Stukas

Thursday, July 12, 2007

The day we fall in love
with the Stukas of experience
dawns fine: out of a refugee

run sky, the crosses fall.
You bear yourself along
the road with all you

own at noon. The sun seems
somehow German, as the moon
was French last night.

The hour we meet in person
the fascists of conviction
can’t be told: they’ll trial

their new-made weapons on
your ground (they sense a hole
your Fuhrer wants to hide).

In the meantime, it is both
inadvisable and not worth
the candle to avoid what

waits: you just can’t buy
what falls from your personal
sky in the swastika shape.

Jeffrey Paparoa Holman 14.12.06

set the writing free/

tie the writing down/

Rocks, Tongariro Crossing, Rocks

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

The other day I did the Tongariro Crossing, and because of the fine blue weather I could well see that it is a rock-filled place up there, a crumbling Stonehenge of a place. There are rocks like teeth, all kinds of teeth. There are bared teeth, dull white with gums of moss and black lines marking the gaps between the long white slabs. There are broken teeth, chipped and rotted with moss and gnashing upwards from the sides of hills. There are breathing mouths, mouths with no teeth but great steamy breaths instead, curling over the edges of cliffs and dissolving round the woollen socks of walkers; and there is a pair of open jaws as well, black inside and black teeth sticking down from a black cavern splattered with white as if with blood and yawning out of the crater-wall at the top of Ngaurohoe.Rocks like truffles on the flats, deep black and multifariously lumped. Rocks like coal, flat-faced, many-faced, sharp-edged, dully shining, and black too, the kind of black that looks as if it will make a charcoal mess on your hands if you so much as breath on it. Great heaps of truffles and coal gather on the hillsides like moss and gathering moss on their dark faces themselves. Rocks coloured like chalk, a rich colour as if the pigment goes all the way down, and arranged in mosaics on the sides of mountains, unmoving mandalas laid down so carelessly by the chemical rain of volcanos. A mosaic of red rocks, rusty on the mountain side like a great lichen dappling on the surface of the mountainside. Rocks with lichen dappling on their surface. Ordinary rocks. Ordinary, dusty-dirty rocks, cut-your-bare-feet toe-stubbers, slightly orange slightly yellow and good for crushing into shingle and holding down tents in the wind and not much else I should think. Rocks sliced in two, one slice missing and the other slice with a sharp-edged crater like half of a split marble. Rocks red as a red desert. Rocks white as bird-shit, black as flies, and the red-desert rock stains a rock-face with a bashed gramophone horn of smoke, with a layer of black-fly rock above it in the same shape, only more bashed, and bird-shit rock splattering the face under the red-desert gramophone as if the bottom line of the gramophone were leaking, with a line of white on the lower edge. From far away the whole thing, smoky bashed old desert, with a big tube in the hillside opened up like a windpipe with a gray crust on the outside and the red dust dripping round the inside and some stones falling out the lower edge, from far away the whole thing like an open wound, bright and free and weeping in the high air, and a crust of skin on either side untouching. On a plane as flat as a lake, rocks. Big rocks widely spaced, preoccupied as a herd of cows. Rocks like human faeces, elongated, rudely clumped, messy as a skinned sausage. Rocks like rabbit faeces, light brown in neat circles. Rocks like cattle faeces even, great cow-pats of lava folding down the slopes in great cow-pat layers, not so fresh as once before and cracking at the edges, cracking and splitting at the edges into little fiords. Layered rocks. Layers you can touch from the track, long and narrow and round at the edges like a pile of surfboards. Layers sweeping up in proud angles up on top of hills, prows and visors, and layers making terraces on the sides of other hills, greenish on the top faces and long low cliffs where one terrace drops down to the next. Layers in the rocks with orange lines in between, orange lines like cobwebs on the rock-face. Rivers of rocks. Thin creeks, widely spaced, fiddling down in clay lines from the tops of long ridges to the bottom where they disappear. Wide rivers of rock, orange rock and rock ground to black sand, sweeping down the hills in great highways of rock, widening quickly from a point like a highway seen from a low angle, and also stringy, tangled rivers of rock and mud, tangled hairs of light rock and gray rock running across the plane in dry rivers. Rocks like cemeteries. Black rocks the size of golfballs. White rocks the size of golfballs, seasoning the plain. Black rocks on the hills in shingle clusters. Rocks like wrecked cars up close, and shrinking to full-stops from a distance. Rocks really pebbles that line the green lakes, chemical-green lakes, with the rocks around the edges making a minute frill around the edges and the rocks in the border shallows showing up yellow-green and the shores of gray rocks on the beach like the dull crust around a precious stone you’ve found inside a dull rock and split the rock into ringed steaks. Large rocks on a hill like an old old building, a temple or fort that’s crumbled down now and left its founding stones broken on the top and the crumbs all scattered down the slopes, smaller the further down you go. Black rocks like an old old battleground, all charred limbs and heads and spotted with mossy blood and dripping too. Rocks light as wood, black volcano rocks that file down your boots and rasp away your shins. Rocks that stab your heel on their wheeling way down the mountain, a high mountain and conical and slightly concave and high, high so that from the top everything else looks flat, even the stretch we climbed up earlier and tore our lungs on the steep rocks there. Rocks that fill your pack so that you have a hard time sitting down and a harder time getting up, and rocks that push your pack into your head into the rock on the ground when you’re on a steep bit on all fours. Rocks that make their way into your knees and clash at awkward angles, grinding away down there and jolting out your legs at strange angles every now and then. Rocks from the sun that fall down in rays and deliver headaches from on high. Rocks in your legs and chest, so when you stop and undo your chest-strap there is a great release, an expansion and relaxation, as if you’ve undone your chest altogether and all your sweaty innards have slid out, relieved. Rocks in your pack so that when you take it off you are much too light, and your walk feels strangely out of time, too easy like peddling with the chain off. Rocks that fill your head with rocks. Rocks, rocks, rocks. I went and did the Crossing the other day, and it’s a rock-filled place up there, a crumbling Stonehenge of a place.

