Who am I writing for?

Once we had formed an idea of the next route and taken a miunte to refresh our energy, we took photos of the surrounding valleys. If we came back this way it might be in an awful rush and and terraforming left to complete may take us thorugh passes that couldn’t be managed by our currently alloted transports. Sanderson took us down into the nearest low alittitude food catchment and we spent the next three days foraging and baiting, preserving and caching. Some of us took some time to do our monthly class 1 overhaul on our hardware while the recce officer and squawk took turns to debate the effectiveness of our last rearguard action. I reported back to HQ and recieved updates, provided my own summary and took some time to consider team morale as it had been four months without significant rest and I believed the tensions within the team were starting to effect mission efficacy. I planted an apple tree for my love.

Thoughts about late summer

Winter observes everything with reverent attention”. The meaning of this vignette of Russian poetry is exposed in the late part of summer. It’s only when the intensity of summer repeateadly saps your stamina that you long for the somber winter when the rhythyms of life run more contemplatively. The yearning starts once the holiday period is over. Work and school start in earnest. We run ourselves ragged as the ongoing rush of Vitamin D to the head provokes an unsaid agreement for us to reject cycnicism and we loudly clamour to outdo each other’s levels of enthusiasm for overly-ambitious projects. Then we slowly realise our back-of-the-eftpos-receipt plans are snowballing. Rinsing off in swimming holes is now rare. The soft intoxiation of fatigue is ever present and while the exuberance brought by long hours of sunshine conquers vissitude, there is one pernicious summer pest that we cannot overcome by vigour. That pest is the great unease of the soul that emerges in the evening hours when the desire to put the children to bed conflicts with their complaints that it is too early. They run wild at a time meant for repose. They cannot be tamed while the sun is up no matter the thickness of curtain. What refuge is there for the permissive parent who respects the natural order? So bring on frost and chill and damp because you bring the quiet with you. Welcome old Jack. Give me back my evenings’ mediatative solace in the peace that early bedtimes bring.

Trust Might Settle

Trust Might Settle

I come into a listless place
suddenly among chipped shadows
 for whose falling apart
 rocks on distant hills shudder

my talking mind
recoils against the smallest things

When the phones rings
what lies there on the street
in white snow
goes to rest
and gives the heart a warm glow

but the phone call never comes
she doesn’t lie
do I believe that yet?

the weight of trust
still shifting

Walking Journal

WEDNESDAY

The first day

I’m poised

soft meets

      hard meets
soft sprung step

and slow walk greet

      fights wins

so down back fired and side till up

This first day flames
my thinking words

THURSDAY

on the gauntlet
 hard meets soft
 icebreak haze of insect sound
soft meets hard
gives way to monstrous cars

FRIDAY

overheard outside a shop:
If only we could bargain by analogy
and hard heart turns to softer tone
with music of stranger sapience

SATURDAY

Shifting house twelve hours
resolve to last the day was hard
and words used to salve her smile
smoothed the burn within my body soft

SUNDAY

Shifting house twelve hours
what’s left of soft approach and patience now
in the hard thrall sweat of man at work?

MONDAY

the lass gathers soft sweet words on bed with Mum
the lad bounds up and springs a smile
routines once hardrushed
dissolve to moves of sweet repose

NZ Poetic Cringe

Self-referencing in NZ poetics deserves a cringe.

That old chestnut, the cultural cringe, needs to be revived. Otherwise how can we rid ourselves of the prevailing claptrap? Unassailable behind their wall of native plant names, nature worship and narcissistic free verse, the current lot silence any criticism by throwing around words like national identity and self-expression. But how believable is the claim They embrace the very characteristics that make the thinking man cringe. The following three poems might help shed light on what has so far been hidden in a fog of smug.

The bucolic as an answer to a generation’s failure

How many times does one encounter native plants in NZ poetry? Or native birds? Or reflections on quiet spaces and the value of antimaterialism?

Compare with Gary Snyder’s ‘Hay for the Horses’. Just imagine all the animals and plants with NZ names and ask if it actually matters which landmass’ fauna makes the cut when one is just providing proper nouns. Then ask the question; Is this an idealised backdrop for the displacement of self-loathing by suburbanites who realise their enlightenment only resulted in a more refined way of gorging on consumer culture? Or does the naming of animals merely provide props to fill syntax and scenery?

“...We stacked the bales up clean

To splintery redwood rafters

High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa…

…..The old mare nosing luchpails
Grasshoppers carckling in the weeds…

….I sure would hate to do this all my life.

And dammit, that’s just what what
I’ve gone and done”

The kitsch of nationalism replaces the icons of culture

Once it is recognised that proper noun listing does not a culture make, post Maori Renaissance self-referencing comes off as rather hollow. Doesn’t the sprinkling New Zealand specific items merely utilise what we have in common as a nation rather than the icons representing culture? Does the mention of recognisably New Zealand detail really identify the unique qualities of our cultural milieu as the NZon Air regime would have us believe or are they merely bullet points in a list of materials for nation-building? And nation building remember is the stuff of propaganda, information ministries and thought police.
Does the use of the word potatoes below work as an exposition for the expression of the self within a cultural context or does it resemble a scream for recognition of a national identity?

I think Seamus Heaney would balk at the notion that after hundreds of years of nation destroying including a severe root crop famine he would hardly expect to be accused of attempting to build Irish pride so glibly.

“When all the others were away at Mass

I was all hers as we peeled potatoes

They broke the silence, let fall one by one

Like solder weeping off the soldering iron….”

Lets talk about ourselvesThe appeal of the universal is lost. Disregard the universal and you are left with prattle.

Isn’t the following such a pleasant read because no silly self-referencing interferes?

“The fog comes
on little cat feet

It sits looking
over harbour and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on”

Parade on Priniciple

The speed of light believer’s challenge
their glass god breaks and loudly shatters
illusions broached by thinker’s knowledge
unlike the spreading load of myth
goes stretching truth that none can take

The rort began with scratch on glass
Venetian’s vision warring tool
the church squeaked last
and wizards burnt with bible pith
they magnified their own mistake

Some call it dross but it is utile
The science mind is never futile
can breech the path of shifting streams
and gives our dreams a bed to lie
from past till now it proves its mettle

So sit and think and laze upon
the imps that make creations throne
So wait for watchers long way home
till speed of dark makes Higgs all known

Skidding

there’s a single last loo

for shopsters and slackers

and spenders of pennies

digesters of commerce

the buyers of trinkets

and groaters of service

can wait till time busted
and wish they were queueless

that one public loo

like a Savage kind measure

this last throne for pooh

will abdicate now

Halt rushes of pleasure
while flushed with compulsion

not nature nor sewer nor spirit can bear
the ravage of crap or the shit that we spew