It couldn’t have come of nothing:
this was invisible Power
shaking the earth.
He was shaken –
chided himself for a fool,
abased himself
before the gods
promising prayers
and acts of reverence.
All that I could accept,
but not his sacrifice
of the kid I called Picasso.
I used to heel my hand
against Picasso’s brow
and he would push
practising manhood,
goathood. Now
we have only a poem
and that splash of blood
by the Bandusian spring
to remember him by.
Aeli vetusto nobilis ab Lamo …
O Oilman Caesar
ignoble heir to another, taller Caesar
who first sent men and missiles across the desert
but not as far as yours –
even into Baghdad, even Tikrit
searching for the Evil One’s
hidden unspeakable weapons;
O Texan Caesar
tomorrow (the Raven warns)
a hurricane will close your capital down,
keep cars from streets, trains from tracks
and civil servants at home.
Gather, then, your slaves about you;
kill a pig, broach the wine cask,
summon the dancers –
while you may
O celebrate your greatness!
Visiting his father Phoebus,
Phaeton wears shades.
He finds the big guy busy
with charts and timetables
attended by Days and Seasons.
The boy asks
can he borrow the car.
Phoebus, uneasy
but thinking ‘quality time’,
consents.
Big mistake!
It’s all wheelies and burn,
smoke and exhaust flame
along the Skyway Highway.
The gardens of the East
degrade into desert.
The Ganges shrinks;
fish fry in the shallows.
When the crash comes
(officer Jove in pursuit)
the polar caps
Man-centred Ovid laments
another teenage statistic.
The World, he seems to imply,
can heal its own wounds.
Pyreneus was caretaker,
the school his domain,
certain girls (nine in all)
his inspiration.
It was a Sunday,
rain threatening
when two came by.
He pointed to the black cloud,
invited them in for shelter
and locked the doors.
According to Ovid
they should have escaped
and Pyreneus in his wild pursuit
crashed and burned.
So why these forlorn bodies
hidden in a field
and this hangdog in the dock?
George Gregan
is the Gorgon’s
head,
every All Black
an Atlas
turned to stone.
Pyramis and Thisbe for example –
lovers from the same
suburb or village
cruelly divided
by a wall.
Are we Black and White,
Jew and Goy,
Ossie and Wessie?
No, my love
we are Palestinian
and ready to bleed.
Trust me –
I’m backing myself here.
Love doesn’t budge.
IF there was time …
BUT there isn’t …
SO
we better fuck NOW!
I used to come here
when I was a kid.
Sometimes my sister came too.
It was nice.
There was the river,
You miss those things, don’t you
as you get older.
You have to get the map of it:
the river came up here, out of the ground,
and five miles further on
it went down again.
That’s where old K.K. built his brothel.
He put in some nice gardens,
walls and stuff.
I was going to tell you quite a story
about old K.K.
but that pusher from Porlock knocked
and by the time I got back to my desk
I’d forgotten what it was.
Just listening to that bird
makes me feel as if I’m pissed
or high on something –
and then the fucker flies away.
Bugger!
This creepy woman
she had a thing about windows –
instead of looking straight out
like you or me
she used a mirror.
Crazy, man!
And then one day a real hunk went by,
Lance Slot, I think he was called,
and she looked straight at him
and sure enough – she died!
Yes it’s spring
but London’s hell –
all these dead people
and me.
Rich and poor
I find them equally
obnoxious.
Autumn’s no better.
Sex can be really disgusting
but I do like the River.
I go there
and hum a little Wagner –
weialala leia
and so on.
But imagine drowning in it –
that would be ghastly.
So in my head
I head for the desert –
dry throat
crops dying
voices, thunder …
He calls you his Auntie
and me his Godfather.
Does that make us rellies
or just partners in crime?
He’s your scribe who prescribes,
you are surgeon to the flax.
Your kete is a poem
and I treasure it.
I think of you up there, ‘up North’
on the Hokianga
where the sands are blond
the sea has blue eyes
and the soul is Maori.