set the writing free/

tie the writing down/

Stupidity: A Sonnet

Stupidity, the least poetic vice,
Is grey, heavy grey. Golden lust, black hate,
Crimson rage: all excite, if not entice.
(Consider, too, the incompletely chaste.)
But simple lack of sense? Dull, dull. No sheen,
No blazing devil’s hue, no tempting shade.
Before, no wicked stratagem; and then,
No passion or despair, just dumb dismay.
He who, having looked a fool, belabours grief,
Betrays a spirit absent as his mind;
And if the spirit finds itself, and speaks:
“I missed a step. So what? Why mope? With time

I’ll ease the sore with verse, erase the fault.”
Mind replies: “Don’t be so obtuse, you dolt."

set the writing free/

tie the writing down/

The Moral Legalities of Dancing

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

1

========================================

This legal dance step collects memoirs

from Egyptian milk baths to colonising spilt knowledge.

Meditating her next leap a United Glider passes.

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Love life is a private signpost of change, public and unassuming,

a planet for all children, Jupiter has a dusts feather lying on a beach star gazing back strokes.

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Channel discovery doubts the swamp.

Time scars a revolution of gulled-friend’s final say,

switching off repercussions of redressed dominion.

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Living reflections under an opinion spell of misunderstanding,

old habits bridged neutral destiny,

so touch a Navigators question.

========================================

Cherry tree dissolves joke’s depth of wandering eyes,

…title plate all in our unique thinking.

========================================

Drugs or herbs caught Love’s lightning strike proposed by fear…

tasteful amusement laughs off complex aces

riding space and a pool imagines reality. ========================================

Environments travel slack deepening the judge, belly landing

the image of organized behaviour

dousing heritage to endeavour a verbal specialist.

========================================

Brothers lie calm watching migratory eagles tasteful amusement

managing to exist of no bodies beautiful plucking Sundown feathers.

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A rubber haze of smiles research a speaker

milky rich of insulation. Books thick as fate soaking bliss

slide down a spare bed rung’s.

