Auckland Poetry

Welcome to the fourth Edition of Auckland Poetry . com

Contributors: If you want your poem to appear - you need to:

a) sign it

b) place your copyright notice - Copyright & c o p y ; 2007 by YourName

c) Change its Post Status from DRAFT to Private (it is then changed by the Editor). If you leave it in Draft - the Editor will think you are still working on it.

When your poem is set to PRIVATE - it will be considered for PUBLICATION. If you leave poems in “draft” mode, and do not finish them, eventually they will be removed - it’s okay to keep a draft version going for a few days but not hundreds.

If you would like to contribute to a future edition - Register now as a “Contributor”. Then all this will make sense!

New Authors

When you join our site you are given the status of “Contributor”. If you are a published poet and known to the Editor - you may be promoted to “Author” - and that means that your poems are published immediately and under your control.

This month we are delighted to welcome new AUTHORS to the site:

• Miriam Barr
• Anna Kaye
• Ramon Te Wake

Recently published poems featured in this edition:

• Rebecca Isgrove - Apairist
• Nicholas Alexander - Monkey Luck
• Jan Oscar Hansen - A Voyage
• Jason Page - Somebody to Dance With
• Richard Taylor - machine music

Review

When you submit work to this site, if your work really takes our attention you may get comments. If it is outstanding for other reasons - then you may get reviewed.

We look forward to reading your work, too.

Promotion

AucklandPoetry has a goal in mind - to publish lots of works by contributors and discover great talent. It is a reflection of years of many extremely good (and some not so good) Poetry Live events - currently these are held every Tuesday from about 8pm upstairs at The Classic on Queen Street. See you there!

we go out and dance,
pull leaves by the fistful,
weave them into crowns
that hold the hair over
our eyes
his sweet fingers,
a song of bonesssssticky
and dripping with honey
watery eyes and
cheeks, flowery
a sudden light from the street
flooding across the floor
like spit milk
where he sleeps, still
as crumpled as paper
after a hard day’s
flower thieving

Rebecca Isgrove

(c) Rebecca Isgrove 2007

A stationary point-unmoving
Upon the stillness sits my throne
From which I behold the crowds
Come and go-in haste-ever changing
Like thoughts-devoured by stormy clouds

Morning Raid

I hear the swishing sound of the helicopter gunship coming
our way, dogs whine and hide in barns as the chopper hangs
in the air just outside the kitchen window blowing up a dust
storm. A solder slides down a rope I open the window, he
hands me a toaster and smartly salutes before climbing back up.

When I plug in the toaster it detonate in a cacophony of finely
chopped rainbows, bacon in the frying pan burns a plume of
reeking smoke thickens the air. Chopper down, hit by a ground
to air missile; I settle for oats mixed with cream and strawberry
As dogs turn feral and tear into crispy bacon.

Oxjam Event

OXJAM Open mic/Jam Night

Wed 24th October, 8pm

Roasted Addiqtion Cafe, New North Rd, Kingsland

Performers $2.50, non-performers $5.

Come out and add your voice to help make trade fair. All proceeds go to Oxfam who will match our efforts. Homemade jam for sale too.

To register to read or play text OXJAM + your name to 027 203 4847 or show up on the night and put your name down.

Cheers.

Anna Kaye

Richard Taylor

the machine music moves mechanically as it must because it is
beautiful and is based on a legal system of repeats but nothing is
yet for sure why should it be after all the law of torts and the
thinking Thinking Thing is there, and we are part of it despite
seclusion like a sheep’s or a boffin’s head, in a vision of perfect
symmetry held in a white drop as if we could know’it all, and there’s
need for change, but who looks on, and who is who who he looks at who
he looks is who — but we need all these people who don’t agree because
of the machine, which, despite its penetential and inevitable
inefficiency, is heard to cry out at deep of night to the Great One
who is probably dead and ensconced in a dream of lubricated, or
lubricious cavortings toward spittle. and flesh, words that send
shudders up my spire wire’s spine loom; one would naturally much
prefer to be the vision inside a technical robot, whose doom scenes
see wire mass everywhere, and, how does the spider know, because he,
too, is a constructor - or is it because the music nags us back down
the drain pipe into a parallel universe of incomprehensible equations,
or a crazed jumble of electronic, electrical, and machine parts
pushed into an elected enclave, whose triumph is its denseness, or the
enormous significance of an endlessly looping musical track which your
great great grandmother could well have enjoyed: some post—
Stochausian, post- Varese etc, not something tame like.the Songs for a
Mad King: but it all passes, even the wind machines, and the ape-
shaped eyes, thoughts of death, leaves, corpse valleys, memories,
inscriptions.. .you turn back to The Romantics, for there is something
about you, something nobody can see: as if you were the one in the
centre of a gigantic sound-shriek, and batting up all hell, and no one
gives a fuck, especially with everything turning into grey
gold. . .something like a cat looking into your face.

‘machine music’ by Richard Taylor

A building Site

On weed cleared bed of earth light bulbs
grew… fifteen watts green blue and
shocking pink, one of the worker's had
a male lover.

In a corner a hundred watt’s shone without
mercy, blinding butterflies, but gave stage
light to a pair of muddy shoes thrown
away by an artless person who didn't see
that Günter Grass had made them.

