Psalm of the new way
Truth
I who am no one
These splintered limbs lost
A tragic disposition
The individual disease
To the bridge
Love song for the libido on the occasion of its conquering the will
Questions and O so many answers
In this the landscape of memory
Dirge for love and nature’s chains
GOLD
There are no original prophecies
Whimsy to self-fulfillment
Panoramic view of this place, just like a mirror
A world no smaller than this
Continuum
Fair
Progress is the word
Innocence
To traverse this time

Psalm of the new way

Plastic
everything is burnt or burning
not by real fire
I am standing
on something connected
to everywhere that is nowhere

Birds scream
wind buffs my shrinking head
my skin is plastic
salt-spray chaps
it's almost 3D
but everything will always be TV to me

My broken compass
is directed
toward fibre-glass worlds
that never rot
that will now never decay
like us

The name of months/seasons
seem archaic/mythological
my eyes regress/disillusioned
not aware as such
find it harder to make words
from shapes

Blended objects
I am one of those
vaporised/granulated/atomised
bounced off the sharp walls
glasshouse green hybrid stones
don't break anymore

Rain splashes
acidic/translucent/plasti-coated
melting my tired yet welcoming eyes . . .

Truth

Truth imagined
truth seen
truth talked
is all lies
bouncing off heaven
in bitter-sweet refrain
evaporation occurs
before it comes back
to the ear
in the form
of blood-stained money
knees burst apart
in prayer
to objects far from grasp
truth is hunger
pain
death
violence
dissolution
apathy
hope?

I who am no one

I is nothing and
I speak for all of us when
I say that
There is nobody home
A quiet sense of unease bleeds
Every thought closer
To someplace far from here
You want me
To be just like you
Are we the same
Or just alike we two and if so . . .
How do you determine comparisons
Like I do
Are your eyes and ears tuned
To the same channel as mine
Am I a mirror or a window
Or a vaporous mist
Am I you
I do not exist
In dimensions of thought or matter
I have become
A reflection of a star
In rippling ancient waters
Shivering not too far away
From your own evanescent light

These splintered limbs lost

I read the words as they sit
and they are but silhouettes
sharp shadows of older buildings
lying buried beneath their obscure shade
there is no cool relief
in the reflection of these hollow walls
the flimsy whimsical frame of form
only affords a weak mimicry of
a more robust native kind of wood
and the warm fetid wind blows
cool nothings through
decomposing allusions to
lofty floating rafters banging heads
in some unreachable land of clouds

where are the nails
to hold this child’s tree-house together
so it will not break and fall
to be lost forever in dense undergrowth
to be picked to pieces by ravenous fauna

where is the fallen timber
buried in the black forest
let us find it so we may build again
the words they built themselves upon
so that when we bury ourselves
between the folds of leaves and sand
we may rest in peace and shade
as older buildings of an age
that did not want or need us then

A tragic disposition

For some
The insatiable seal of tragedy
Is impressed upon hollow eyes

Scarred into the vacuous heart
Riveted indelibly
Around a weary soul

Through desperate vision
The burning breast still leaps
In search of a companion
Fit for such misery

The individual disease

I feel like a leper
today
if only I could crawl back
in this skin
only
to consume this husk
from inside out
in disgust
with what I find in there
like a snake
I shed my skin
and slip inside into a dream
I dream I am
a silkworm
in a big white cocoon
stuck to the side of a house
someone has painted black
the skin is sealed
the eyes are too
there is no way
out . . .
no way back.

To the bridge

I cut "I" from my existence
when I step down from my dreams
the foaming sky
froths the burning eye
with copper mist or smoke
the stars hang poised
like sharpened glinting shuriken
ready to dance their fine honed heels
up and down my bare back
into my bulls-eye heart

I am stone
an empty cage
mass as solid as a clock dial
twisting
gleaming in the moonlight night
the unattainable heights
anchor me in this mire

the colours of life
breathe velvet moments of maroon
across the abyss
-- a mill crushing hearts
wind turning grinding gears
to whisper over a bridge of pain
their essence of sound
flooding the fjords with blood
squeezed in violent alchemy

Love song for the libido
on the occasion of its conquering the will

Down between the labial folds
of the hungry couch
I hunch
a disease
now a germ.

The burning bulb dissects
my flesh
cutting me in two
-- to breathe I sieve shit
through broken shards of teeth
gargling
fly blood perfume
for you always.

