For Zoe,
Complete illusion
this pressure to ‘do’
by whos lore
must we not sit
and do nothing
haven’t we done enough
combustion metal money
paper
I’ll pay to live
no roses to smell
losing the chance
missing the beat
with a jingle in the pocket
Love Vanessa xxx
Surrounded by my past,
I have discovered a lot.
I have discovered at last
The anguish of loss in my chest.
This anguish is all that I’ve got.
Surrounded by this gloom,
I only want to break through.
I only want thoughts to bloom
Like weeds by a foreigner’s tomb.
He fought for the word, proven true.
Surrounded by this mist,
I have apparently drown.
I have apparently missed
The time that still runs through my fists.
My anger could burn it all down…
In the catalogue
models cavort at Aotea Lagoon
pubescent girls playing mother
to well-wiped toddlers
nothing like the weekday mums,
lank hair scraped back
bulging nappy bags and op shop clothes:
no child has passed those narrow hips
Wednesdays
the waggers congregate
on the children’s playground,
always the same time
they must hate that teacher
The girls meet my eye,
make room for the kids at the top of the slide
they all want babies
Pumpkin Patch babies
Westfield catalogue babies
The boys can’t sit still
they dangle, one arm one leg
hanging
nothing better to do
except punch and fight and screw.
There’s only babies, and girls,
in the catalogue
and for these kids
that’s true
Tanka.
Ruby, he gave her
Unclean as coagulated blood
Looked like stones
Rocks should come in a nice box
She gave them to an orphanage
Tanka.
Ruled by the toffs
Social welfare, banks preserve
If you are poor
The state don’t want to know
Find a soup kitchen, my friend.
When first I came here
I was like you.
In search of something
real and warm.
Something to hold and shield me from
the terrifying cold that is this life.
Then I grew up, and
Seeing with newly opened eyes
I knew, embraced and owned
the reality that is this place.
There is no cold.
Only life’s beginning and life’s end.
That brief, hot and energetic moment that we spend
Suspended between infinity before and infinity after,
has no meaning. Has no point and,
most of all, has no end.
Then, if love should come
Is that not a special gift?
Is that not a plus in a universe of nothing?
Is that not a thing upon which we,
The mortal shards of this vasty universe
should hold, and grasp, and take unto ourselves as if for us
they were real?
Yes.
For me, this fleshy shred,
The thought of love is real.
This shade that seems so firm
IS here.
This momentary madness of a universe
within which all possibilities come true
Has delivered unto me
That, which, were I truly to exist
would seem like love.
I ask, and seek no more.
To have wrested from this cold and desolate space
the warmth that seems like love
In a mind that thinks to know it
It is enough.
I have been.
I have known.
I was here,
and now must go.
From one who has been
to one who may be,
Be sure to love.
For in that madness lies
the only true mark that errant thoughts like us
may make up this endless space.
From one before,
to one who comes after…
Greetings.
What the Poet Wrote
(Birth over an open grave)
A poet wrote:”Mothers give birth over an open grave. I thought it was harsh, most
children live long after their mothers die. A young man driving behind me was edgy
wanted to overtake thought I was driving too slow. I kept as far to the right as I could,
he saw his chance, but he was not quick enough, front collision. He wasn’t wearing
seat belt, died on the bonnet of his car. So much blood, dark red and sweet, but his
eyes were open and they saw beyond to a place I have never been. His mother,
a widow, collapsed when the coffin was lowered into a an unfeeling ground, she had
given birth over an open grave. I see a field lit by millions of candles in rows a man
walks among them and ever so often snuffs out light with his thumb and index finger.
But behind him new light appear, sometimes he turn go back and snuffs the new
lights out, mothers who have given birth over an open grave. He is now heading for
the part of the field where the candles have burnt out, only the wick flickers, quickly
he snuffs them out, but misses some, of people who live too long, those who death
has cruelly missed. There is no light on my terrace, a car passes by and plants casts
shadows on the wall, they have no colours. I’m past caring; tomorrow will come
whether I’m there or not, mother will never know if she gave birth to an open grave.
Morning Light.
In the morning breeze petals fall off the rhododendron bush. The terrace is
a magic carpet and on the wall sunlight and shadows enact an ancient play.
Dogs still asleep, the cock has not crewed, only the old man across the road
who fears his own death, is up; even for him there is solace in the glory of
an August morning. A plane crosses the sky leaves, behind exhausted dreams;
tired tourists going home. Alfredo is up starting his noisy tractor he will collect
carob beans before it gets too hot. He used to have two of stubborn mules
harvesting took longer then, but the beasts made the landscape more pretty.