2

========================================

Society squashes intellectual glamour pigeons wooing

monopoly wet like your navel,

Graduation comes Wednesday, Thursday, Payday or salary

========================================

Healing fittest freedom territory to gratification,

a buffering metropolis for noon-western victims of non-agency

destroys the commuting locality.

========================================

An Earth crashing onlooker shares orbits with Mercury’s

Moon becoming tomorrow when poor arise railroad lights.

========================================

Standing there as a natural left over you Capitalise on a wrong investment.

A humble oxen rides the last reclining deprivation

with a face full of grime choosing yesterdays bargain.

========================================

An exempt seagull high as a dollar thrills cheap medicine deciding future miles ahead obliterating taxes paid through charity of a friendly sleeper.

========================================

Guided through hiccups and rain,

a spell so happy out of disaster deep down to wonder deserving no blunder, the straight baby face catches a blanket.

========================================

In the morning the line bends whilst traffic sits dodo rhythms contributing nothing honoured, feathers untangle a wish from tuft’s teardrops rushing free speech to demise.

========================================

A whisper of realms serious the silk suit fits

carefully away from interested gazes shrugging a root of disguise

relief to city faces.

========================================

Becoming too much to breathe we about face World

roles imitating in the highest form of lunacy.

Howls belong a catch

========================================

3

A dance of thunderheads lying here naked an Indian skips the heirloom crashing polite policy on the world's best driver.

Dews dry the sunlit dust.

========================================

Living very precious spheres floating back to sovereignty,

smugglers bear onward embellishment outlining countries

in sand.

No great white fang swallows a shallow channel.

========================================

Coral all colours timid across the surface listen silence brought

selling lonely tone remains of late Summer.

========================================

Concluded, a bystander studies audience banks of hard wisdom

standardised by fiction’s fashion of reclusion.

Thinned by emotion, obligatory statements and passions are relentless.

Reading the morning page side on side terror vanishes

drinking rodeo stalemates slack.

Tomorrow awakens rainbow synthesising heartbeats.

========================================

Executive beach star hotel breast strokes life,

resistant heavens listening to enemy plans scaring of mortal chaos.

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Devolved promotion variables amongst the World populous,

a community sheds warm negotiation and advanced man wonders to unravel magic. Backstage a friendly newcomer appears.

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No crisis like a pond which once held goldfish, crossroads of ignorance exist but final Summit dreams tear imagination exclusive of looks beyond sense.

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4

Complete destitute and unsurpassed a Cherokee holds his pony and an Apache awakens the wind, meanwhile Black foot carries

water no longer.

========================================

Sitting back some cowboys give glances to those old chicken roots rocking.

Not constricted by construct disease or doing wrong,

the day over to dance ownership and no violence.

========================================


========================================

On the term declared sifting dirt at feet they drive by in luxury jet plane thirst sleeping over Winter solstice with a lightning cloud from car light.

========================================

A place to urinate up before branches broke the forest conscience

frozen to regain foreign shadows they

drift off to new simplicity…

========================================

Manene 2006 Josh Kahu-Noho

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tie the writing down/

Disappearing Act

If I had a balloon, I would paint it red, all red, and let it carry me through the sky A drop of blood on a ceiling of blue

I would float and the air would whisper ‘don’t look down’ There is no ground; no green or brown;

no black or clay Just me and the day and a balloon painted red I would loose myself

in light and the music of the flight A lonesome polka dot,

a splash of jam, a pin-prick in heaven

Where? See there I’m sorry I

don’t, I can’t Just

watch What?

That, see,

There

.

Clare Bycroft

set the writing free/

tie the writing down/

The Shape of a Key

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

She has made love with strangers
in rooms she didn't know.
She makes love to strangers
in rooms she doesn't know

The light fittings differ,
so do the cracks in the plaster
and the tune in the background,
but they are all a shade of white
and the cobweb pendulum
floats on the same breath of air.

There are kisses
mingled with her hair,
skin slides and rises
in peaks and troughs

Her eyes are closed,
her heart lies inside palace walls,
surrounded by a moat, beyond
a range of mountains
across a swamp.

