Auckland Poetry.com

All days are the same: morning, city, the crowd.
Life’s not going forward, it’s moving around.
And masks of all shades on those ignorant faces,
A few made-up stories in cheap street newspapers,
Sluts looking like stars, dirty queens of attraction,
Gross idols of so deceptive perfection
Are doors to the mind of the crowd, so hollow -
They hear the call of the dumb and they follow.
Now passion means lust, now freedom means violence,
Stupidity prospers. It’s due to your silence!
The weak ones are searching for someone to blame,
The helpless would trade for a minute of fame.
A couple hearts broken don’t cost a damned thing;
The hopeless romantics would give anything -
Despite having nothing – for love, non-existing.
We’ve made up this concept, as something is missing.
Believe it or not – I can cope alone!
I never wished someone to call me their own.
It’s such a delusion that having you here
Will help me get over this common old fear.
What’s frightening? Solitude? Fear itself!
I hide beside you when I fear myself!
But it is much better with you than the crowd
That never goes forward, that keeps going round.

Midnight revolution of collective conscience. Watch your step, there’s death on the footpath.

And they overcame him by the blood of the faceless,

Nameless, unseen martyrs.

Dead in the streetlight; flare and gash

As the eyes drop. Down, in shame, in astonishment

The just deserves of a life spent in captivity,

The last reserves of a generation spent, spent,

Spent, mother fucker.

And what? They,

The martyrs and saints and holy men

All bow down, last breath’s moment, bergomask

Bergomask.

Clumsy eyes follow clumsy demise – a trick or treat in the streetlight

Glare and stare, fucked through the face

Staring into space, dreams dreamt and time spent,

All gone to hell in a moment of dignity,

A moment of nobility,

Flash and glare;

A moment of purpose and fight and all they had lived for

Overcame, by the sense of blind purpose, that shook

And fucked them through the face.

Cold lead, footsteps in the streetlight

They hear numbers, they hear an incumbent,

Despondent respondent whose shrill exposé

And drilling words betray

Their true motives and cause and all they had to obey.

Fucked through the face; is all

Some dead, some never alive.

Come closer you’ll see the damage, don’t let the streetlight fool ya,

Buddy ol’ pal. Them fucked through the face.

This isn’t going too well, they’ll say,

All too late, I’d imagine,

As one saint falls through the pavement

As one they become, drawn by the streetlight,

Overcome! They’d said,

Now:

‘hold my head’, instead.

Don’t be fooled, my son

Life is forever if you’ll only give it away

for a rulebook and ritual,

Obey the habitual

Ringing of ears and killing of questions.

One can be assured

Doubt will be purged, once one is

Dead.

