inferno 2

The sign nailed to the front gate says

Welcome, all those who enter.

 

The ante-chamber’s lit by the pale eyes

of dead souls with no way out or

in: attendants with nothing to give

but themselves, which is nothing.

 

The library shelves the most extensive collection

of old scholars who trudge

the circular road of academia.

Their lungs are wracked with God knows

& thru the tight hole that exits the throat,

they discourse. For no reason.

 

The lounge is stuffed with men stuck

in armchairs; whole families

& televisions set on blasted adverts

& melodramas which are like

& nothing like their lives.

 

The kitchens are hot

with bad-tempered cocks,

domestics. There is no rest.

 

The stairs are crammed with guests

with no-one to talk to

& nothing to say. They came

& never left.

 

In the back room

lovers consider ultimate solitude

& boredom.

 

In the bedrooms lie a multitude

of couples who say nothing but know

it’s over.

 

Thru the bathroom windows

you can see the silhouettes

of lonesome men washing their hands

in the cold porcelain; feel

the blunt steel of razor blade.

 

In the garden at the back,

in the sheds, are high beams

lined for miles with necks

at the end of ropes

about to break, caught

in that moment.

 

& children

wandering the halls

don’t understand the silence.

river nurse

river nurse
for Claudia, Bethie and all the nurses in
whose care we come & go

she had
lifted them
into coming
the wet
the just
learning
to breathe
she had
seen them
off the old
the broken
with a
hand gentle
down over
their eyes
she said
she knew
whenever we
talked of the
river there
was just
one and
we could
only run
into it
never out
only go
with
the
river
and if
we knew
how well
we were
made a
gut like
filigree of
autumn leaf
all through
to the smallest
length
if we really
knew how well
we were made
a perfection
we did our
best to
poison
we should
have wept
at our piece
of shine in
the river
autumn
the shine
that was
us.

shone
to a
sky
like
winter
ice

august 2017

dead man stuff

I wear yr shoes work

boots you left good

as new & yr coat

I hung on the line

 

shook yr drawers for pills

loose change gold

fillings rings

tender notes

 

frm yr son Dad

not the best but mine

& a photo of him

I laid aside

 

for now nicotine

gum because

cigarettes is

so expensive

 

fucking government

tools to match

boots & junk

which I can sell

 

I feel like

such a cunt

but shake it off

in the morning slog

 

I let the kids

have the ps

but will give it back

because I’m decent enough

 

if your folks ever come

Yellow Petals

Sometimes, those left alive,

they are bound.

Sharing an odd sense of relief

and slowly, together,

wading through their grief.

 

And others, the others,

they are torn apart

Become possessive of their pain

a pain so big, they cannot share,

because they think it is so unique,

it is theirs and only theirs.

 

And then there are the ones who

Make it their mission

to forget.

 

So I take the pills prescribed

Take the pills that are, somehow,

meant to replace the people

who are still alive,

but no longer exist.

The medicine you take

when the compassion leaves

along with the funeral car.

 

So I take the pills to dull the feeling

that someone who was once there

can no longer look me in the eye;

Fearing the sight of their grief

staring back at them,

the pain they’re trying so

hard to deny

 

They’re too scared

and too tired of trying to be fine.

I know and they know

that a longer glance could mean

being lost in that dark mine.

 

So I take the pills

and listen to the doctors

And wait for those that lived,

for them to come back to me,

one day.

 

The petals and the ashes fell,

long ago,

But I am still here,

I am fighting.

And I refuse to fall too.

 

birthday cake

who will sing for us

hear us

in love

with ourselves

 

only

no-one cares

if we live

if we die that’s

 

different

friends we never had

speak for us

say such

 

& such

which is worse

than nothing

but I didn’t

 

want to talk about that

tonight I

want us

to think about

 

isolation

 

is it good

 

15/07/17

beard in-fancy #2

4

the shock
of the
day
is my new auto
payment.
the poetic interest
is anthropological.
the personal need
is a difficult night
to overcome.

we are the ripples
on the surface
of Sleep, giving
very little
indication
of why the water rose
up.

40 some seasons
of rent paid
without a price increase
at a third of what Realtors
charge, and now,
in a new
dwelling, I pay the
Market prices,
upped with the earthquake,
and the crisis
in housing.

4.1

everything works
for something else:
the person whose
manifest covers several
thousand employee
works for Customer: and Trees,
designed solely
for the sound they make,
cast cool shadows.
we are feel-capsules
in search of compadres
to express the infinite
condensed.

this poem
is about the difficulty
of finding where it is
we emanate from,
and the task
of these words
is like air
to
the
birds,
like rungs
I trust
will
hold my wait,
paused between this
age, and habitat
changed,
as I climb from
a night
of sleep closed
like a fist within
my mind, white knuckled
in its grip
around a living star.
a source restricted
shine. the move,
performed alone,
with a trailer and a van,
went so damn smooth
it had to be right.

4.2

the dust
restrained had turned
to dirt behind the oldest
abstract paintings, while
the wall, its power
socket I hadn’t seen
for eight years, revealed
the dinosaur stickers
beside where our
pillowed heads
in the comfort
of kindness
kept lawful
by shared parameters
and Mingus first asked about gOd,
all wonder and freedom,
sat between my legs
in bedtime reading
before the closed-eye
mystery of Sleep.

