blackmail press 18
Annora Gollop
New Zealand

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Korora Rd

Fossil Bay to Artworks 2006                                                                                        

You teach me  
that stars have colours
that the head of the
true cross shines red
that you can lose everything
and still be fascinated
by what you find beyond it
that looking up
into the shades of black
there is a language
in points of light 
that stars have colours


I look up into the dome of heaven
you look out
just above the horizon
where the shooting stars
sleet out of the North

I see nothing
except the milky way
and all the twisted
crosses which are
flying men and diving
and scorpion is swooping
like a swallow
with a tail of stars

This night sky
paints the dream on me



The pointerof the false cross
is skewed and divingand there’s Orion
three stars and the rest of the pot
clear as dayhe’s belt tight
falling upside wonky downto the horizon                             
Across in my other sky is the true cross
with its familiar directions and meanings
and in between is a patch of blank night
where I don’t understandthe connection



If I had a brush of brilliance
I would paint
this lattice of light

In the sky the stars
are wide the eyes cannot catch
the whole black canvas                                          


Some fucking planet
so bright
it’s like a lamp
hung up there
making you think
it’s a plane





The Original Ink

The moon is new enough
to form a cup
David calls it a crucible
the sun beneath it certainly
the thick black nothingness
to spill from the vessel
and in the first surprise of black

all the colours


After the Poetry

I am most myself in my silence
I am finally paused
to listen to the
peaceful indecisions of the ocean
I was shaking earlier
it was all too intense
now it is cold
and I am breathing

this is a place with directions
I may not move from it
just look down the path to the beach
up the road/ down the tarseal
hill to home
or that peaceful track
cross country to the edge
of that old massacre

I am hyperaware
I am alone
I am full of the music of words
I am here now with no insistence
on the future
but I wonder.