Questions and O so many answers

What anguish, O what lack of peace to me
What horrors & pain & insane nightmares
Char my brain incessantly

& what of the world at large! Gigantic
In proportions of infinite smallness,
Always cancels my regrets

& all that it leaves me standing here with
Is a stubborn fragile shell, boiling blood
To what answers do I owe my questions?

& why should I ask them at all & why
Have I the inclination to think that
I could think myself – as part of anything anymore?

A chain of fear chains us as one & now
& then a weak link snaps, the sound is
Heard distinctively, in the cold electricity

Of the eternal moment of confinement
The broken link is looked upon with disdain
& disgust, for having been so weak

& for making loud noise & awful sound
& for displaying the possibilities
Of our common & repulsive lineage.

In this the landscape of memory

There beyond the city walls
a slow sounding memory
rolled across the paddocks
my mind aspired to heights
I’ve never climbed before

alcoves of lofty fear
remembered as mere time
while the sun encompassed
with warm yellow blood
the altitude and longitude

lashed together on a cold dead hilltop
a flag flapped whitely
this way and that
the wind moaning with hate
raking with seething malevolence

the gorge below steadily levelled
to a flat field of broken shrubbery and rock
all the while the sound of rhythm
the flag flayed back, cracking
puffing, like a locomotive

just before the leukaemic sun
and its weird wild cousin killed it
ripping it out and tossing it high
beyond my field of vision
there beyond the city walls.

Dirge for love and nature’s chains

To truly live is not to love
then and only then
can one be free
for no sin shall ever knock
upon the door of one
who never turned the key
upon the heart, to lock
and possess.
How can the jailer be at liberty
more than the prisoner of love
For ‘though the mind may be at will
the heart is lost to reason;
and to the boundaries of the flesh
that always rule and win,
and so am I, by God
-- I think I’m dying . . .

GOLD

"Because it is uncommon and useless and shining and mellow in lustre; it always bestows itself. Only as an image of the highest virtue did gold come to have the highest value. Gold-like gleams the glance of the giver. Gold-lustre makes peace between moon and sun. The highest virtue is uncommon and useless, it is shining and mellow in lustre: the highest virtue is a bestowing virtue. Truly, I divine you well, my disciples, you aspire to the bestowing virtues, as I do. What could you have in common with cats and wolves? You thirst to become sacrifices and gifts yourselves; and that is why you thirst to heap up all riches in your soul. Your soul aspires insatiably after treasures and jewels, because your virtue is insatiable in wanting to give."

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, from Thus Spoke Zarathustra

The labour of travel through grim terrain
To reach a destination yet unnamed
The arrival in the harsh remains
Of valleys, fields, rocks, and pain

In the shallows of a shadowed basin
A brisk creek crackles over tumbling stone
The cold water shatters the senses
As the steel pan dips and sieves the silt

Fresh hands transform with wear
And age drags the search up the ravine
In anticipation of yellow colour
That proves too few and far between

But when found, the gold gleams for many days
Until the elements intrude and wash its worth away
It drives further, however, up the creek
The miner who still seeks its weight

The precious little found, becomes all
Consuming -- the years and weather irrelevant
The vision of worth – priceless, invaluable
To anyone else but the miner’s sentiment

The end of the stream beckons in the mist
The murky water churns and clears
Then blackens, as the weary miner rests
The fluid drains as he inspects the dirty pouch

Black stones as dull as coal, stain the palm
How could they weigh so much upon the back?
Questions the mind as a golden glow fills the gorge
And the riverbed and the valley rocks recede . . .

There are no original prophecies

Any moment now
the bomb might drop
a comet fall
the ocean rise
the earth, quake, erupt, collapse
-- disintegrate
and still I write
a selfish record of my existence
yet who else will do it
if not I for I
am the only one
holding this pen
with this hand
and this thought
on this page
at this moment

Whimsy to self-fulfillment

The deaf can hear
so much keener
with the eyes.

Then let all those
deaf ears hear
when they read
my words one day.

Panoramic view of this place, just like a mirror

these old hills have become houses and cities:
green gone grey and hard
bland boxes of pine and brick
have cleared the scrub
the pestilence of gorse --
the fences of my ancestors
I never knew
that were themselves, evicted
stripped, robbed, and raped --
that crawled between then choked
the brackish Manuka and Kowhai
themselves, only newly named
now gone . . .
but that was then and this is now
and tomorrow never comes
and yesterday means nothing
there is no history, no connections
no ownership
for this white boy
apart from this panoramic view.

