Auckland Poetry

Tibet used to be a quaint place, full of monks and poor people who didn’t often washed their faces.Intrepid westerners liked the place, thought it was a
Paradise, even though no one stayed too long. Then the Chinese came and, as occupiers often, do destroyed works of art, the Lama, and his staff,fled to
India. Today modernity has arrived, there is less poverty, roads have been built and it has been said that there are dancehalls and painted ladies in
Lhasa. Life is better now chiefly for the poor, yet people would, it’s been said, endure the hardship of freedom and yak butter in their morning tea for a taste of independence. The intrepid would be back and write books about this authentic

November Love.

He was around thirty, dressed in a grey suit, but he had no arms, (accident) zip open, a man desperate and drunk, came into my café wanted a beer with a straw, that’s what I gave him. He needed a pee I had things to attend to in the kitchen, a woman, his age, said she was a nurse, helped him; back from the loo he looked respectable. In her company he was more at ease and joked about his plight, asked the time had to take a ferry home as he lived on one of the islands. Ten to nine the nurse followed him down to the docks, she didn’t return; but took the ferrytoo, I think, and became his arms, lover and caring wife. She had left a plastic bag behind it was full of crumbled up bread and stale cakes meant for the ducks; I went to the park next morning and fed them crumbs of love

Epigram. 

The CONTEST.
by
Bernard V. Kyle
[C] 2007

Those minutes of longing & yearning,
Time passing, as hope starts to fade,
Pulse on the pound, the crowds raucous sound,
Has the hype, been all overplayed ??.

Some garbed in outlandish costume,
The more staid, in ritual attire,
Face paint, an added adornment,
But all, with the belly on fire.

Speakers that blare, Policemen who pair,
Players in combat, no less,
Out to succumb & overcome,
No mercy, due care, no largesse.

The siren then goes, the last whistle blows,
For some, it’s all grief & woe,
While victors gyrate, & celebrate,
A win, o’er an arch rival foe.

Blog link to Richard Taylor’s truly enigmatic work.

If ever there was a mentor for the oblique it must be Richard.  Something of a mystery the first few hundred times I heard him, but now his exotic language both infects me and ejects me from any feeling that one needs to moderate language.  Richard Taylor understands the language in a totally unique way.  Syntax is not collected under circumstances that will feel familiar and yet like the scattering of syllables we are left with insured faith.  Or at least that may be how I feel about it.  Read it and see for yourself.

http://richardinfinitex.blogspot.com/2007/09/room-23a-inside-of-eyelight-inside.html

dogs in wars

The big, white dog cowered in the shadows unseen
by soldiers marching by, there had been fighting and
many corpses lay rotting in streets, hungry dog had
been eating, first reluctantly, then with abandonment,
forgotten was ancient taboo about eating human flesh…

Soldiers, who could kill their enemies brutally and
without mercy, had an irrational fear against dogs that
ate humans. The white dog knew this, any dog seen
eating man could never again be mans best friend

When the war was over it would try to be adopted by
a nice family with small children it could look after;
but for now the dog was hungry it had to finish eating
an arm that appeared to have belonged to a soldier who
had been keen on weightlifting before joining the army
and be blown to bits by a wayside bomb.

Jan Oskar Hansen

New Zealand

by Bernie Kyle
Copyright, 2003

Do you know where New Zealand is ?
Oh where, Oh where, on Earth ?
Is it big - or is it Small ?
Just How Much is it Worth ??

It’s not so big, I must Confess,
It’s in the South Pacific,
And Money isn’t Everything !!
The Country is Terrific.

There’s a green, green Land, & Mountains too,
Within the Easy Reaches,
And Walks and Lakes and Everything,
And lots of Sandy Beaches.

Without a Care, there’s God’s Clean Air,
And Nature’s Gifts are Free,
There’s Caves and Waves and Worldly Raves,
Why don’t you come & See ?

So from this Land, of the Long White Cloud,
There comes, a welcome true,
We trust you’ll come to visit us,
And enjoy our lifestyle too.