A tramp took pity took the boots, a boy
threw a stone knocked out the offensively
hundred watt bulb, lesser bulbs sighed cast
a mellow glow and enjoyed themselves.

Senryu

Poverty is a myth
Look at the poor they are fat
Live on sweet and crisp

The New Poor

Many middleclass people are poor, I read,
when house and car are paid for there is no
money for food; they could sell the car and
move to a smaller house, but the indignity of
no longer being thought of as middleclass,
stops them from doing just that. Trapped in
a spiral of debt and their own insatiability,
they are stuck in semi poverty mitigated by
new the Volvo in the driveway

Through a candle’s essence
Crimson borders soothe the edge
Pulsating to the beat
The sounds dance on the eyelid
The visions a striking purple
Equally green too
But why the film of the photograph
Capturing inside the minds eye
At time opaque
Even transparent
But always certain
Creation imprisoned
Freedom is a memory
This place can be hell
Convalescence will be
When she finally presides next to me.

8:14am 13th Oct 2007

There is nobody left there

a throng gathered waiting

The people you came to kill

had vanished into thin air

they came and they called on their plastic box device

and flames we took for games fried brains and let us leave

waiting for them ask for more expired days
important truncated oats and wheat chaff to the feedthe quiet afternoon

the endless glory of minutes

Here, at the Ruinscape - we wonder at the minds that

brought us this hiddious expanse warped thoughts

executed in explosive charged seconds shades were sent

over the eyes made of silver cement

the pain left behind by thieves

and

the wooden bench

They all came to collect their debts

one by one

they left

in a queue

bent

and

harried

by death

mystic island

A Voyage

The ship was loaded we were going to
an island in the Saragossa that cannot be
seen by radar as it is always surrounded by
a miasma of sadness, here daybreak is
only a five second glimmer in an endless
night and only expert navigators are able
to find this island…

Our cargo consisted of discarded dreams
the islanders had lived so long in peace
that they had lost the ability to think of
esoteric things, their word expanse was
of seaweed and monster cods; but they
needed this diversion if not they would
sink into apathy and die

When the ship blew its siren for the third
time and the gangway was lifted, I was
hiding behind a warehouse that was full
of dreams destined for another island,
I wouldn’t like to be a part of this, giving
people second hand dreams when the could
consisting of clichés and spent phrases.

I could have lived with this mild betrayal
if it hadn’t been for the rule that no crew
member were allowed to dream or read
or sing, but be, as often long time sailors
are, men who have lost their ability to
remember that once they were children
and not blinded by endless tediousness.

Worst of all, perhaps, it was said that ships
going there were crewed by the world
weary, men who are shadows of themselves
who drowned when crossing the vastest
expands, too far away from a priests soothing
words where love had lost its meaning and
the last thought was of a whore in Santiago.

A walk through the park does it
When it rains and then shines
there are trees speaking a foreign language
and some that, like trees, stand up straight
if I were a bird and alighted on a tree
I would want to know all about it
Trees have no idea what to do except
hang on for dear life
the corruption of innocence happens commonly in clear daylight
there is nothing you can do when its a tree that has bent on its resolve
but a will of the wisp dragonfly is easy to brush aside
its far more likely to have taken the time to explore avenues of escape
it has darted this way and that
made a flute whistle under the willow
and sucked fig sap from the tree
nothing was out of range by extending its filament wings
new ground appeared but it never settled very long
so its ideas were grand and tended to be forgotten
like enthusiastic laughter
And in between, we have the union of the King and Queen
Henry and Winifred the reigning monarchs of the monkey
These bipedal beings that breed huge families - they
grow roots and settle in the forest
some just sit there and stare at the trees
during the rain the wind pushes great branches about
they wheeze like aching lungs whispering a chorus
and yet minutes later its calm again
the sun clear and sharp
The monkey had developed a new trick
it could consider the tree, drink and flick
a dragonfly onto its waiting tongue
the trick was to be both quick and still
Its luck improved with the
development of skill

14 October 2007
9:50am

The War Weary

When I think of war I think of Falluja, massive
firepower total obliteration till silence descends
and one can hear blood dripping from the cross.

No heroes here only scarred and scared soldiers
who will take this horror home and remember it;
and for whom the war will go on in nightmares.

Falluja, here a miasma of fear obscure the ruined
dwellings workers are rebuilding, but how do we
repair a heart that has seen too much blood shed?

Rangitoto

You emerge,

Upwards from water,

like the hump of a whale.

Like a grass-stained knee,

breaking the water surface in a bathtub.

But your smooth greenness,

belies your dirty red rockiness.

From Takapuna’s shore,

I can hold you in my hand.

But adventuring to your summit

feels like forever

when you’re a child.

I remember walking

in dehydrated step

short legged.

Red,

with prickly heat.

You can’t even see anything,

most of the way up.

Its just another bush walk.

Until the top.

And then,

all this effort expended,

for a view

that’s a dime a dozen anyway.

Copyright © Anna-Kaye Forsyth 2006

Senryu

Diamonds are forever

But you’ll not always be there

To see their sparkle.