A city was born
of a virgin junkie,
And in him is life
And the life is the light of men.
Streetlights and shivelights and splatters on the pavement
Dictaphones crackle, creation stares down the barrel of a 45.
And the light shineth in the darkness,
And the darkness comprehends it not.
Real people in nice overcoats and expensive socks
Stroll by, content and satiated
Come join the cause!
You can’t buy this kind of publicity,
Dysphoria sells! Despoliation is the key!
You see,
(by streetlight, does it count?)
He comes unto his own, but his own receive him not
It counts, my friends, it counts.
For now, though we see by the glare,
Though we make out
Only shadows
And shapes
And that tall striking man whose self-deception is betrayed
By only his aching footsteps
We see him so clearly! I swear. We know who he is! We know who he is!
We have the cure, we have the vision!
Nobody sweat this life we are leading, there’s nothing to stop you believing
And being
Exactly what we want you to be
Obedient and servile, come join the cause,
Asinine and senile, come join the cause! It doesn’t matter what you see or what you feel or
how or whether you chose to get to this hell,
It only matters what comes next,
And this city knows, he’s seen it before,
Be assured, my friend, the end has it’s role to play
Just as the shapes and shadows have their snares to lay.
Just don’t believe, our city won’t be saved, he’ll burn with Sodom
And he’s seen it all before, everything under the sun,
The moon, the streetlights and shadows
Neons and burrows
Hide while you can, life does indeed squint in the wind
As you do,
So never fear you’re alone.
THE SOLUTION THEY SAY!
The comforter is here, and with hypodermic tram carts what’s more
They don’t see, by the streetlight, what and all
They claim to see
For they trust their eyes and nothing more,
Flash and glare and shadow and shape
Or love and life and time and space,
Love, and life, and time, and space.
Breathe, now
Let go – close your eyes to the lights – wake
To see above the surface
A surface of completeness and perfection that falls far, far short of any concept of hope
Its vindication that’s killing us,
Achievements you can hang on your wall -
Or life above the concrete perfection
Its satisfaction with sameness,
and love with not too much sugar
I’m watching my figure.
So it’s choice now, it choice
Choose life! They say!
The city’s not so foolish, he tacitly waits
And when finally the rhetoric collapses, when finally the white noise gives way
To reality, clarity,
dawn will be sneaking.
And the gentleman performer, as always; our city
Follows his cue, as the brilliant sun hints
At her nearing arrival
to the vista of hero’s and thieves, players and pawns.
Shadows and shapes and neons and burrows and flash and glare;
This is to them a gospel, a vision, a scene of prophetic clarity
But our city,
He knows better.
Impending, impending, expectancy bubbles
And boils in the hearts of man,
Desperately wicked! Who can know! They’ve shouted
And toted their rulebook and ritual
Always in the streetlight; religion by shadow and by glare
By eye-trap and stare.
In vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrine the commandments of
Men.
Shadow gives way, glare dulls to glow
Shape is illumined to be found-out as white on black, not black on white
And flash still drives on, but in the sun?
In the sun.. flash goes unheeded
What they thought they had saw and
They knew they had saw
And they had previously been so sure they had saw;
With their eyes they had trusted and their friends they had followed,
Now is face to face, to face, to face,
Known as they are known, no longer in part or shadow or shape.
All fragments replaced,
with
Love and life and time
And space.
The city, he knew, he watched all along
They sang, they cheered,
They lamented Jerusalem
In vain, in vain, rulebook and ritual.
He watched all along, their song
He waited.
The first shall be last, now that night has turned day
And the city he sleeps deeply, as should you my dear friend
For though this world’s at it’s end,
It’s just another role to play, and how vain to sing of the future and beyond
When the now is extraordinary, and you’re itching to move
They called it the end,
He whispered:
‘it’s dawn, my friend’
And there is your clarity, there is your
Vision of prophecy -
Not a decree of judgment, or list of souls burnt, but
A virgin diurnal, instead,
New minutes to lose track of and chase to the next
A choice has been made, overnight, in the streetlight
For love, and for life
no shadow or shape.
Watch close though my friend,
It’s not quite what you think.

“You’ve failed the writing” – you were told,
And you gave up. You quit.
I saw one more young talent fold,
And they just laughed at it.

If you are told life’s hard to play,
Your breath will still not cease.
How one should breathe, one cannot say,
As well as what to breathe.

You generated thoughts in rhymes,
The crowds wanted prose.
You know, they get harsh at times
From “truthful overdose”.

You proved yourself a zero, too -
A zero with a core.
And though your words are so damn true,
You’re nothing. Nothing more.

Execution

Ann had killed two men, for that she was fated to
die, there had been many appeals, they were in
vain; the governor too, not a man of much emotion,
had turned his manicured thumbs down.

Ann had been in our prison, five years now and had
become a friend and it was us, her keepers, whose
task it was to end her life, this woman who felt safe
in our jail, but she had brutally killed two men.

She asked us to be in the death room with her and
we spoke to her as she was injected with lethal drugs
and slipped away. A murderess that had killed her
father and brother, but refused to tell anyone why.

I was alone in the office when the phone rang,
the governor himself on the line, it was his birthday
and if it wasn’t too late her life could be spared.
“Too late? Ok! A killer, guess she deserved to die.”

Entertainment

Where I grew up the landscape was flat, the sky wide
and Christianity, demanding. The nearest village didn’t
have a cinema but sometimes a travelling preacher
came along and the meeting hall was full.