A world no smaller than this

lost in words and books
I could become
but what for, would I
do such a thing, when outside
the study window
the world swims bye and by
myself I would maybe write
some more, some things
that someone else might read
like you, someone with time to spare
some time to kill
and less could care
about the outside world
out there
beyond the pane of glass
seen from this small world

Continuum

On this strip of labour
That cuts these hills in two
Between the green arbour
This dissecting line pursues
The sea at the end
Going north to south
Then back around again, until . . .

Fair

A white fair face
by the merciless sun, burnt
cheeks & nose, red as ripe tomato . . .

the summer burned its way
across the last 3 months
of my adolescence . . .

instead of days, I
pass the while with seasons, yet
they still flick by as quick
as birds. As fast
    as
            falling
                            birthdays.

I have not seen another
swollen face, like that
since then – from that place,
that time & feel.

And the heat
of that hot lost summer, still burns
in my head & heart . . .

Progress is the word

& when the ones within
grey city walls & factory toils
do lay themselves down to rise
where do they go, and
where, too, do they leave
that is the same as everyone
whose ascent is the same as theirs . . .

for such years of grind must descend
upon, all hope of fulfilment
in this sphere – not of the unknown . . .

for a span no more than that
of drudgery, can spawn no right
of passage or pretence . . .

for is the meek servant, the wiser one,
or just the mingled soul of resignation
& allusion – self-martyred . . .

for is not life, about living
not to die, but to yield to life
& all its senses, yet without belief & ethos . . .
life becomes death – without peace
& it is a pleasure without the lust
save that for life and ascendant release . . .

but to where, one asks, as if
a physical thing, a geographical relation
awaiting discovery by the cartographer’s pen-eye . . .
an epitaph to write for those things
which should be dead, for ‘human’ progress
is not a physical thing

& these tomb walls of labour & disease
consecrate in pain & will crumble
to stone & dust one day . . .

for to blow against regeneration
through the temporal spheres of memory
through a passage of time, is like
stroking butterfly wings . . .

& so I write a dirge for the physical
for our connection to the material world
of hope & dream, let us build
mirrors amongst the green hills & trees
where walls & cities sprawled & spawned
dead industry & stiff decline . . .

for what is progress; but an evolution
or a shift in things & thoughts,
a stretching of the eyelids,
an awakening of the mind
& its connection to all dead
& living things, or maybe
just a word . . .

Innocence

I fear nothing now these days, but nightmares
of my youth. How I wish for those days &
dreams, fraught with fear & screams.
Now my sleep is nothing, but sleep
my dreams are light nothings
& full of people, who may be strangest
of all, but far less than dark spirits of
some infinite world, of lost memory.
Where are those strangely familiar beings
& forces, who kept me tightly shut in
within the corner of my sombre room?
Many nights on years they dwelled & sullied
before my sleeping eyes, so wide awake
with trembling sense & belief of certain
impending doom. And now I lie awake
& count the waves, falling upon some shore
somewhere, without a sense of innocence . . .

To traverse this time

Am I awake or in a dream
wandering in hopeless night
a huge hole in the black peat
of some lonely mist-bitten moor
I fall into its depths to land
on a hard slab of worm-ridden Norwegian wood.

Through a crack in the lid my eye descries
a million gleaming skulls – between
there & now I recognise;
a cracked cranium, a gold filling
a glass eye, a captain’s cap
all in various stages of decay.

Now standing on the lip of the mouth
I ask myself Am I a memory
an ancient form, a word, a clown
a fool, a reptile, or an embryo . . .?

I begin to walk away, to wander more
to search for signs, a light in dark
blood on the stones, evidence
of my life in all life . . . somebody
Am I an infant, a bird, an energy
an aardvark, a cracking bone, a stretch of skin . . .

I reach the point, the line, where worlds
become one – where one ceases to exist
as they have before, but yet as they always have . . .
Am I a moment in time & place, a feeling
of pain or joy, a breath, a reflection
a youth, an aged dying being, someone
aware of their limits & capacities . . .

I go beyond that place to the land of ghosts
& Prophets, to nature’s time, to the unknown
but the imagined, to the stars & the core
of the earth; to my heart & to a line that is
not to be traversed, but traced . . .
Am I a dream, an old being, a state of mind
a veil of blood floating on a mirrored lake . . .

Am I a sick thing, a dead one, a chain-link
a tree, a grain of sand, a construction of chaos
a dissolution of matter . . . I am here now
I have gone & returned, I have ceased
to breathe, in order to live . . .
& now I breathe & dream again . . .