Auckland Poetry

Tanka

 
There was a time
When the famous kept leopards
As an accessory
Now they keep an orphanage
Of colourful children

Wick and Candle

I woke up in a strange room, couldn’t find my way out
collided with a standard lamp, thought it was an intruder
and wrestled it to the ground. Ice on the living room floor
fell many times till a Chinese lady, dressed in a short,
green shirt and blouse, showed me where the loo was.

When I came out I was very tired I’m a fireman, you see,
and there had been a forest fire, laid down on the ground
and could smell freshly dug earth and noticed, before
falling asleep, white coffins being unloaded from a truck.

Awoke it was morning in the mirror I saw a dead man he
had sot in his face a victim of the fire? I tried to get him
out of there but couldn’t break the mirror; and anyway he
disappeared when I got up from the floor.

“Not your fault, he died of a heart attack,” the Chinese lady
said and with that she climbed back into the picture on
the wall. “Your heart is weak” the cardiologist said,
“Walk an hour a day, you have to let go, someone else has
to extinguish the forest fire.”

Encounter

Profound tiredness I’m sinking into myself
body gone, weightless now but my mind
sees that sea and sky are one, the aimless
cosmic cloud is a redundant god that has
been alone so long it will see no one.

Mother Teresa tried to talk to It, but failed;
she was very tired when she died. There is
stillness here where there is no night or day
and a forever fading cumulous;

I have great fear, will not sleep before dawn
is here, delivering me another day.