Her mind is a dungeon
-a butterfly on the sill fans ruby wings,
its body the shape of a key.

Christina Pater

set the writing free/

tie the writing down/

Southern Alps at Midnight

The soldier on manoeuvres
stands in the howling dark,
on rock crystallized to white

The night strips away camouflage,
opens his ribs and creeps around lungs,
to germinate a small seed,
the dream that is his life,
whenever he thinks of home.

Rae Pater

set the writing free/

tie the writing down/

Adventuring Up North

My silent broodings hang over the head of the Hokianga,
where charcoal waters claim the tyreless rusten hulk of an old augustan logger;
the kereru sing to the kauri and sup greedily the cardinal fruit;
and ponytails flick sandflies, adrift in distant fields.

While in the settlement, as such; the pier sinks empty to the bay,
horse-shoes and hammer hang idly from iron pegs
and tidal swells quench the smelting-fires, stifling memories of Golden Age.
The town’s quaint sepia: a blink, forgotten from today.
~
This is all far from the Sky needle’s shadow
where I once sat sweating,
licking citric fingers,
waiting for a bus to come to take me past

Rangitoto’s volcanic ire, red-heavy under january’s kisses,
eclipsed by a mechanical ‘marvel’, lilting in fervent foreground –
red-russet oozing from anchor-bays: the effluent of the affluent
discarded discretely to help form sandcastles on next month’s beach.

And at the heart of Things to Come:
a juice bar in suits, a café in à la mode,
a man in the papers
sleeps under a tree.
~
When I’m flailing in the slipstream
in(evitable)transit from the Hokianga
I like to look north to the tranquil treehouse
and set sail for the greyhaven head of my harbour,

James Flewellen

set the writing free/

tie the writing down/

Alphabetical

The extent to which the book extends
is bound within its cover and stretches
through the vaunted halls of mind cathedrals
in signs and codes

The book whose spine
follows the circle of library walls
is God - according to Borges
-and spins circles through space.

The space between books on shelves
in the library,
any library at any time,
remains a universal constant
over which a librarian has no control.

This page, a leaf that turns through cycles.
These letters, catalogue of scrawl on the toilet wall
by those who seek light
as they travel down rows of shelves,
neatly filed volumes dissolving into atoms
of information
transmogrified,
transmittable via brainwaves
anatomical cables bridge
print to thought.

A conversation with God,
with gods of words in ceremonial procession
covering page after page,
alphabetically,
systematically
coordinated page and word.

Titles by authors long dead,
the scarecrow straw and stuff of their heads.
'Oh time thy pyramids,
thy labyrinth of letters'
how we scramble and climb
through their thorns and dust
for meaning
and find only the beauty of symbols,
a simulacrum of beauty.
We search now for alternatives
through spaces, silences, the narratives unwritten.

How long have we stumbled uncomprehending,
and who writes the findings of the search,
the narratives of the searchers?

Is there, somewhere, a writer penning
in slanted gold calligraphy ...
'In the beginning the word was ...'

Christina Pater

set the writing free/

tie the writing down/

A Piece of Power

A piece of power,
A peace of paua.
A country of no
upheaval, war or
transgression
These elemental facts
are fiction to your
3rd eye, I never
married the girl who
Asked me, regret has to be
Reality, denial is
really faith, yet
I married her
in reality and divorced
myself from faith…

Josh Manene Kahu-Noho

set the writing free/

tie the writing down/

Pewter Rabbit

Monday, November 20, 2006

This tiny rabbit on my desk holds
aloft a smaller racquet. A tennis
joke from summers ago. Unfunny
bunny now. We have been too long in
familiar circumstances: avoid eye
contact, maintain a bare civility.
Rabbit has seen daylight through
my promises, observed petty vanity
and displays of subterfuge. Also
he remonstrates. Bad habit Brer
rabbit, and I’ve grown tired of
your false silver, buck toothed
smile, and silly fucking ears.

Owen Marshall

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tie the writing down/

Snow at 2am

Hazard leads the way, blossoming ahead,
to the moment grace tilts towards sublime
snow's slow dance on night-time's stage.

