Auckland Poetry.com

We did not memorize our love in waves of raging beauty
shining in the night, embraced in thrusting waist’s delight,
but rather faced our flaccid eyes as if required course of duty,
defiling one another’s youth in new year’s early light.

We did not share sonnets sung beneath romantic balustrades
while listening to the whistling of a wild and florid wind,
swaying like a springtime bloom alongside marble collonades,
but found in dumpsters lumps of love or lust at least unleashed in sin.

copyright © 2009 john durrin

Summer has a taste
I guess they all do
But summer is worth mentioning

Its not just the strawberries
Or the salt of the surf

It’s the lawn

It’s the colours
Summer isn’t coy
It doesn’t have pretense
Spring lies
And autumn pretends

You cant hold the others

It makes you squint before you see it
And makes you over dressed

It swallows shadows

It makes you hold all things up to it
Then hide them from its light

It s the point that the others were leading to
Or the place they depart

It’s the drip at the side of your mouth

It colours, smells, and embraces
And looks like the smile
God would have before talking.

The speckled snake is slain
a legion of rats roared like the raging sea,
the cat kept licking the milk,
I looked at the ghost.
Fish-reeking twists began to furl
The moonlight smiled,
but the rope did not budge,
and the post stood erect.
Bearded fakirs thronged the ether
to prepare a midnight cascade,
the blades of the blind ceiling fan
failed to cut to pieces the dodging bat.
Time ran away from now
to here, where reason
trod on a thin fence of being.

Copyright © 2008 All Rights Reserved

This runner’s low reserves lead to Race’s early end
when wealth grown fast is built without foundation.
This suntanned summer world cannot ignore, delay, pretend,
when Earth groans under endless exploitation.
I see we don’t stop breeding,
it’s clear we may be needing
more space for endless graveyards
in cities dense and smoke-scarred
What peace remains where man has been?
What land remains in pristine green?
What air untouched by smoke and smog?
Where man plants feet, he plants the fog
behind which all seems grey and dim
and that which does not bend to him
he kills, with kindness or with spite,
and catalogues remains in lights
that burn the eyes in bland displays
where all things dead glare in decay
at those who stare and memorise,
in photo albums plagiarise
what little left of past remains,
most often misty darkness reigns
Who can say with faultless truth
that humankind, still in its youth,
does not in future time await
the selfsame morbid ghoulish fate?
Since now, in screams and black disease
savagery steadies on its feet,
and grows in strength, with spite, through strife,
and grows till suffocating life.

copyright © 2009 john durrin

New Year Eve 2009

Midnight, New Year, fireworks explodes on
velvety sky. Gaza has fireworks too every day,
but they aren’t enjoying it the way we do,
standing here on the terrace of a five star hotel,
perhaps it is only three stars, drinks in hand
and idle chat. I feel wretched, wish I was drunk
but this place only severs wine and that is not
enough to drown my lack of shame.
Palestine, Europe doesn’t cry for you tonight.

I

Shadow cast a languid palette
Of colours, clear and incandescent.
Grey freen, mottled and blue
Impressionist eye held the view.
Through tall grasses dancing
In Parks expanse leading,
My eye to follow a shadow to a water fountain
In reflective notes, it played happily in the fountain.
And cheerful droplets rose to lead
Ones eye to the great leafy
Guardians fo the park, heavy
with their summer spread,
For the human need
To escape the heat
of the day near complete.

II

Layers green, deep and pale
Leading to sky, blue and dove-tail.
Rest in grass, tall and summer lent
Sink into universe, each breath spent.
In summer idyll of childhood tree
Each year expanse, reaching down to me.
Arm in arm, far flung and home
I’ll not forget the majesty shown,
And if a return was made
There you’d be out-stretched arm
Welcoming me.

You hover like a cloud
Something unsaid
Brooding
Dead calm
Ominous
Quiet
Distance retreats.
Proximity
Blurs
As we collide.
Sparks start
And I count out
Thunders taunts.
Still time to run.

