Auckland Poetry.com

One of Aotearoa’s finest voices Mahinarangi Tocker has died in hospital at the age of 52 from complications of an asthema attack.

It is a really sad moment.  Here is the NZ Herald page of public tributes.  You can also add your own as comments on this post, if you wish.

Hope you don’t mind
if I take the time
to say good bye to
my left foot

It not due to hatred
or foul language
or even odor
its not a bad
foot either

It is just it
never does what it
has been told
no matter now carefully
its said

No the left foot has to go,
its done its dash and so I throw
it out into the trash
and the sole escapes
as it flies through the air

all in jewels it ticks
quietly like a crossword
the occasional clue
mutters somehow across the
room and soon you learn
to turn with the style
of a reverent loon

Saying

“The night has no morning”
For a man ambushed by his
Own shadow when going to
The loo before daybreak.

Animal Power.

The cat, on the terrace, is black and it isn’t mine,
it used to run away when it saw me,
now it ignores me, wants the terrace for itself and
waits for me to go back in, but I defy its unspoken
dislike and stay there as long as I want to.

I don’t stay very long, no point hanging about just
to prove that’s it’s my terrace; it’s not like a tiger,
jaguar, panther or a cheetah, no, it’s a regular feline
that I can’t get to like me, It’s really pathetic, but
the animal makes me feel like a loser.

The Inedible

The bush in the corner of the garden
carries berries that are pearl shaped
pale red and looks nice in sunlight.

They hang high up on and taste bitter;
the birds ignore them, to make jam of
them one needs a ton of sugar.

Yet this bush grows in my garden and
gets bigger every year, it is not for me
to ask what’s the point of it all.

A Farm Cat.

The cat sits on the steps outside the scullery
watches with indifference maids clean urns
and separate cream from milk to make butter.

It has had a saucer of cream and is tired after
a long night of wildlife, violence and murder
that goes unseen by sleeping humans.

So it curls up on the steps and warmed by
the spring sun thinks of nothing in particular
except, perhaps, of another saucer of cream

The Mortification

The famous widowed singer, a titled living icon
worshiped as a demi-god, married again, this time
with a woman the same age as his daughter, who
called her stepmother a brazen gold-digger.

And in the sewer system of the famous, poisonous
rumours seeped all the way to the gutter press,
the new woman in their heroes life was tart and
didn’t deserve him.

And to make matters worse, the singer still loved
his dead wife, everyone knew that, and soon tired
of the new one; so he changed locks in his houses
and started divorce proceedings,

And the press gloated when the humiliated wife
trashed about in distress and uttered words that
didn’t make much sense, and showed picture of
her posing in an unbecoming way.

So she got her money then and is it: good riddance
then? No quite she has got a gift the singer has to
forego, his baby daughter and the snubbed wife is
going to live far away

The Mortification

The famous widowed singer, a titled living icon
worshiped as a demi-god, married again, this time
with a woman the same age as his daughter, who
called her stepmother a brazen gold-digger.

And in the sewer system of the famous, poisonous
rumours seeped all the way to the gutter press,
the new woman in their heroes life was tart and
didn’t deserve him.

And to make matters worse, the singer still loved
his dead wife, everyone knew that, and soon tired
of the new one; so he changed locks in his houses
and started divorce proceedings,

And the press gloated when the humiliated wife
trashed about in distress and uttered words that
didn’t make much sense, and showed picture of
her posing in an unbecoming way.

So she got her money then and is it: good riddance
then? No quite she has got a gift the singer has to
forego, his baby daughter and the snubbed wife is
going to live far away