Three Japanese students run out in their
white underwear from the backpacker lodge,
brocades of ice sifting through their giggles.

Quantum sky-burial, abstract and bright
mystery practising the art of concealment,
snow's ghost ships, shrouded, sailing into dark.

Then an empty, green-lighted, silent street,
crystal interiors of freezers on surfaces of cars,
the clear sky alive with shooting stars.

Dave Eggleton

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tie the writing down/

Paku paku, wakka wakka. Pacman activate player one. Tick tock. Tick tock. Whe’re you going? What you got? Wakka wakka. The Daily Grind. BP Edgewere. Tick tock. Medium latte, fill’er up. Paku paku. Wakka wakka. Coffee Culture. Tick tock. Paku wakka. Tick tock, what time you got? Beep Beep. Time for the news. Terrorists terrorise, petrol prices rise. Paku paku, need more wakka wakka. Where’re you going? Pinkey. Blinky. Caltex Riccarton. Mobil Bealey. BP Fendalton. Tick tock. Tick tock. Café 101. Fair trade. Abolish slavery, Danish pastry. Paku paku. Tick tock. Make the grade. What you got? Tick tock. Shell Merivale. Wakka wakka. Up the Hill. Got a view. Paku paku. At the Cup. Short Black. Hot Choc. Tick tock. Paku paku. Tucked in bed. Wakka wakka. Made the next level. Tick tock. Tick tock.

Nick Colville

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tie the writing down/

Skies Versus Mountains

You can feel the thin air crossing a swing-bridge,
you can see it in the toi toi.

Of course there’s sheep on a snowy hill
but I don’t hear the national anthem playing.

Church of the Good Shepard like a brown monopoly piece.

Floodlights shine over a dying horizon,
Crusader’s flag dissolving in sunlight.

Antenna on the Beehive for the radio controlled colony.

You ease the bowls on like a baby’s head onto a pillow.
Swimming mountain, chuffing smoke.

Rocks like biceps holding in the ocean.
There are nations here that I have never heard of.

Sleeping trains painted onto the walls,
I think if you open them, there’ll be more underneath.

Waiheke to or from Auckland or Devenport.
more spiny mountains into the sea.

Wooden moko seem compelled to take it all seriously,
There is a story climbing the walls and roof around us.

Space aged technology on the rolling grass.
Bananas fastened to the mountain bike.

The Major’s death was always very dramatic.
Darwin would have liked our ferns.

They dress the whales for their visit on land.

The consequences are dire if the greenstone’s not given.
They have lights to light-up the old wars.

Things cut in stone last longer than semantics.

They came and liked the view from the hills.
Rocks so tired the limey moss caught it.

Nick Colville

set the writing free/

tie the writing down/

Little Things

Little things,
Moments caught in the web
Woven from thread
Of words,
Tangled in colours,
Free to fly
Across the walls
In our minds, fall.

Words
In our hands, last
Remnants of seasons past,
Leaves on Autumn ground,
Left to gather,
Not to let fall
From the lines
Held between time.

Andrea Quinlan

set the writing free/

tie the writing down/

A Leave Message

My property manager sleeps at night.
I wonder how

to sleep when the scump, thurry and squeak
above my bedroom
above my bed
above my be
Quiet for fucks sake!

There’s a number on the fridge, but
he never answers

when we call –
Please leave a message.
for fucks sake

Rupert woke up screaming, hysterical
clutching his neck, clawing his
“I thought there was a rat on my face!”
“Be for fucks sake!”

I guess he wants to be left alone.

In the tenement hallway, there’s a camera
(enclosed in a plastic bubble)

Once we got a response,
like when I threatened to call health & safety.
A tenant has obscured the camera’s
view with vivid.

Someone just left

A bag of rat poison
on the doorstep one day.

Sacha Bradford

set the writing free/

tie the writing down/

Let Me Tell You a Secrete.

Let me tell you a secrete.

We smelt the smoke for blocks—
Is Highpara on fire?

I want to tell you that I’ll protect you
but I know it’s not my (historic) place(s trust)

Asthmatic gutter children. They sniff.
A bag of paint and glue.

