there is a way of committing suicide, by Sinclair Beiles

Original page from Sacred Fix, Cold Turkey Press, Rotterdam, 1975

On a canal, by Sinclair Beiles

The canal water
Black.
Black my mood
In this houseboat.
Through the bleary porthole
A cobbled street.
Sodden leaves turning black.
Shut-in people with bent heads -
Umbrellas.
A lid rattles on a pot of boiling stew.
Sodden socks hang on a string
Across my brain.

(from Ashes of Experience, Wurm Publishers, Pretoria, 1969)   

An invitation, by Sinclair Beiles

When your voice
Sounds of dark avenues
And parks
Breathing with mysterious hoodlums
When the last rattling tram
Has frozen
And hangs in icicles from the eaves
When your heart no longer stands
On a street corner
With feverish eyes
Stamping its boots
When the traffic lights have stopped
And you are through with calculating
Forgetting your train journeys
And timetables
Come to me
With your switchblade knife.
We'll climb the spire of the town hall
Together
And carve our names on the moon!

(from Ashes of Experience, Wurm Publishers, Pretoria, 1969) 

Exiles, by Sinclair Beiles

in the flower market
at night
beside the church
with its glowing ornaments
beneath the windowsill
on which she leans
staring at the twinkling city
when the dustbins are rattled
by marauding cats
when the shoes of the last lover
beat like drums
and suddenly a chorus of drunken singers
lights up the street
the exiles gather silently
to examine their wounds
and to plan for their departure...

(from Ashes of Experience, Wurm Publishers, Pretoria, 1969)

Sinclair Beiles, le poète excentrique du Beat Hotel, by Bruno Sourdin

Né en 1930, le poète sud-africain Sinclair Beiles a vécu à Paris dans les années 50. Il travailla pour Olympia Press, la maison d’édition de Maurice Girodias, qui publiait en anglais des livres sulfureux et subversifs, à la fois des récits érotiques (dirty books) et des oeuvres interdites aux Etats-Unis (parmi lesquelles Sexus d’Henry Miller, Lolita de Nabokov et Naked Lunch de William Burroughs). Sinclair lui-même a édité un roman érotique, Houses of Joy, sous le pseudonyme de Wu Wu Ming....Read more

The French Village, by Sinclair Beiles

Everything blue
Blue nuns
With hats like paper boats.
A boys' choir with open mouths
Like young birds wanting to be fed.
There's an old policeman
On a bicycle
And a girl shaking a rug
From a window
With a wisp of hair like a tendril
Hanging in front of her ear.
And there's also a woman wearing black stockings.

(from Ashes of Experience, Wurm Publishers, Pretoria, 1969)

This exile, by Sinclair Beiles

Happy
This exile.
In unfamiliar streets
Canaries sing
And women smile from their doorways
At the stranger
Who carries his heart
In his hand.
He walks about the marketplace
As if risen from the dead
An ancestor
Come to see his people
Trading old coins
Stamped with his likeness.

(from Ashes of Experience, Wurm Publishers, Pretoria, 1969)

Ari, by Sinclair Beiles

Ari lives with her mother
Spends Sundays with her lover
Under the pine trees on Lycabettus hill
While the church bells ring for mass in the valley.
Ari wears an engagement ring although she is not engaged
And dreams of meeting an American
Who will take her to New York
And so she sits at tourist cafés during the lunch hour

Wondering whether she can still have children
After that abortion in Piraeus.

(from Ashes of Experience, Wurm Publishers, Pretoria, 1969)

Czechoslovakia, by Sinclair Beiles

the tide runs out
and gangsters strut along the beach
while fighter jets roar overhead
in towns where tyranny clicks its heels
free men are exiled to the rainy squares
- screams like cattle waiting to be slaughtered -
rifle fire drowns out retreating music
and on the promenades where lovers used to meet
soldiers with savage eyes mount the machine guns.
men whose dreams were smashed by blaring radios
stare from cafes with frightened eyes
and flags flap like vicious whips
as dark curtained limousines
speed through the murdered streets.

(from Ashes of Experience, Wurm Publishers, Pretoria, 1969)

Street corners, by Sinclair Beiles

Many things happen on street corners.
Lovers part with a kiss
Salesmen smooth down their hair
And straighten their ties
Cloth manufacturers stare
At the hair on the napes
Of schoolteachers' necks
Blind musicians play accordions
Little boys hand out yellow leaflets
Shop assistants straighten their green skirts
And old dogs on leashes relax and take a piss.
Oh my heart!

(from Ashes of Experience, Wurm Publishers, Pretoria, 1969)

A song, by Sinclair Beiles

My dress fell.
It fell about my feet
Like a pool in the rocks.
Come close to me.
Lick my skin
And you will taste the sea.

(from Ashes of  Experience, Wurm Publishers, Pretoria, 1969)