The Playground by Lee Richard Kirsten

8/9/2019 The Playground by Lee Richard Kirsten

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Published by Letchard Inc creative rebellion since 1991

London, England.

editing and layout by Lee Richard Kirsten

Copyright 2010 Lee Richard Kirsten

All Rights Reserved.

Protected by UK Copyright Service registration

The Playground

cover design by Lee Richard Kirsten


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e Plyground


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PA ONE1994I held a job down as le clerk for Unicorn Shipping (South

Africas oldest shipping company), and after only a week I receivedmy very rst wage packetmy jeans bulging with a little manilla pay

envelope stuffed with notes and coins and as I walked home that late

afternoon, I got my very rst taste of independencestruttingI was

now ofcially a working man and boy it felt good.

At the proud age of 20 I still lived with my folks, though at least

now on a wage I didnt need to sponge pocket money off them and more

importantly, I could focus on saving the money to get my poetry into

print.But before anything else, it was imperative I got back the time a

week of bullshit had swindled off me and the perfect place to get a full

night into my blood stream, was at a nightclub on Long Street called

The Playground.

The interior of The Playground resembled a Satanic commune and

with its black labyrinthine rooms: psychedelic and ghost-like with low

hung ceilings and shrine-like murals painted on the wallsit was the

perfect place to trip.

Before I entered The Playground, rst thing: from the cellophane

outer-skin on my Chesterelds, I took the drugs cash set aside for such

an instance and slipped the leathery notes into the clammy palm of the

drug merchant.

Sold at 50 Rand a trip, all the merchant had on him were double-

dipped Sonic Hedgehogs (blotter acid), wrapped in foil paper the size

of a pinkie ngernail.

Heading down a quiet street, I wedged the acid under my tongue

and waited for the usual numb-burn of old copper coins to stun mygob.

I headed back to Long Street, paid the 10 Rand admission fee, got a

rubber stamp across my wrist and entered The Playground.


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PA OLost in intrigue, like a boy beneath the bed covers reading his favourite

dark comic book by torch lightI took the whole scene in; I loved itThe Playground was everything the church warned me againstit had

drugs, devil music, sluts, bad company, temptations, demonic presence;

you name itit was the perfect place for a young impressionable poet

like me.

Up a cast iron spiral staircase, onto a steel diamond plate platform and

across a miniature wooden suspension bridge that swung precariously

into a circus-tigers-cage made into a chill out spot, I stretched out and

melted like a Dali clock over a leopard print sofa, (I was) already 60minutes into my tripI was youthful and creative, fucked-up and

dragging hits off a big fat doob; my loud heart doing stampedes that

knocked out my chest and rang my ears with high pitched bloodsilver

ripples on dark waters and then all of a suddenFuh-thoom!!! The

acid gave a full introduction of Itself. No way, or point to turn back

now.

I left the tigers-cage, over the suspension bridge, and balanced in my

boots down the spiral stairs only to fndmyself back at the top AGAINonce more making my astral descent (outer body experience)my

brand new brains screaming out fantastic possibilities, but without prior

experience to harness my new gifts, I felt overpowered by moments:

blank jittery, scratched lm frames stuttered-awake with bursts of

living dripping celluloid spun out of colour and spat out of light and

back again to the scratched, jittery realmeverything disconnected

nothing going inlike feeding a bloody steak to a babyall I wanted

was comfort, for everything to be alright, to return to infancy and suckon some big racy titties and ejaculate in my nappies and sleep BUT it

wasnt happeningthe drug like a suped-up devil dragster punched me

all way to hell driving me from my coolnessI was the sane man going


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insane, broken and broomed into some psychedelic heap and shovelled

into the incinerator. I was literally loosing it AND caught strobbing

snatches of myself scurrying through the nightclub in zigzags holding

my head like a nutI couldnt remember anything, my name, how to

use my brainI was Fish pastenowhere and all over the place at thesame time WITH a screwball chorus in my head and the devils eye on

me like a cigarette burn. THEN in some ant-like sense of direction, I

found myself outside The Playground. I froze and gazed down the street,

everything new-shop-floor squeaky, scintillating and glistening with ice

packed freshness, even the dirty gutters shone and in the tarmac patterns

formed: each tiny gravel stone flashing brightly with sharp diamond cut

colours that twisted and shot sparkles everywhere.

