Kirby Wright , Hawaii Black Point, Oahu I sedate in the coconut breeze, ponder the hum of runaway ocean. Men test the shallows with spears - they stab at shadows then poke and prod holes beneath the surface. The men are stick figures, bending. The sea is a canvas of tortures. The beach is missing its people. Mansions at Black Point pretend to be human. They crowd the soft bay, this skinny shore. Waves slap the sand, repeating yesterday and the day before. The water fills with pleasure boats. A sharp white sail severs water from sky. Nu'tungktatoka Material matters will be destroyed by spiritual beings who will remain to create one world and one nation. Hopi Prophecy Things spill out with frequency, especially childhood beatings and secrets. Remember when you used to lie on your back on grass and play with the clouds? Now find a seat on the salt train and watch your face get pulled by wires across a cloudless sky. These grey heavens shower my accomplishments, but beyond the quivering magnolias the ocean laughs. I fill my life with little miseries, trying to disguise surface weaknesses. Does what's on the inside trickle out and spill into morning coffee, me drinking my reflection again and again? See the skeletons dance their dance for flesh. They move like rivers move beneath this city, quiet and desparate Overhead, a plane does its mock planet routine. The moon pulls our bodies over walls, joins our shadows. Horizon bleeds, spills twilight. The sky? in pain. I hurry my crabmeat self over the bones of the forgotten, foraging for things I don't understand, things that won't resist my claws. Rochelle Hope Mehr, New Jersey, USA sine qua non art is so needy: a floppy-eared dog wagging its tail panting and slobbering for your attention just for a moment for your stroke of flesh to validate its leap of faith Below Ground Zero What's apparent from the surface is a cavernous hole agape and ghastly as a jack-o'-lantern grin illuminated by the fires within It japes at us, it gets to us when we least expect it this absence this space where the Twin Towers stood Below the seared off hubcap of a car the pulverisation of flesh absence within the absence The ATM in its eternal expectant moment waiting for the next customer to log on In the bookstore, books still on shelves self-contained unperturbed The Mean They'll always be the master of me. The confident, shiny people. The people who know the answers to of all of the questions. Or who at least ask the really impressive questions. So easy for them to walk and talk. They glide through the corridors of life Off-limits to me. Executing programs. Following through with gracious ease. Exchanging pleasantries. Apparently human But cogged into some mighty, Machiavellian machine. They'll always be the master of me. The confident, shiny people. They're too much on the beam. They're sleekly efficient. And just too mean. The Detachment With a sick parent in the hospital. Starting out with the noblest of intentions. Still myself with Bach's French Suites sallying forth in my head. Trying to break past The grim scrim of beeping monitors punctuating the air. Then (fatal consequence of sensory overload?) Finding my legs lockstepped into the staccato rhythm Which motors the place. The robotic knee jerk Which is - one might say - The heart of the place. Moving further and further into the march. Farther and farther From the more natural rhythms of Bach. And losing my pulse Dawn Bruce, Australia Divorce Lunch Modern, sensitive, in control, we've worked through the maze. Mould odour of mushrooms lingers in silence. I look away from you, glance through glass at mute horror of trees twisting toward light trapped between towers. Wintered bare they lean; boughs thinned to twigs. Distorted trunks darken and angle. I weep inwardly for all withered dreams. To fill the waiting void we tear lettuce, spear prawns, devour bread rolls, look forward to the main course, for in an hour we'll be free. Divorce absolute. Painting of My Mother's Village Small cottages stepping through soft vales invite wondering. Warm reflected in toffee-glisten panes incite longing. Indigo roof tops hooding white-washed walls evoke mystery. Frost breathes upon the scene and melding with moon glow infuses a cold lace of light. Trees stretch in silver rows like gaurds, protecting this fragile land, this tiny glimpse of a dreaming moment. Conversation We speak of weather, food, the price of petrol, and then the thread snarls, tightens chokes off into politics, racism, sexism, strangles into swearing screaming leaving the gasp of friendship caught in the slammed door of an empty room. |
BMP4 nzpoetsonline |
BMP4 nzpoetsonline |
Photography: Bill Perry; Africa 2000 |
James Quinton, Australia The Weight Of Chainsaws She uses petrol for hairspray & We head to the markets To drink the merry-go-round. I buy a cone, well, three All of which have clouds on top She buys fairy floss & twenty chainsaws, one for each relative Christmas is soon. We enter a warehouse & On the roof I can see bodies Within corrugated perspex They're being sucked back and forth As if trapped in a hysterical vacuum cleaner One falls through and lands in a bowl. I take their hand We lumber to the slide outside My sunglasses spewing a liquid tint The weight of chainsaws hurting my back. Star - Ten - Hash The craziest of alarms Is hidden in A car attack on the pavement circling I am a thoughtless perciever of red walls & Hearts in retread Will it happen? The full handed walks along the salt Shaker and eyes we've just had for lunch When your engine sparks, it's guitars. When I clean my windows - Come over I'll have