Auckland Poetry.com

If They Could Talk.

The walls in the bedroom were once creamy
reflecting the former occupants middle class
pretensions, now they were just winter grey
and sad as only walls can be that have had their
favourite pictures removed and placed on walls
unknown, in a new home in some out of town
housing estate.

Not only the bedroom but every wall, ceiling
and floor of this two story house were bare, it
only housed a ghosts that was adapt at stealing
copy pens, it was standing there by the curtain
less window in the living room (what irony)
contemplating if it should move into the office
block across the road only they didn’t use pens
there anymore.

People wrote words on a screen and sent them
into a void or to people who deleted them before
reading what had been written. Morning now,
the common soul of every plank in the house
and waited for executioners, in overalls, to come
end the old order of things and build a shiny new
city centre, with rings roads, supermarkets and
a grand opera house.

The Thing

In my home town they were closing down
the old library, going digital, giving away
leather bound book. I parked by its door
got as many beautiful old books as I could
carry, alas, I had parked in a no parking zone
the police had dismantled my car, an officer
guarding the pieces said if I paid the police
would come back and reassemble the car,

I agreed, but it began raining, they couldn’t
come before it stopped, staggered back to
the library with my book, but it had shut its
doors for the day. And did it rain, the books,
now a dough of damp leather and wet paper
gave birth to a ugly, slimy thing that crawled
back to the library leaving asexual spores of
dense, computerized words behind.

Haiku

Summer sunlight
Filtered through green leaves
Made old moss golden

Saying

Chase the rainbow
Not for its illusory gold
But its beauty

Senryu

The carob tree’s shade,
Soft as a dusky mistress
A tropical night

The Long Delusion

I sat in a café when she came in, hadn’t seen her
for ten years, she had aged badly, used to be slim
now she was scrawny, and her glorious red hair
had lost its lustre. Her eyes grey and bland, they
used to light up and shine as diamonds in the heat
of the night, perhaps they still did. She sat down
we had coffee talking about harmless things

Then she said: “Why did you always give in and
agree with me when we had an argument?”
I was going to say: “I wasn’t interested enough in
the cause to argue about it” but said: You know
me dear, everything for a bit of peace in the house.”
I thought it was because you didn’t love me,” she
said and for a moment looking lost.

I was an island in a stream of people, but hear and
saw nothing, what a fool, how deluded, I had been
all those years, of course I didn’t love her, it was her
warm embrace I had yarned for and still did.
When I looked up to agree with her for the last time
She had gone she had gone, her scent lingered in
The air, then dissipated as all things must.

Helping the Banks

The night is as obscure as homemade wine the TV screen
casts a grave light in a room that has no shadow; presidents
and prime ministers appear tell us of financial woes, even
the forgotten George Bush is there; they say they are doing
the best they can and that savers money is safe; but I know
they are as powerless as I’m, but they were the ones who
let lose the beast of a free market believing in the myth that
it would correct itself that is to ask a drunk to stop drinking,
gallons of booze and it are all free. “And your money is safe”
is not true, when a bank goes belly up the savers money is
the first to go. Had I money I would take them out and place
them under my mattress but since I’m broke I tell you.
They will try to stop you say it will make matters worse, so
let it; withdrawing you money is the only power you have,
you have little to lose, they will lose everything for without
your cash they are nothing

Cena De Amor (Love scene)
By IBN BAQI ca 1145
translated from Poruguese

When the night curls up
Its tail of shadow and
Drinks dark wine so thick
That is as lunching on dust,
Absorbed through nostrils;

And it tightens around me
Like a brave man grips
His sword; and its pleats
Hang like standards from
My shoulders;

That’s when I give in to
The sweet weight of sleep
It breaks up our embrace
And I push her away from me,
The object of my love,
‘Cause it is impossible to sleep
On a pulsating pillow

The Dancers

Went to a dancing competition, but little did
I know it was naked dancing by grotesque
old people, the audience, all young, laughed
violently, great fun this, till their faces
became a mask of horror, when realizing they
were looking at their own future.

Someone pointed a finger at me and shouted
“he is old.” and hundred hands began pushing
me to the dance floor and tearing off my suit,
but I was able to jump out of an open window
were I landed in a stream five fathom deep, of
tears that had forgotten why they had cried,
and crocodile tears shed at gravesides;

I drank it all went back to the window spewed
it over the shameless old people who had let go
of their dignity in pursuit of eternal youth, and
fled into the woods. Torchlight, barking dogs
and angry voices: Get him, he isn’t a democrat
wants to stop us having innocent fun, would
have been a good nazi, string him up.”

Pale sunrise, still- life- forest- a deer grazes
in the clearing, suddenly it jumps in the air,
a red rose is born on its chest, and as a single
rifle shot echoes amongst trees, a day begins.