I shook hands with many strangers that night, I just went up to anyoneon the street AND in all of them I saw their own version of sadness, the

sadness at being mortal: pathetic racks of squeaking bones and organs

burping mucus draped in dying fleshPEOPLE rotted before my eyes,

each pore in their skin like septic sulphurous geysers spewing death;

bodies moist with oily sweat that slid sick THEIR minds shrunken from

egotism and dumbed down dreams BUT they at leastwere in a good

place, all except meI was the seer, the devil doer, the poetsearching

the darkest alcoves of human existence, through a mean and crazed-updrug.

PART THREEI tried to concentrate on one thing, perhaps a loved one, but it didnt

workthe effort overwhelmed me, I couldnt even talk, communication

seemed regressive, on par with drooling like a baby.

Indeed, in the eyes of the world I was a loser, but to mother nature Iwas a positive force: somebody that failed completely to fit into every

category the world prescribedan underdog I wasa raw soul, doer

(with his own flow), a righteous personnever self-righteous, lawless,


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unpretentious, unbeautified, unimposing, different, but newdefinitely!

*My only hope was to learn all I could, to walk in wisdom and be an

example to othersearning enough dues to cut out to a higher playing

field, where the harem walls smell of musk and the trimmed mink

crotches of the sexy ladies taste of marzipan; this would be good.

PA FOURThe night was warmI looked up and the shimmering holes in the

blackness above were silvery as the chirruping of cricketsI saw a star

shoot and cut through the junk of living, then it disappeared behind that

black tarpaulin up there to a place where dreams come alive and from

standing lost in the middle of the street I retreated into a crypt hollow

doorway, sat and closed my eyes and listened to voices twist like prayer

smoke in the dying distancevoices discussing death and the queen of

the open road.

At the crossroads again. I croaked to myself. Well, you never learn

do you. Whats it going to be this time, what you going to give the devil

and what promises you going to make to God, to get yourself out this

one?

I failed to comprehend what it meant to even breathemy chest an

empty accordion case lined in red velvetI no longer had lungsno

hufng bellows to deliver air to my brains, my accordion long since had

fallen out and got smashedI even had no internal reeds to produce

sound withI was out of English.

On the outside to any passer-by, any poor soul not prepared for such

a sight of a human being spiritually smashed, I must have appeared

catatonic, burnt up, but on the inside, within methats where the

show was. Locked inside myself I struck the grandest oration known tomankind, a colossal delivery, a spectacle to hell, a salute to heaven and

a nger to purgatoryno one would ever see it, hear it, record or write

about itit was a fugitive dream, a eeting disclosure hailed by a great


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audience one day to be.

The crowd of friends I had made on the street looked at me as if I

were gone, lost and burned foreverbut if only they could have seen it.

If only they could have been blown away by the superstructure in my

minda great device, but the duality, the harvest, was that (inside me)so much double-dealing was going ontragedy and ecstasypleading

promises to God, and the same time making backstage pacts with the

devil.

Then I heard sirens and heavy doors burst open and an ambulance

crew jumped out with life support to resuscitate (me) and Get this boy

back from the dead.(and of course all this was going on in my head)

and I felt cold and realized my nal resting place was being prepared,

I could hear the echo as the grave diggers shovel cut the landand Iwas already dead and the voices of people on the street were nothing

but distant eulogies and there that night on the streets of Cape Town, no

mourners were about, no pretense, no fans or journalistsjust people

like me, struggling actors in this one-off play.

The End


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Documents

The Playground by Lee Richard Kirsten