a new CPU that's compatible with the old Random Access Memory Star-ten-hashing the hurrah daze Somehow I thought we these days A one-world government is all I have Is that enough? Or shall I buy more laundry powder? Pris Campbell, USA Pedestals and Pits Doesn't he think I've noticed the missing pedestal as my feet flail, dangle to reach ground? Hasn't he discovered I can hear the absence of sound as clearly as the songs he used to sing? Can't he see me shiver from the chill of his words, bare armed, so unprepared? I shall dig a deep hole. Sit in the warm sand. Avoid pedestals. Sing my own songs. And, when he has gone, gather my courage... climb out. Heart of the Matter Quiet ocean rhythms net the heart of the matter. Waves rise, recede. Shorebound miracles disguised as jellyfish, shells, and baby turtles rush to greet my damp feet. I gaze into turquoise seas, breathe salt dreams, sing with the dophins, forget my yesterdays. The Gift For the last ten years of her life my aunt sat vigil by the phone. 'He'll remember this year.' Words my mother could recite by rote every spring. Her birth day. When she was young and beautiful he was her sun. His hand in hers, held tightly in the park. Lovewords breathed into his ears. Nightmares soothed in her lap. Her last Christmas, a hastily wrapped package... Bath powder. The stench drove the cat outside. She didn't wait the following spring. When he came for the funeral, eyes searching, I wondered: was it the powder he looked for, or her? Mike Williams, Perth, Western Australia tales of crazy alice walk the crooked path alice you've never gone straight the traffic blurs on the grey street as the fury of breathless rivers words like birds pass through all the silent skies it's birth & death stolen time that slips through lips in busy faces ticking like the clocks wearing smooth the stones & rocks & darkness on the sallow ridge where the sun slips beneath the wheel of earth the seas in wombs of salt call their whales home to the deep the swaying cradle of her moon tides pale angel moon who needs no god phase after phase naked in solitude legendary as guinevere while the gutter offers up its dead on stage you step through dark librarian record your wars give them to the new born this is how we do things here welcome to the world we have made your bed while priests unthread their coats they have no hands that have not destroyed while business men are drawing breath a dollar here a dollar there alice your ears are burning crazed merchants beating on your door in the garden of your flowers you are a small white thing in a fragile dream you know these things i can tell you nothing these streets these houses these towers of commerce new worlds the americas we ventured west for i see you weep for third world hunger though i feel nothing how can i with my belly full? alice you are lost for years in strange fields i could never find you there is that your chair by the fire where you sat consumed by explorers tales as the winds howled beyond glass? we move on a furious train my dear down a steel blue track rocking through the cracked nightheart we are hobos yelling songs to the starry sky i must revisit my hat become dangerously mad look! you say the white rabbit at the window the swirl of unseasonable snow Raven, Australia Four A.M. 4am twenty seven years ago, James ripped screaming into my life. Blood and water. Never slept, he cried till the kookaburras started each morning, chortling at my sleepless muttering. Pete no damn good, long hours in the mill always fell asleep with Jamie in his arms, draped over the couch the TV snowing, Jamie crying. 4am seventeen years ago, James got crook. Blood and water. Hours to days, Alexandra base hospital sitting on plastic chair bum numb watching his face. Pete no damn good, couldn't make it could'nt take it tears on his grimy cheeks unable to speak his fear. 4am last night James crashed his car into lake Ridgely. Blood and water. Into town, identify the body. Pete no damn good, weeping for my sleeping child I got wild smacked him across the face. Blood and f*ucking water...... Beauty in departure Beauty in departure, separating each coil with long fingers. Unknotted, to part in parallel lines. The braid a memory of sun baked earth where you ran laughing in the harsh glare. Undo me. The flax twine of unity. Dancing on the strands sliding through my hands. The pull losing its compulsion, we walk on the tight rope alone. In the end, sending farewells along the string. The braid of a moment when you rested in the palm of my hand in course fibres. Untie the sun for us. This Gun. This here gun, blue metal whisper. Family court ripped my life away peeled it layer by layer exposing every lie every truth. Rests easy in my arms, a lover with a promise in its eye. My brief didn't even show up, bastard took a sickie on me, some suit covered fuck who didn't know my name came on my day in court. click, And the breech beckons a narrow darkness, insert one chance. The stand in bowed down so low I thought he was gunna spread his cheeks he didn't even read the case, her barrister walked all over us, mowed me down dry grass stalks brittle in the wind of the law. Click, and the symmetry becomes unbroken once more smooth patient. she got the house, the business, but the kids... oh Christ two hours a month with the kids I can't how the fuck??? I can't only see them for two hours Mandy will cry herself to sleep every night she needs me you see? Can't they see? swift movement and the barrel is pressed under my chin the metal cool the trigger tight under my finger this here gun this gun this... |
BMP4 nzpoetsonline |