4.3

it is I now
who wonder
who I am, in the memories
made in our children,
their phrases and progressions
carried in their finger paintings
& craftwork lionising us
on Father’s day, all moved, the
important toys
found as I evacuated
the old studio, peeling back
the layers of paintings
like archaeologists
revealing solar activity
the deeper the drill digs,
I’m finding work
I’d forgotten I’d painted, works
I don’t remember
painting—the slashed articulate
cravings leading into Rehab,
a fifth of what
has
accumulated
useful,
a
tenth of
that
necessary.
none of it required,
all trivial, but for every
mark on the life growth
chart, half in child’s writing,
as we dated his ascension
directly on the wall
panel, this, with the landlord’s
blessing, was removed;
the single prize possession
a potent memory board
moved to a new dwelling, shifting
more than I tell.

4.4

Wordsworth’s scholar-gypsy, turning
his back on, the wind in his face, on
the gracious blue of the lakes, returning
and knowing that everything goes;
Basho, in two robes, leaving his snow
-fall indentations
in the white beginnings
of another Winter; after all
the purple-orange leafage
twirlings, the dust left to settle
on the curtains
I was going to hitch to Auckland,
busk the ferry
ticket, return all Savings
to a locked, Interest-bearing account,
and live off the hat—
this was the plan, thought fully
through, originally,
when the bulldozers were ready
I was to going
to reduce and smooth back
into the van: instead —2
hundred & 80%
more rent.

beard In-Fancy

beard in-fancy,

1

from behind, in photographs, there is a balding
moment when I do not recognise myself;
I’m driving, under the speed limit, a work vehicle,
towing a green trailer slowly being loaded with refuse.
it has two compartments for the Recycling,
and a coffin-size lidded box of chemicals
and equipment for toilet cleaning.

I talk, into the left hand holding the device,
notes, for this poem, about reimagining
my avatar, the weighing of Obligation
with Necessity, getting out to myself
the message of what to stop, so OldAge,
unable to support the irresponsible
adornments a flesh-groomed Ego thinks
it needs, wont collapse in the beautiful
crisis of vanity disappointed.

2

the shore-misted blue of the mountains
has changed as the Day ages,
as the sun burnt off the clouds.
clouds behind the ridge line
silhouette the podocarp
and the gauzy valley mists of moving rain
accentuate the depth, the sense
of awe for scale and place and time.
I have stooped to scoop a dripping
mess of maggots, rice and meat, in the cold
odour of milky take-away coffee
as a bag falls out of the bin, onto my feet.
it is both a cloak of honour and a badge
of some defeat, awarded in front
of a high heeled woman, in view
of the travelling bohemian
europeans in their station wagon
and a teenage netball
team on an away trip.

3

picture the day otherwise: in homeless
fingerless gloves, sat, on a folded cloth,
on the smooth mars black supermarket
entrance, fingertips touching eucalypt,
eyes counting coins, heart expecting
sympathetic invitations to mourn
the Tomahawk and Hindenburg
smuggled in the lethal privacy of societal
security and freedom.

When’s the music gonna stop

Fuck Recycling

I’ve grown up believing
that the environments problems
were mine, that as a consumer
I possessed the answer
I believe that was pure bullshit
I believe that the environmental issues
that we all face are a matter for government
and the state
to make the difficult
hard decisions
that need to be made
They are not mine, individually.
But ours. And we’ve elected successive
gov.’s that have failed to engage constructively with
the issues. Just tredding water
passing the buck to the next one
who does the same,
well, when’s
the music gonna stop

I will keep recycling
though I hate it
cause you’ve made me do it
and I follow the logic
What else could we be doing.
Will it really make a difference
Show me the difference
in a way that is like show me all those who
profited from 9/11 and then blow up a building,
in terms of making the difference a tangible real
was a connection able to be made
If not.
Fuck your environmental guilt

I’ll eat plastic shit if I want to
and derive enormous pleasure from
trashing it in your pristine forest waters skies and eyes
I’ll take dumps in your lives with brightly colored packages
It’s my expression of freedom
NO I WILL NOT PICK UP THE RUBBISH
I PUT IT THERE
you do it. Or better yet
pass a law that makes real pollution
go away.
Disappear.
Make the poisoners of our environment
go away. Stop
Cry a little. Then stop.

germinal

I’m here for the burst of rains that score trails across

the silences, ‘til my bowels give out or some more

spiritual need intercedes, flowering my insides: heels

on the street, the memory of her skin; any minute

 

I expect a vision pressed against the glass, looking in.

I’m in the mood to conjure up, everything; cracks

against the sky, lightning strikes; strive to understand,

like the first man to rise from the protozoan slime.

 

All things can tempt me from my bliss – colours, for instance;

the spectred trees, hands to the sky, on the other side

of the rainbow; temporal worlds, apparitions like stone

peripherals, half real; love, politics…Anything

 

goes

no other

no other
      for Keikei

i take
a love poem
penned
in arcane
script
the whisper
in candled night
of a man to
his distant
wife, caught
away on business
at the edge of
a crumbling
empire and he’s
worried for her
worries if they’ll
meet again before
the season turns
to blood on steps,
i take such
a poem and feel
that ‘you’ he writes
to, could have been
‘you’, who i love
in this day’s light.
those in the know
say any love poem
ever written and
worth its salt will
give you this feeling
the ‘you’ of then
is your ‘him’ your
‘her’ of now
i write this then
to say that these
words are for no
other lover, no
wife or loved one
who ever was
there in their
own time
here in ours,
i write this
to say simply
these words
this heart
is for
you,
no
other

july 2017

silence

There’s some time when there’s birds,

insects. Weather. Then, flies.

Nothing more. This

is the end. Germs & such,

scum.

 

Although just now a car went past,

I hear nothing but the micropods

cruising the silence, cracks in the

pavement, blades of. Past this,

I can’t go.