Alight your eyes in sky, life is endless magic,
life is not what happens when composing other plans,
fatalism has no place in worlds where we belong,
only worlds we stumble waywardly as driftwood in the cataracts,
megalomania, mass hysteria, juvenile dementia,
deep layers of delusion self-aware just doesn’t care,
insane, inane, what world, what brain, what endless maze of madness,

what seen unspoken glacier cliffs overpowered vain Narcissus,
what vain attempt to voice perception,
what endless spiralclimbing vanity,
what outrageous affront to civility,
what shocking outrage to banality,
what pomposity,
what repetitive heartbeat pumping blood as like manhattan double towers fell in furnace centre of blue planet gone to hell after insane disgusting y-front headed demon speaking guttural gusts of jihad,
jihad,
what ridiculous convergence of a million different madnesses, subtly shades of grey to black seen prisms of perception excremental shat from thought as ‘God’,

what outrage something stunning like the rings encircling Saturn,
what outrage like the grass her green eyes pass in cool distant level-headed glare,
what outrage in the way that women move alongside water forming fountains of your fantasy,
what allowance lets her sculpt by turning men to stone with stares,
what pillar made of salt hit by tornado how legs felt like crumbling under weight of overwhelming Trillion Dollar Stunning Love,
ostentatiously paraded like a golden-domed cathedral,
worship at her feet rehearsing future times regret,
nights you saw her seemed as grains gone unattainable in what outrageous cavern quite colossal of vast and black indifferent galaxy,

what beanstalk grew within our backyard holding roots in silent air,
climbing skyward, all the while surrendered to the cirrus cloud where angels sat in silken robes and togas like our forebears did in better times,
open air philosophy, stared at grid-shaped cities gridlocked still convulsing like the arteries of future cardiac arrest my mind archangel with some miracle no longer meaningful in light of new technology,
words and verse transmitted in an instant cross the world,

accrue the mounds of bullshit till you make a molehill your own mountain,
stare with impotence at dreams gone lost in billion prayers at night,
make me rich, make me happy, make some woman somehow love me, make the barking dogs down driveway silent,
Mount Olympus how degraded, once imploded by St. Paul who tore apart the walls of genius, like his colleagues now in headscarves long to do,
three thousand years lurched back and forth,
three thousand feet did beanstalk climb until we watched this madness rapidly unravel
as tectonic plates form continents,
soon fall apart,
implode again,
climb down again,
and back to earth

what lax bureaucrat let rolling stones grow moss on clouds,
what outrage Mr. Ali, what outrage Jesus Nazarene,
what outrage Lewis Carroll, what outrage Friedrich Nietzsche,
If what outrage all imagination,
then what outrage true humanity,

what outrage all things better, brighter, lighter than the density intense of tribal elders
dwelling caves compatible with dustbin of the brain’s most grey and morbid recess
wherein you possess belief, confess your grief,
if not latent, then waiting, ready to explain
turns of temper, words of scorn,
as pettiness possessed the minds of neighbours fighting dog-like,
men cheating in the half-light run, women beaten in the midnight sun,

all manner of madness once was law,
still quite often is.

copyright john durrin 2008

The Occupiers

They came, the huddled masses, victims
of a war and pogrom far from our shores;
we gave them room at the inn, and on
our common land they could graze sheep.

They have now taken over the inn, stolen
our common land, bulldozed our villages
and uprooted olive trees to build roads we
cannot use, erected walls to keep us out.

They want us to leave to roam the world
as they did; we will not, we shall stay here
near our ancestors and the land and wait,
yes, wait till they uproot again and leave.

Harold Pinter RIP.

Harold Pinter is dead, we had one
thing in common; he protested
against NATO’s bombing of Belgrade,
I did too. He disputed the invasion
of Iraq, so did I.

He called Bush and Blair war criminals
so did I. His voice was heard far an wide
mine was not, but in the end we were
both ignored, and that’s what we had
in common.

Yet, Harold Pinter could not find time
to sharply criticise Israel’s brutal
dealing with Palestinians, his voice
fell curiously silent; on that point
we had nothing in common.

goodbye
goodbye smells musty, like old clothes
untouched in the back of the wardrobe;

dusty, like words on a scrap of newspaper
that flutter from an opened book.

goodbye smells like an old man who smokes
and ate garlic last night, and the night before;

warm, like tarmac in the middle of town
in summer, after a shower has passed.

goodbye smells like coffee newly brewing
somewhere nearby, for someone else;

like the kerosene taste in my throat
in the airport departure lounge.

it smells like your sweater, grabbed in error;
instantly you are around me. my eyes break.

- Just Mercedes

The Clairvoyant

Over a cold Nordic coast a seagull flies and sees
the bay between the island and the coastal town.
40 minutes each way by ferry. It’s an old gull and
has a blind eye and one leg; yes, you are right,
a real pirate I used to know years ago, it knew me
too when I was a cook on that a ferry boat, sat on
the mast and waited for me to throw scraps of
food into the sea shrieking harshly, it is the gulls
way of wishing me well.

