Machine Gun Vignettes I His agapanthus were the best in the village. His shining pride and joy. Retired 10 years his days were spent tending the garden. Precision was his game. A ruler was used at sowing. His petunias sparkled. On his berm a row of bright plastic signs prohibited any excretion of excrement or…
Category: Poetry
Travel: Pennines – Yorkshire Day 1
“God, the wind. It peeled the stonesfrom the skull of St Thomas’ church,left its mouth slacked to a yawn or a scream,sounding vowels through the nave, throughthe clock-eye, the altar stones, the flat-backedflat-packed dead in their wedding gowns.” Wendy Pratt – Heptonstall Graveyard Lisa had bought in a bunch of English delicacies for me to…
Life : Plenty more in the Sea
A truck with “eco” on the side hoists a skip up over its head and inverts it. It winnows a broad range of detritus across the carpark. Bloody tissues dance and pivot in the wind. Plastic skins find graves amongst the overgrown shrubbery. Offal is swooped upon by gulls. The driver seethes at the sky…
Life : Become the Ocean
A man builds a barricade of driftwood at the end of his sand dune.A wall to keep back the rising tide of absolution. No one’s sins will matter when the inundation comes. No one’s fears will last long. He steps over piles of carrion. Gulls sweep over like drones. Try to look at this like…
Life : Just an ‘Other’ White Straight Dude
I recently wrote that I have a propensity to think of myself as outcast. This self casting as the sore thumb or the ‘other’ doesn’t just arrive from nowhere. I grew up raised by aging hippie parents who did things their own way. My mother had very specific thoughts on god and good and love…
Life : Pākehā Man makes it about himself again, Whaea Blue
I came across the writing of Talia Marshall very recently. Her rebutting of Paul Moon and Scott Hamilton’s takes on Ans Westra to be exact. The piece is sharp, humorous, withering and persuasive. I summarise but in essence it starts with ‘the dog had a stroke and now I am here dealing with you boof…
Life : Happy Trails
Paw and hoof and foot pock marks extend towards a grey haze of horizon. Each one the scar of this morning’s moment of happy free abandon. They swirl and knot and zig and zag and finally lead back to the dunes. They die as happiness gives way to indelible terra firma. The day matures and…
Life : In My Bones
It’s in my bones, the old country.The first hour in blighty and I stepped into Heathrow,no heath no row just so you know, into the carpark building, whose walls I will call bones,the building’s skeleton, holding cars in the sky, they were made of concrete, which is made of bones,I’m no geologist but trust me…
Life : Origin Hymn
In the beginning there was no fracture between land and sky. The stars hugged the earth like it was a newborn, and so it was, and so it was. The forces of the earth knelt in the hinterland, the air hummed a warm analogue feedback, power surged and hissed, the show was about to go…
Life : Seasons Explained
With definite inspiration from Bill Manhire’s Hotel Emergency a dodgy Facebook translation from Swedish to English turned into a poem on the state of the nation. I hereby explain mushroom season in New Zealand has begun. A little dry, but they are going. I hereby explain corporate season in New Zealand has begun. Operationalised, strategically…
Raise the Dawn 