Auckland Poetry.com

Your husband, unfaithful, and five stupid kids
Do grow the seeds of despair;
You water them amply, chain-eating with greed
Cheap sweets. Listen, quit it. Stare.

Your husband detests you. Accept it is true.
He needs ironed suits and your dinner.
However, he had kind of feelings for you
When you were much younger and thinner.

All hope is gone,
You try to flee,
You’re dreaming of the deep blue sea,
Remembering your honeymoon.
But hope is gone.
You’ll wake up soon.

Your children are craving for stale breakfast pies,
Which wasted a couple nice hours.
Your husband can’t hope with his hair and tie,
Your morning is fully devoured.

Brazilian tragedies on the blue screen
Appear your only salvation.
Most couples discover the same boring scene,
Routine is the pain of the nation.

Monuments

They have gone now not a trace left but hazy memories.
Leaves are getting yellow there is no denying fall is here.
I’m the sole survivor standing on a plateau of nothingness
where dust of wasted years, blows in the wind. But it was
the wasted years that brought you here, a voice whispers.
I shall not now climb the Eiffel tower from the outside in
honour of the army of welders; whom are all but forgotten.
The name Eiffel lives on, but the man himself lost his crown
when trying to construct the Panama Canal. This long hall
I must walk so many doors on each side, I will not enter any
of them to see what’s inside, my curiosity is gone I need not
know. My object is to reach the end of the corridor where
I see shadows, perhaps the great man Eiffel is there, if not
I hope they are, the welders of the monument made of Iron.

Unpainted Painting.

I found a painting on the dump by the road, heads of many colours
seeking shelter, under a colourful umbrella, against coming storm.
It is an original painting signed and dated 2052, who threw it away?
A black fly walks across the computer screen, when I shush it away
it only indolently moves and settles on the edge of the virtual page.
I look for a newspaper to swat it the devious fly reads my thought,
take lift and disappear Into the painting. Now I can read the name:
FEMA. I got, it the date, the work is not yet made by an artist not yet born; I’m seeing into a future and if the sad faces are anything to go by, it doesn’t look too promising. Before the darkness swirled into the village I put the picture back on the dump, as it wasn’t painted yet and not for me to see. The black fly was buzzing around my head whispering words in a in a future language I shall never comprehend

In the morning dustmen came and took away the trash.

Grey Hospital and a Brazilian Café.

The hotel where I stayed served lousy coffee, insipid and milky.
I knew there was a Brazilian café nearby, on my way there walked
past the closed down city hospital. Grey walls dripping of uncured
diseases, graffiti and dead windows. Convert it into an office block,
but who wants to work there, a place haunted by cynical doctors and indifferent nurses who stalk the halls at night waiting for their shift to end so they can get out from this place of horror, and patients they have lost interest in and can do nothing for. Tear it down and throw the debris down a gully. At the Brazilian café the coffee was strong and healthy; the staff, young, moved as dancers to the music in the background. There is much of Africa in the Brazilian soul, passionate, courageous; yet, sometimes, viciously moody.

The girl who served me coffee, smiled with lips and eyes, her skin
dark, glowing… fit. And the sad hospital faded into oblivion.

Little mother, I’m told you appeared
at a World Trade conference
with mangoes for the delegates

sang with U2
at Slane Castle
a gypsy child held your hand

ate KFC
with street kids in Otara
shouted down the truancy officer

I glimpse your white sari
your scent lingers
17 herbs and spices

Morning Light.

In the morning breeze petals fall off the rhododendron bush. The terrace is
a magic carpet and on the wall sunlight and shadows enact an ancient play.
Dogs still asleep, the cock has not crewed, only the old man across the road
who fears his own death, is up; even for him there is solace in the glory of
an August morning. A plane crosses the sky leaves, behind exhausted dreams;
tired tourists going home. Alfredo is up starting his noisy tractor he will collect
carob beans before it gets too hot. He used to have two of stubborn mules
harvesting took longer then, but the beasts made the landscape more pretty.
I have been here a long time, this tranquil bay away from North Atlantic storms,
so let me soak up the peace of this morning before I set sail for another voyage
across the seas of reveries.