blackmail press 29
Mark Pirie
New Zealand
First featured issue 5 March 2003
In Your Enigma - Ilinca Höpfner
In Your Enigma - Ilinca Höpfner
index

Piki Ake

for Robert Sullivan

listening
to the talk
in the cafe
i realize i
haven't really been
there

*
i'm actually
outside
listening to
birds/
watching
their plumage
colour
the sky

*
&theres's
someone else
with me/
she is holding
a camera
& squeezing me
into its frame/

*
so i try to act
like Tawhaki --
climbing further
into the sky --
imagining her cry,
Pike Ake !

*
until the cafe
& the birds
& the camera
can be seen
vanishing down
her vine-shaped
arm



Making a Point

What if the war was never won
and instead they called a draw?
But what if the war couldn't be drawn
and somehow a decision
had to be reached?

Would they decide it on
body count differentials,
say bodies for and bodies against
or would they decide
it on aggregate, say most bodies
lost away from home?

Or what if the war was won
on a points system say:
2 points for massacre
1 point for a cease fire
and no points for a surrender

and then in the final stages it became
a knock-out playoff competition

and what if the final went into extra-time
after which the UN couldn't
intervene and all the conscientious objectors
on either side could be lined up
for a penalty shoot out?

and what if the shoot-out
became a tie and it
went into sudden death
until no-one was left standing

except for one man who
survived the final bullet
thanks to a Bible stuck in his
left breast pocket?





For Rangi Faith

Let the Kauri
Give me strength

Find me a Huia feather
Build me a waka

Wave a Tokotoko
Let the Poetry fly

E Rangi, your book lives
Your book is good kai moana

your lines swim
like ika

I dip my hat to you -
Kaitito of the South