The city council strictly denies applications for open air fires.
Regulations prohibit open air fires.
Chch has a smog problem, don’t you know.

Hey kids, is that spray paint CFC-free?

Symptoms may include respiratory problems.

My flatmate has a hacking cough like you would not believe.

It burnt down
flames all up
in the three storeys.

Only the two lift shafts survived
amidst a mass of timber, burnt, bricks, burnt and bricks, smoked.

It had been derelict for years. No deaths.
The Press said two women were pulled out
“too high on an unidentified substance to save themselves”

Three pages of press coverage, colour photos
I cut them out and sent them to my grandma.
In retrospect, this may not have been the best idea.

The IRD begins renovations soon.

Once dark, we lug charred bricks and timbers back to our chambers to build shelves.

The developers probably paid some street kid
a bag of glue to
set it alight
- man it’s their fucking home – you mean
all that glue and he still couldn’t apply himself?

We climb out the window of our third floor flat
shimmy along the gutter, hoist ourselves onto the roof.
The corrugated iron slits my jeans across the thigh
- He thought I “paid like $400 for those rips” –
But then, he lives at Home.

Designer tears, little nibbles every time.

The rubble smouldered for days.

It is our backyard, our outdoors, our get-some-fresh-air.

Sacha Bradford

set the writing free/

tie the writing down/

Lichfield Locals Development

We call the street
light Lucy Fir;
below, a shoe-box
of pine needles.
Pot not pop popular
at Poplar Alley.

Not official CCC
dollar-a-bag rubbish;
Felicity’s whores,
car battery,
place, paint and peel:
a gruff confetti.

We live here.
We thrive here.

Vivid poised, strike with precision!
Don’t make me scribble
this ain’t no ribbon
It’s time to get some unrest
in lease, picture piece piece,
Each each pause, at least.

Saline ill solution reveal:
brick brick
brick brick
brick brick brick.
brick. brick brick
brick brick. brick brick
brick. brick. brick. brick. brick.
Turn our exhibitions into furtive reclamations.

These graffiti is important to us
These graffiti is important.
To us, these graffiti is
Important to us
These graffiti it important to us.

Sacha Bradford

set the writing free/

tie the writing down/

New to the Scene: Sacha Bradford

Sacha Bradford is in love with the city, with every dirty inch of it, every scrap of rubble, every graffitied letter. “I love how the urban throws up beauty in unexpected ways,” she explains, and I think that’s how her poems work as well. They never fail to surprise me. Both playful and dark, juxtaposing inflated language with incorrect grammar, slang and hiphop rhythms with allusions to William Carlos Williams and nods to David Eggleton, Sacha makes the language in her poetry feel new, uncertain, sly. We are constantly traversing broken ground, trying to get our footing, and yet excited that we can’t quite. In Sacha’s hands, the poem is a form of run-down architecture. One gets the sense that the poem is built onto the site of the page, that the poem has mass. The bricks in “Lichfield Locals Development” are an obvious example of this, but I’m also thinking of the erasures and shifts in “A Leave Message.” This Wellington native finds the sublime in even the darkest corners of Christchurch, and I find it refreshing to discover this aspect of New Zealand explored in poetry, rather than more poems about mountains and flowers, for, as she explains at the end of “Let Me Tell You a Secrete”, the ruins of the city are, for New Zealand’s youth, “our backyard, our outdoors, our get-some-fresh-air.”

I first met Sacha in my poetry workshop at Canterbury, and I am thrilled to have this opportunity to let more readers in on her secret world. Although she majored in Political Science and Marketing, I’m sure we’ll still be hearing her name in the poetry world. She’s been writing poetry since the age of 9, and I think the habit is in her blood.

Claire Hero

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Acrobats

So, balance here upon the high wire
not daring to look down. So, arc
upon trapeze, let ourselves go into
the void, arms outstretched towards
the ones we love, while captured
beasts are forced to tricks in rings
of spangled sawdust far beneath.

Owen Marshall

set the writing free/

tie the writing down/