How is your heart, Auntie Huia?
Listen carefully
to what he tells you about it.
Moko can be skin deep.
I think the one on his arm
goes all the way to the bone.
‘Let me introduce myself.
I am a patriot from a Shithouse
in the South Seas
known as New Zealand.
‘You think your Shithouse
is worse than mine?
It may be
but I don’t live in your Shithouse,
‘Why do I live there?
Let’s call it a habit, an addiction
like smoking.
‘When you hear our national anthem
please remain seated.
If our flag’s raised
tear it down, burn the bastard.
‘Do this for me.’
‘The Mayors of Auckland and Manukau cities are combining forces
to advance the cause of the Eastern Corridor Motorway’ – News
John Banks
The part of us
that’s human
dislikes him.
The part that has wheels,
accelerator and brakes
voted him in.
His thank-you gift
will be another scar
across the face of our city.
Sir Barry Curtis
The speech machine
will go on orating
without grace or thought
conscience or content
grammar or grampa
as long as coins are fed
into the slot marked ‘coins’.
If, after a pause,
speaking is not resumed
wait while the tape rewinds.
Do not kick or shake.
In that country
poet spoke for people
against the invader.
Between bombings
when sirens were silent
poems were broadcast.
When newspapers lied
people queued for poems
and read them on trams.
Oh for such a contract
to write only the truth,
even to die for it –
how much better than
to be civil servant
to Propriety, our master.
He thought the whole fucking discourse
should have been preceded
by ‘a long learned thoughtful meditation
on the presupposition of Yes’
but I said No.
A black hole
in the galaxy of Perseus
(scientists report)
in the key of B flat
but at 57 octaves
below middle C
inaudible
to the human ear.
Come in, Beethoven.
Are you receiving me?
A star
in the constellation of X
has eaten two of its planets
and exploded.
Our sun could do the same.
Great Ra
source of our life
source in time of our deaths
we abase ourselves,
we salute you!
(And please, watch your diet.)
Less melanoma may mean
more rickets
and vice versa.
So the bow-legged cowboys
confront the twiggy blondes
with leather faces.
There’s no gain without loss.
He made an appointment
with the Blessèd Virgin.
There were one or two
details of doctrine
he thought it important
they should discuss.
She stood him up
and it was raining.
She may think it
doesn’t matter,
but (off the record) he told me
he was not impressed.
Here we’re debating
schools of creative wraiting.
Day after day
graduates rush to say
in the same indignant tones
‘We are not clones!’
My father was political
a revolutionary of sorts
a forty-a-day man
with a gunshot arm
and paralysed hand.
My mother
a concert virtuoso
gave up the circuit
to teach (among others)
me.
My sister’s affairs
with officers and aristos
were legend.
My granny?
She was Dame Nellie
and a peach in the kitchen.
I published my first novel
at fifteen
and went off somewhere –
to Africa I think.
The rest is history.
I was born on grass
among flowers
and volcanic stones.
Those blacks and whites
falling from the window
were notes of music.
Death was not in the picture.
From the hill
I would see the harbour,
from the harbour
the world.
Oh dear!
There would be no going back.
Africa, expect me!
Who will argue with a war?
It was a story.
People died.
Our side won.
Love
is no end of trouble.
There will be no escape
not even in
Africa.
Children will be
children are
children have been
and look
here comes Death
with a bag on his shoulder
marked ‘Africa’.
There’s a prescient movie
maybe by Robert Altman
that ends with toads
a storm, a downpour
an Old Testament pelting
of tumbling toads –
and in case you should think
his story’s slipped
into the realm of the unreal
he has a boy, a quiz-kid,
one who knows everything,
smiling, saying ‘Yes, this happens!’
Nine-eleven was like that –
minute shapes that were bodies
all arms and legs
hurtling down.
We’d picnicked
on the white stone slopes
above Mausanne-les-Alpilles
and came home to it,
to watch it like a movie,
its horror, its rough justice.
New York seemed to be burning.
‘Yes, this happens!’
Americans
were falling from the sky.