Samuel writes that he is ‘a Māori-Scots kid who was conceived in Christchurch, gestated in Tonga and eventually surfaced in Labasa, Fiji’. He now lives and works in entertainment in Hollywood, California, USA.
a poem for Dame Te Atairangikaahu – Māori queen
where the cross streets collide
on infamous hollywood and vine
your star crashed into my heart
as your wairua finally left your body
from the top of maunga taupiri
roimata eyed I played hori hop-scotch
between pavement cracks of the stars
on the hollywood walk of fame
that connects james stewart on the north
across street to maria callas on the east
diagonally to gloria swanson on the west
back over street southward to william holden
ae queen, you are more than a southern
cross news story today here from hollywood
i imagined a star being cut just for you
from rarity of kāi tahu pounamu
a whetu befitting for a much loved queen
with your name etched in royal māori font
that lee smith of te taura whiri had
signed off on, for the prime minister
it was then set in the pavement of a
walk of fame that does not yet exist,
but should, on auckland’s waterfront
in my mind, you were placed between
sir edmund hillary, denoting your magnitude,
and hone tuwhare, for love of māori humour
[hone, being flanked by queen sālote of
tonga on t’other side, the lucky, cheeky
bugger!]
oh queen, how you won hearts and minds
of world leaders of the calibre of mandela
who’d call you on home phone direct
asking your opinions on global affairs
as you sat in front of telly, hot cuppa tea in hand
chuckling and chatting in te puea scarf and slippers.
dear dame ata, your gift to just naturally be
one’s unique māori self, was as good as it gets.
poem 2 of 6
iMāori brings me the words of my fellow poets
like a ‘star waka’ satellite ship of custom-ised verse.
Man[n]a from heaven for the soul, downloaded
cyber fresh, as poetic whakataukī reigns to quell
heat of LA desert in a national drought of morale.
When I press speed dial, I ‘kōrero our brown
words through fibre optic, networks of tukutuku DNA’.
In that moment, I’m a work of prophecy being spoken.
Yes, I’m living the dream, Māori styles, by thinking,
forming, breathing our taonga words into this world.
By email, I’m fed by sibling warrior poets whose
wairua eyes are as fierce and ferosh as my Nanny Ruihi,
our tupuna whaea, who saw first motokā in Hokianga,
and man setting foot on to the face of Marama, from the
picture box-ed wonder of her 70s black and white tīwī set.
I Love Lucy still looks the same, today on my phone as
it did as a kid at her whare. Always loved those afakasi,
cross cultural comedy shows. Lucy and Desi, mediating
bicultural reality in skilful Selina Marsh slapstick fashion,
before Kerouac and Pollock ever started splattering poetry on
page and canvas. It was Nanny Ruihi’s favourite show.
Back in the day, she was exporting purple iris flowers
and kūmara to China, so what my entrepreneurial kuia
could have done with an iMāori phone, is above
and beyond me.
She would have rocked it, for sure.
iMāori also brings me the whānau’s reo, carried on the
wifi wings of whakapapa, the toto of a poet’s destiny.
Riding well the crest of this millennium
we no longer sit in literary darkness, we are inc savvy.
If we yearn for it, we should reach for it, envisage it,
write it …
… perhaps, just be what we see.
We are poetry, written down and becoming flesh.