Drakensberg mountains
where my transformation
into a herbal medicine man was complete
in that cradle of mankind
reborn
I came to be an interdimensional
shape shifting shaman
eternally
   
                  !gui gowa-i ge tatse ǂâusa tama hâ

painted rock face cave walls retell the origin story
paired with the transcendent ability
to share & pass down intergenerational history
using the vast vices of art
  those mountains echo the birth of consciousness
a cyclical fairytale of suffering
known as the human condition