I have been here a long time, this tranquil bay away from North Atlantic storms,
so let me soak up the peace of this morning before I set sail for another voyage
across the seas of reveries.
Cascais, Portugal.
First day of summer both winter and spring, full of rain; we are visiting her mother’s
resting place, a hole in a wall with a glass door that has a flimsy lock; easy to break in to
but who would want too? Her mother, born in Kinshasa, Congo, but upheaval forced
her to leave; now she rests in Cascais, Portugal far from her native land. The bible on
top of the coffin is full of tiny holes soon the book will be a pile of dust
While my wife pray I go for a walk, beautiful day and Cascais has a lovely bay. There are
sailboats and a few yachts in the bay one of them belongs to Prince Albert of Monaco,
he likes Portugal, the local paper enthuses. Indeed, aren’t we lucky? She joins me, says
“I don’t like boats and I don’t like the sea, my first husband took me on a sailing trip in
lake Lugarno, I was so sick they had to set me ashore.” We turn our back to the bay,
her mother and walk back to the car.
I remember a winter night in the North Atlantic Ocean, giant waves came crashing on
deck taking the railing and lifeboats away. Three ships sank that night with irrelevant
cargo onboard. No survivors. “Yes dear, the sea is a monster if it doesn’t takes your
body it takes your soul.”
World’s Biggest Rat.
A moonlit evening, behind a supermarket in Denmark, a guard
spotted a very big rat and he got his dog to kill it. The biggest
rat in the world so big it couldn’t live in the sewer, it makes
you proud to be Danish. With so much food around in streets
and in supermarket’s bin, could easily feed the poor. But there
is no poor people in Denmark! Vermin is a problem, one can’t
put them on a lorry and send them to another country.
There was a picture of the rat in the papers, a conceited guard,
we didn’t his dog though, held it aloft like trophy. It turned to
be a mother rat when it was dissected at the lab, eight baby rats
waiting to be born. More and more, long tailed rodents are
roaming streets, emptying bins and eating our babies in their
cots. One wonders if they are listening to the ancient prophecy:”
One day vermin shall live in the sunlight side by side with man.”
The Fado Singer
Our visitor was ninety two and could see far into the past
and into a future that held no trepidation.
Unaided she got up and sang us a Fado about love that
never lasts and the sorrow of defeat…
Melancholy, that’s Fado for you, but it’s also about how
sweet love is, and the art of acceptance
She lives in the shadow land of an impending ending
and what is new and timeless.
When she left she beckoned for me to kiss her, I bent down
to touch her cheek, but she kissed my loveless lips.
I was enamoured, and her eyes was clear as heaven;
a woman is forever a woman even at ninety two.
You detest me. The reason is clear,
And your welcome is always so cold,
But the core of my perfect idea
Has been stolen by the whole
Heartless cruel rotten world.
You all promptly discovered the sense of surviving
And at last started thinking what means to be free.
Full of envy, consumed with mixed feelings, you’re striving
For quite shallow things in the same way as me.
You are trying to open my eyes
To my being the core of the vice,
And you all are as pure as spring morning skies.
I don’t care what you think,
Curse me, things will still get better,
Go on, and I will sing
Of the happenings that matter.
Please believe nor my laughs nor my tears,
Like I never believe what you say.
My true muse will be straying for years
After one unlucky chain
Of the same exhausting days.
You are lively discussing your sides of the story,
Do you find it a pleasure to dig tons of muck?
You have nothing to do with my grief or my glory,
Or a lot of misfortunes of ultimate luck.
You are looking at me with eyes green,
But my eyes are still pure marine
And will stay so regardless the scenes I have seen.
I don’t care what you think,
Curse me, things will still get better,
Go on, and I will sing
Of the happenings that matter.
A Country for old Men
I have been into town bought a paper and drank a beer,
in the café where the old men sit in the afternoon shade.
I feel more at ease here amongst other wrinklies.
On the other side of the road, near the pharmacy,
the big clock on the wall tells us it’s five and the temp is
41 Celsius, but in the shade and with a breeze blowing
it feels fine. In a few years the big clock will tell us that
time is up, but others will come and take our place.
There is a vast pool of us in deaths ante room; we are
but tiny ants on a window pane so easily squashed by
a child’s thumb. I sit in the shed, see how cigarette smoke
spirals up and out before dissipating in still hot air, and
thought of the silent sighs I heard when a beautiful girl
walked past our café. We shall never possess anything
as lovely again.