This year has no ice in the bay, there was a time
when the ferry was icebound island’s folk had to
walk on ice across to get to the shops, they still
do there is a bridge now, ferry been sold and
is plying its trade on the delta of Bangladesh.

The day is clear I’m a seagull and can see the past
lucid as the day it is lucky that I can’t see the future,
but there is a name that warms my heart: Falluja.
The down trodden, the raped, took up arms and
fought the mightiest army the world has seen and
won a moral victory that one day will bring peace,
to Iraq. I’m not a seer, but the old pirate is, flies
beside me now and harshly shrieks, it is the way we
seagulls greet each other.

Bleak Coast

On a sea that is a clear green mirror the ship sails past
sandy shore on a day the fierce wind that always rules
this shore has taken has taken a day off. Harmony and
silence the sun has taken on an African hue, burning
Nordic skin brown; a day dream perhaps, can a land so
cold and remote be so sultry beautiful, dress up like
a Mediterranean tart attracting tourists by the scores
to swim in her tepid embrace?

A sudden shadow casts a net the unseen’s rest is over,
the sea’s skin cringes, heaves and slaps the shore in
a triple salty spray. Freedom, a dream; endless wind is
back the cruel ruler of land and sea, the shoreline is
misery as are the round shouldered, windblown people
who makes a living tilling unwilling soil to produce pale
carrots, small potatoes and white, hard cabbage which
they eat with sour milk and many prayers.

A frozen point in infinity
The lifeless flower’s vanity
And the ever-smiling faces’
Arrested moments fading.

Left behind to stand, constant
Many left the scene, hesitant
Pointless images, Irrelevant
Showcase of absurd life, transient
Strange faces near stained vases
Stagnant shadows and rigid gazes
The eyes forever waiting
Wistfully anticipating
Black distorting the white
Like the night the day
The child’s innocence, sweet
Like an eternal pretense’s sheet.

Shashi Dhar

A Night to Remember.

It is cold here in this room that has wall paper
With faded roses on, which absorb the light.
From a 40 watt bulb stuck naked and hanging
On a thin rubber encased electric wire.
Too dark to read too early for a bed that doesn’t
Look inviting, I wonder who many losers
Have been trying to find sleep looking up to
Silence and asking the same question: “how
Could it come to this?” I sit on a chair and look
Out of the window, dark shadows move some
With haste in the hope of getting away from,
Here, but they have yet to formulate, to where?
On a ship of dreams I sail, at dawn ice crystals
Glitters on the window pane and tell of hope.

…when sleep takes over too quickly
and then departs too early
when you eat
but there is no hunger
free to satisfy
when you look at the vast
gymnasium of holiday shoppers
lugging weighted apologies embarrassing
trinkets neatly hidden in gold wraps
so it all seems familiar and safe
but under there is a soap on a rope
or a penis shaped candle
and what percentage of Aunties will be subjected
to it at office parties across this city and many others
this ritual of adding to the pile of junk things you do not want
to mimic how they set fire to that great wall
how the man threw more paper at it
“its liquid ain’t it?” he cried
and the stock brokers were terribly serious
for the photographers
after having laid to waste the plans of twenty somethings
never fear, to the rescue come granny
she learns ebay to pay the mortgage,
and measures up the grandchildren
before the price drops too far

(inspired by “bang bang”)

Last night you tried to pot the moon
But hit the sky instead.
A bird fell stuttering, spluttering, down,
And smacked the daisies, dead.

Mow over it, mow over it,
Don’t wait for it to move;
Here is a target you can get,
A hit that you can prove!

I will not draw on distant moons
Nor sight upon the sun,
But wield unstayed the swift red blade
Until the lawn is done.

- new westie

Meat is Meat (a christmas tale)

Santa came running up the road his coat was open
exposing a hairy belly, arms full of parcels, asked
me if I was a vet, because Rudolf had broken its leg.
Told him I was a destroyer of Christmas, took delight
telling children that Santa was their own uncle Ted)
every child got an uncle Ted) but was willing this once
to help him out. I called a Lapland friend, who has
a herd of reindeer lives in a tent and is dressed for
year long winters, he gave us a reindeer for free as
he too was a sentimental fool and had eight children.
Problem solved, but what about Rudolf? We sent him
to an abattoir where he was humanly slaughtered,
(humanly, means he was shot in the temple when eating carrots) as a reindeer is too cute to eat its flesh
was sold as veal, which is meat of doe eyed calves.