They were good the old preachers, spoke about sin,
forgiveness and the saving of the soul. Many cried
came up to the podium spoke of their many sins and
was forgiven, many came it was a good meeting.

Our neighbour was there being saved, the farmer
told me that he was always saved but it didn’t last
long, he tended to look embarrassed for a few days,
then he was back being his old sinful self.

The farmer’s wife, Alice, stirred restless in her seat,
her eyes shone she wanted to get up there and
confess her sins; I still wonder what sins that might
have been? But the farmer, Torvald, held her back.

Back at the farm Torvald had a dram his wife sat near
him, and at milking time next morning she was half
an hour late, said she hadn’t heard the alarm clock;
the farmer didn’t get up before breakfast at eight

Yes, they had warm, caressing voices the preachers
of old, and sometimes they thundered about sin till
we deliciously shivered, and when the collection box
went around we kindly gave more than old buttons.

Senryu

An Agnostic’s nightmare
Wakes him up every night
He dreams of God.

New Mirror

My wife brought home a new big mirror
She wanted to see all of her glorious self.
I was happy with the old one that showed
my face, upper arms and chest.
This damned mirror makes me look like
a child’s drawing of a man, a rotund body,
matchstick arms and legs. My image took
offence walked away in disgust, left me
standing there in my elderliness, staring
into blank eternity.

A seafarer’s life

I didn’t want to work in a factory and get my hands dirty,
be locked inside grey walls six days a week, as everyone
else in my street was, so I got a job selling books from
house to house; only I was so terrible shy.

The first doorbell I rang was also my last, the woman who
opened the door was kind enough but she didn’t want to
buy anything, I nearly cried, and didn’t have the courage
to press my finger on another doorbell.

Selling pictures of farms, taken from a helicopter, was
my next job, out all day taking the bus to the countryside
only the day I got there it was raining I had no umbrella
and the first farm I came to was also my last.

I took a course training to be a waiter, in white jacket
and golden epaulet I looked handsome, so my sister said.
I did well at the course and got a job at a posh restaurant;
but my hands shook I dropped plates and was fired

Finally I got a job on a tank-ship, in her galley hidden from
view, washing pots and pan, and hid from the world for
thirty years. Now, I write poetry about a sea I hardly saw
stuck inside a ship’s casing seven days a week.

The Gallery Owner

He had been to the doctors
nothing could be done, they are
not magicians and he had
a painting exhibition at his
gallery tonight.

Sat in his chair leaning left,
less pain that way, some thought
he had had too much to drink.

In the night he was saved
from further agony,
a sudden heart attack.

Many people came to his
funereal, a lyrical lady singer
sang about love and loss;
there were tears;

…and then the silence began.

Assertiveness

It is very hot I have switched off the air-condition and
opened up windows, it is supposed to be hot in July.
I hadn’t wanted to buy air- cooling in the first place,
I’m too placid and get swayed to do the wrong things.
I sit on the terrace on the terrace, in a plastic chair
that is easy to move around I used to have had a chair
of real wood before I liked more, but it was given to
someone poor; I think about it and get upset I ought
to put my foot down and say: No. Summers past I sat
in my heavy timber chair and smoked my cigarettes,
the burn kept mosquitoes away, now it is frown upon
and I dastardly I quit, but I do have a packet of fags in
the drawers; maybe one day, if I get pissed off enough
by the virtuous, I’ll lit up and enjoy my august nights.

A Summer Night.

A Bergman movie had an old man running in
the hall senseless, gripped by an irrational fear
of death. I sat by the bed pearls of sweat ran
down my butter coloured body, summer, but
all can hear is the ticking of the kitchen clock,
to witness a day’s passing gave me no pleasure
this insistent march towards timelessness and
there is nothing to hold on, a moment’s respite,
or love to assuage the vortex’s relentless terror.
Dog awakes, hears steps too light for my ears,
a night visitor and I’m alone and without a god.
No, not here, the cur loses interest goes back to
sleep. Night is an enemy; the shift is nearly over,
I walk out on the terrace and wait for the day.