approaching the trap

As we approach Waitangi Day I'm going to put some of my poems up - they relate to this day, they relate to me and they relate to today's world.

Sci fi colonisation

the first one arrived all

sun-spill and screaming

like a God. Somewhere

a parchment of pixels

was signed and they don't

talk to us anymore.

What have we loved?

To make ours into

theirs they came in numbers.

Poem - Maruia

Maruia

I've

seen these

hills before and I

see them again, they are

free cloaked, fully wrapped

in beech, a layering upon and their

uplifted moko grooved heads are gazing.

We've wandered upon their attired slopes, spongy steps

sank us, we balanced in our hands and slid

under the mottled trees in fragmented  light,. Our walk out, the uncomfortable

stream a silence, as still as a star and as

distantly afraid.

I'm

looking

at my familiar face

facing me again reflective

and free, fully cloaked, wrapped,

a reach to uncover tangata whenua

for sure, though my fingers trace ancestry.

The nesting curve of your undulating hip, and an

ankle lightly lengthened, I suggest upon them

love phases invisibly chiselled. You absent-mindedly entwine my feet as I sleep,

dreaming a moment too small to sigh as

distances sway

I am

the growing

tip, life extended

I live on the distant hills

free, fully cloaked, wrapped

incessant pushing propels upward,

my feet knead the ground so slowly

Our sons collide quietly, a flood full of limb,

branching elbow unlocking a leg like a log,

the entanglement of us revealed unadorned and complete. We replay the scenes

of the past, the future as is now so

distinctly displayed

the last guide

the last guide

We climbed through clouds

the first day up to the pass

my body sang laments to

each stoney step and at the top

we went to sleep to a dire

ukulele strummed hard by

a german youth reliving a past

The wild kiwi slid through

the bush and we watched

and at Heaphy a Rangitāne

and I hongi, later a descendant

of Te Rauparaha and I kōrero

about the voices we hear here

where here enemies are friends

as I cradle my baby, home,

softly rocking and reaching for

another son to touch his head

and still his sighs, his mother,

my love, leans across my lap

and I realise the cadence of my

breath is still a walk, my pack

sits serenely on my shoulders

Waitangi day night - a poem

A poem for Waitangi day 2014

Waitangi day night

A queen sent emissaries

as I checked the rat trap

for a licker lover of

peanut butter inside the

ceiling of my whare

on Waitangi day night

That wasp stung me inside

my ear, I heard the vibrating

wings notch up but too

late my instinctual alarm

bell rang, too late for me

on Waitangi day night

Their paper home has grown

and my ear has swollen so i

cannot hear their voices

entreating the benefits of

a queen constantly begetting

on Waitangi day night

I huddle inside a fern now,

my old whare adorned with

photos of a queen, a tidal

current I see, head-high as

sweeping so clean, me

on Waitangi day night

Beneath Te Papa

A busy time at the moment with assignments due left, right and centre - but I am enjoying the deadlines for some reason, even though I am moving house again. Whew - must be time for a poem.

This poem got 2nd place in BayLit which I was really pleased about. I've decided to leave it unchanged with its flaws intact, although in some ways I'd still like to rework it and make it better.

Beneath Te Papa

My knee clicked loudly like an out of time fingersnapper

as I entered Te Papa. A museum, as am I, both hoarding

treasures deep on this day of my birth.

I am 50 today as I descend below Te Papa, the oversized

lift looming around us like an atrium, my socks slip

on the floor. A slow motion ritual fall to our past.

The doors weep quietly aside and I find them along walls.

Taiaha stacked supine, appearing settled yet expectant,

as poised as hungry white herons staring at faint flickers of fish.

They watch as years slide by. Discarded weapons now relics,

longing for a warm hand, the lightest touch of emotion, we were

forged for our time, as useful as a steady pay packet, or an edge.

A weapon-less warrior watching warrior-less weapons.

Te Papa and I are the cave mouth open everyday, and they enter

to see, to touch, to feel - the museum, but not the man.

I also received news that somehow two poems from the blog have been included within  brief magazine issue 44-45. The editor of that issue was Scott Hamilton aka Maps from Reading the Maps so I believe I have Scott to thank for my inclusion - Kia ora Scott. I am not sure which poems were selected and I'm awaiting a copy to check - the anticipation is intense, I'm loving it!

back soon

I'll be back blogging soon, until then here is a poem I submitted to my course.

Still life without you

The cupboard closes quietly as

it settles into place, a sigh of capture

intended. As reassuring as

a seatbelt sliding around me.

The old war-cupboard would still

be resounding, an echo of slams

descending from distant headlands,

the guns, my fingerprints everywhere.

The cupboard sits as silent as an

absence, a gap that exclaims,

remember I am still paused,

waiting in anticipation for more.

it is all us

our tears dry as

salty trails in the nor-wester

that heated wind

slides forcefully within the rubble

it continues

restlessly toward the sea, our lives

emergency

that digs our sides and cuts our shoulders

it is all us

that hot breath knows it holds everything.

The shock is opening to reality and the stories coming out of loss just drop me into tears. We are seeing the community work together, we see the people supporting each other as we naturally do - kia kaha to all.

Update - 148 confirmed dead, 50 still missing, 55,000 properties don't have water.

smithyman - trees

275
                                  TREES

                  not so many kauri
                                     rimu
and on the flats when
those were cut out
they put the fire in          kahikatea
                                     kohekohe
                                     taraire
                                     matai
                                     tawa

burning off

Black black black was the colour of my true love's hair.
Was after, grey, like ashes,
and were                       
                                       miro
                                      totara
                                      puketea

and those which had
bloodstain flowers,
the family of
                                        rata

tuna kahu poem

coming up to 3 and run,

he calls them snake -

leaning over, reflected

eyes expectant, the

long-fins radiate, an

undulation a leftline

later at hisfirstfacepaint

he is eel and also

with a pen positioned

he draws a trailing

tuna, and an eel

and a snake and he

knows they are, he knows.

Smithyman - Lone Kauri

225


LONE KAURI

Whatever happened, it happened.
In swamp, on lowlands, gum diggers find ancestors.
Sometimes a lot of them lying the one way
as though sometime was
a great wind which put down a bush if not a forest,
trunk by trunk, and they've been lying there unseen.
Their wood can still be good enough for working.
Hauled at, they are reluctant to be earth, turned over.
They are pigheaded.

On the climb to Ngapukehaua there's one
didn't go down, up there by himself standing
over teatree. He's not far from caves of the dead.
Maybe he feels responsible,
he's older. Nowadays

I have to stop for a breather.
He has been lightning smitten and gale struck.
He is failing from the top down.
I like to crouch into and lean my back against.
I say "Brother" and he sighs.

 
Smithyman online