Bernard Kyle

Lost Pearl

When she went, she left behind her family of six
Her blanket and bed she lay on for seven years

Old Bentley slept on the well worn spot
and her books lay open in the bright sunlight

but her pearl brooch was nowhere to be seen
Something strong she could take over the end

a grasped for thing that stayed with her
like her accent or that way of looking at you

Pantry Skulking

My eyes flare wide
No tomb robbers would dare
Unyet you gamble with my skin

I do not wish to be screwed
Or unscrewed -
I want to sit upon the pantry shelf
And swing my feet

I can see a lot from way up here
I see through you
my transparent friend

I lost my rose specs long ago
In a pile of tissues on the floor

© Julie Walker 2007

Of all the online writing tools I have used, I rate Google Docs as the best. I hardly feel secure about a manuscript unless there is a copy of it on Google Docs. It will take the End of the World as We Know It to reduce that mountain of servers to rubble. I think my writing is safer there than my hard disk but multiple DVD copies and USBs with copies are also ways of preserving digital data. The main thing is do not rely upon location and that is why Google Docs is better than Microsoft Word which I long ago found too interested in how I was writing than allowing me to break what rules I wished to…

So now publishing on line is supported by filing on line. But google docs is not so good for a shared magazine style of poetry publication where we can find videos of poets alongside great work published by the poets themselves and perhaps edited due to constructive comments. Doubt it will ever work - poets are like other people: competitive.

I personally do not like competitive poetry slams or such like. I like that they exist and others enjoy them, but for me poetry does not inhabit the same cells as rugby or other sports where I want to feel like cheering it own. It is a little more like catching the elusive moments for me, just some poetry is up there in some kind of intellectual cloudscape waiting to be ignited by your words.

We keep on performing Shakespeare for good reasons. It is not due to how fast it can be rendered or how loudly we can stamp its essence into each other’s brain-space. I have decided to declare this site as open to a general membership as the elusive will only be captured if an online writing community supports it - not with rampant approval - but with constructive criticism or at least some kind of feedback.

My hopes that poets would adopt this publication easily are being hampered by the short attention span of modem users and some stupidity on my own part. I have been severely admonished by some past users who felt that I was not savage enough as an editor, or that the site was too hard to use. The trouble is that I totally agree. So, here I present a site that does work - does not lose your precious moments of inspriation and lets you instantly publish poetry. Plus its category and tagging system is easy and sensible - you can find your works on the site instantly.

The Editors can now take individual poems from the Wordpress site and publish them on the google indexed blogger site - which will be updated with a new design sometime soon.

We invite Auckland Poets to join in and enjoy each other’s poetry.

Poetry must be of a standard or please leave comments if you think a poem should be removed. I would rather see fireworks and broken egos with lots of poems being discussed than a few perfect poems. This is the internet - things may get a little rough! That said, comments should always address the work, the writing or the subject, never insult anyone or your access may get removed.

Oh, the new site just got noticed by Google - perhaps this boat will launch!

Piano lessons

I was seven years old when
My parents signed me up for piano lessons.
I went there twice a week
They were held in small room
Furnished with two chairs and an old piano.
My teacher was OK but still
I hated those lessons with all my guts.
And I despised to turn up in that room.
It felt like torture.
In addition, I practiced at home.
My piano stood in a living room, next to
A couch.
My father was often lying there, reading, smoking
Spitting pieces of loose tobacco
On book pages, sometimes farting.
When I stumbled
He yelled ‘You son of a bitch! Play it again and play it good.’
It was especially bad when he was drunk,
‘You’re fucking idiot! How many times you’re gonna play over this shit?
Do it again. Do it. Do it. DO IT.’
Sometimes
I had to sit at the piano till midnight
Sick with headache,
Hating music, my father, everything.
The more I stumbled the more he yelled at me to play again,
Again and again until he was tired himself.
Once I said to my mother ‘Listen, I don’t want to go to those lessons anymore.’
‘Do you know how much I’ve already
Have paid for your lessons? You wanna waste all these money or what?
Stop your whining, ’ –She said.
But one day I decided to skip it anyhow.
I nicked a knife from a kitchen,
Went to my room and started cutting my arms. A knife was blunt so
It did not even cut my skin properly.
There was preciously little blood but still
It looked like mess. I became frightened.
Mother returned home and cried ‘Son! Hurry up. It’s time for your piano lesson.’
I shoved her my arms. She gasped:
‘What the Hell is this?’
‘I scratched my arms. It was an accident’ – I lied.
‘Are you crazy? How could you scratch your arms so?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Are you an idiot or something? Anyway, it is time for your lesson.
Hurry up now and put on something with long sleeves.’
I grabbed my notebooks and headed to
A piano lesson. My arms burned badly but sleeves of my jacket hid all cuts.
That day the lesson went as usual.

Alexander Mikhaylov

Not
the vapour that leaves
the trees in the morning
that silent stream light fog
driven by limping memory
Not
the growth rings
natures spare tyre
marking age as though
it were an event in itself
No
more grain invested ceilings
or laughter at dawn
that moment before you smile
collapsed about my eyes

1/ Editor

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