ruby cabinet tray4
Two sonnets
37. The Jacket
My dear friend Janet’s jacket hangs in view
on my bedroom closet door, dark in colour,
its inner lining orange like its thin
vertical stripe and every second button.
It hangs there looking smart, fashionable, chic
at ease in a middle-class home with works of art
by Hotere and McCahon, and with a poet
writing sonnets almost daily that come
it seems out of the blue, like the jacket
clearly not his, and not his late wife Kay’s,
possibly not even Janet’s but a visitor’s
half angel, half Muse who spent a dream with him
and departed, leaving her nifty jacket hanging
like an unreadable word that might have been love.
53. Caracas, Venezuela, 2009
City of lavish trees, barred doors and windows,
gas cheaper than water, and lunatic traffic;
city of vivid slogans and sad citations –
‘Construyamos la patria buena’, and then more staunch
‘Patria, Socialismo o muerte’. All the plazas
are named for Bolivar, and the ‘Bolivarian’ President
has kind eyes full of promise. I want to believe it
as his people seem to do, but History has doubts.
Should those brilliantly painted posters say instead
‘The patria fucks us always’? A purple beetle
like an angry enamelled robot seems to attack
as I walk to the van. The driver beats it down
to the rutted oil-smeared asphalt. ‘Don’t stamp on it’
I shout – too late, and in the wrong language.
ck stead tohunga crescent
o
Ruby
Ruby or not ruby, aye, there's the rub,
a rubious light smeared in rain puddles,
rueful, had we but world enough and time
to more rubies find, stone in paraphrase.
Held by claw-clasp, three clicks of slipper heels,
bling exed-out, or sodden rātā blossom,
sanctuary glow, rosary bead gleam,
loot of empires crunched to spangled candy.
Gemmed casket rubble, pomegranates halved,
scrawled red tip of a correction marker,
night's firework filaments, string bulbs lit up,
cut-true axes turning their refractions.
Heat's fanned ember, wild cherry rubescence,
cruel eyes' glare, law's wax seal, dripping knife,
dragon's blood, sheen of wine poured in a glass –
flawless moment, fuller, richer finish.
david eggleton ōtepoti / dunedin
o
degustation menu
‘a lifetime’s delectation’
1.drinking empty milk from my dieting breast feeder
turns me into a newborn failure
to thrive the specialist’s life-saver
prescription is ‘to feed the baby feed the mother’
2.hating the ox tail stew i won’t eat that
yes you will sit there till it’s gone but
then they found they couldn’t
make me
3.thick white bread sandwiches with Vegemite
& peanut butter and so many glasses of cows’ milk
each green apple from the pine-wood crate wrapped in pink tissue
but bananas were too expensive
4. in stacks Saturday morning pancakes
that were fried by my father and ferried by us upstairs
to my mother then we kids debated which was best
lemon and sugar or honey or lemon and sugar or hon
5.every Friday ribbon noodles and frozen mixed veg
in a huge pot of mince all heaped on toast before
we departed for our extended afternoon ramble across
six wild parks to drama class: O New Plymouth
6.four years of nurses’ home dining then
i suddenly had at my flat to cook for 6 boys
inspiration i chopped and baked cabbage with
Weetbix – a dish redolent of mattress flock
7.after my birth-giving Max homemade
mayonnaise with spinach eggs Benedict
also for our second with an eight pint
accompaniment of intravenous whole blood
8.all his Asian travels re-rendered in the kitchen
where we girls ate in appreciation and since he’s gone
i haven’t worked out how to make
any of it
9.oblivious with his ashes in the front room
but later the kids said there wasn’t enough
food for the mourners we should have
phoned over the road for K-Chicken or
10.the beautiful lasagnas and pumpkin soups i ate from
the freezer for the next 6 weeks but then
began my own disgusting cooking i try to make it
wholemeal everything
11.after searing the meat at high heat
sets off the smoke detector
eating the Eric-hunted venison on rye
in ear protectors on the back step
janet charman avondale / tāmaki makaurau
o
Red is always
from somewhere
So Pound it out:
'Go in fear
of abstractions!'
recalling Wystan
living fearlessly
Yellow, yellow, yellow, etc'
then
'red, red, red...'
you got it!
avant gardening
in the Musgrave
Studio Theatre
the Seventies flush
no strobe lighting
the red balloons
on strings straining
against the gravity
of their origins
no, I said No
ideas but
in things
Let me bring in
Robert Motherwell
Black Mountain 1945
The 'pure' red of which certain abstractionists speak does
not exist, no matter how one shifts its physical contexts.
Any red is rooted in blood, glass, wine, hunters' caps, and a
thousand other concrete phenomena. Otherwise we should
have no feeling toward red or its relations, and it would be
useless as an artistic element.
'Beyond the Aesthetic'
Pop!
Williams also breaking
new wood
certainly not wind:
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
also breaking
one or two spokes
in the New Critical wheel
Do we need
reminding that
the concrete
is dependable
renders the red
with a sheen
anchoring the
as yet unpopped
balloons
still billowing
around Parisian
streets?
Oh, for a shiny fire truck!
Oh, for a sailor's warning!
Oh, for the old phone box!
terry locke full moon rising, moureesses bay
o
What does poetry give to life?
‘The poet is endemic with life’, Will Alexander
For me poetry is a process, of making sense of experience, a cinematic capture of events, ideas, impressions, thoughts and feelings, and building them into, condensing them in to what amounts to the creation of an archive of values. Poetry is much more than just words, it is phrases joined, with pauses, flow, rhythm and musicality. Why include the phrase or combination of phrases if they do not express or capture something that adds to, enhances, enthuses, gives hope to you and potential readers?
Voice of lighted hills
With a song like the endless sobbing of distance
with waters weeping in the limpid blue afternoon
with a body of a veil thrown / a flight of silken stairs
she is the eternal dancer of the short-lived day
In the fluid music of the garden of lilies
in flashes of Geminid shower lightning
with rustling satins of warm oxytocins
her name tastes like camelias
With the resonance of islands
and the calls of painted birds on the ceiling
filling her vase with echoes
our love is infinite while it lasts
This is what we are here for
sharing poetry, in the face of death, immense
Somehow it is that we as humans are all connected, we know that and too often, seem to forget that. That forgetting is perhaps not individualised, but ironically, a collective amnesia. The practice of poetry is intrinsically about sharing, is a collaboration, connecting us with each other and with the immediacy of our awareness, emotions and perspectives including the places we live, call home. It emboldens curiosity and exploration of language, the fire of metamorphosis and social, community, societal renewal. Poetry is the tissue of experience, the flesh of communication and exchange, and for optimistic endeavour.
piet nieuwland whangārei / aotearoa