Black and White Photo Memories
This is a portrait of dissent, a city without streets or sleep
this is cigarette smoke raping the sensible lives of others
a noir world of harsh pocked skin and soft kodak jeers.
This is the burning cross against southern klansmen because in the
end all colours become black, as black as ashes, this is the
sepia girl guides calender selling boxes of biscuits next door.
A colourless porcelain mask, a tattooed montage of abstracts
this is a portrait of lone ghostly shadows draped against
a gallery of faces that look back at children with playful taunts.
It's the eyes that touch, the anger that reveals, it's the smile
that bears the unmistakable ache of seperation, while the tears
get lost in the paleness of the bleaching sun for just a minute.
Why My Wife Ate a Peach
the leaves on the cotton tree should be
described more accurately as a frond.
nonetheless on a hot still sunny afternoon
they waft lazily in an imaginary breeze, while
underneath my wife, sitting on a sun chair, reads
a barbara erskine novel blissfully unaware in the
midst of this indian summer the book's dust jacket
shows toned blackened Nubian slaves fanning the
queen of the white nile as she reclines
luxuriously upon a bed eating white grapes
When Things Move
outside the world has erupted,
the tremors of the shifting
alliances between God and the
land or rancid blood letting
and pagan stone deities. the
eyes of which shimmer with blue
cobalt alarm. eternity is never
closer than when in the arms
of an earthen ill wind, it is
found in the still sweet seconds
of fear. at that moment the
whole world is a waiting corpse.
A Cook Strait Crossing
In between the sandy rough surface of the hull
(painted a rather ironic/iconic vomit pastel green)
and the imperiously soaked bollards draped with the
heavy rope is the golden imbued bowels of the ship
floating on top pasting the water mark with waste.
On board the Aramoana the surprisingly rolling roll on
roll off ferry we sail in hard seas eating unenviable
government mince pies and drinking warm flat cola
through a straw,(a mistake soon to be realised)
that slide wretchedly with the wave.
To port, against the scarring salt spray, stand
the sea dogs loving it with legs strong and godly,
laughing with the maker. The starboard side, heaving
with the motion and the storm, a chorus line of ill
hanging onto the hope of the shore and steady ground.
Mount Tapuaenuku
the maori have lived
long
against
Mount Tapuaenuku's
erudite wizened
face.
long before, when more
ruddy of visage, the
whanau (family)
would come with
aroha (love)
at your feet
and
you would wrap us in
your korowai (cloak)
hiding us from Turehu,
ghostly
and
fair headed
we could hear
their song
silently
in the still
mistiness
of early
day
since
Aotearoa
has had
the musket come
we see less of
Tane's (God) sacred
home, but you
were
a
refuge,
a Taonga (treasure)
as we walked on your
back
