blackmail press 22
Wil Christie
New Zealand

Wil Christie lives in Wellington, Wil's poetry is both abstract and concrete.
Wil has had works published in Brief, Percutio, Kaupapa:Political Poetry and Landfall, and a book of poetry published by Titus Books, called Luce Cannon.

Post-protest/ant

Make me care
  
    insectate
    tripartheid
blue jokes cracked like heads

Lust stutters in the blood
in this moon phase, even while
we all decide life's pointless.

There's no way out
but through, or the attempt
to annihilate awareness.

You move my heart,
you're such a glut of
typical human details.

    roses, crosses
  stolen goodnesses
first break.  then down

I want to do
things to you. 
Not for you.


2  Cancer sticks

You impress yourself
upon me.  You get better every
  day, yet things stay the same
like the spin of a drill's spiral.

There's bad blood on the grounds
and on the hillside, gorse stretched
over ample ridges, all bulges and bones
and in the gold light, faded, soft
set against a light blue sea.
  If you were inside me

I'd see much more than I can stand
for.  Our mouths are changing
shape to fit.

I cut my throat.
You blow your brains out.
I bleed dry, completely
  from my fingertips.
You shake in the gutter.
I step into moving cars.
You stop your heart with heroin.
      rationality is less glamorous


3 Can you feel it?

All the anger
that's abated
in White girls' arms

destroying even the form
     of games in which
challenge and danger and strength
could be tried out

What's a gesture without structure?
We get left with punk rock
  with bitch fights
with hissed and vicious
attacks on fashion and character

         I stand in the way
use my shoulder to push things over
  as passive as a hillside

White people don't teach kids how
  to be together.
We get taught manners
how to allot resources
  and negotiate
from our separate houses

and you don't like to be called White
      cos it reminds you
   how we're erased
by money and the power we got
by hiding our cultures.

I'm not blaming anyone.
It's my analysis.


4 Myths hold

They hold us down
where people belong.
We eat shit.
The gods don't watch
our imperfections
gross them out.

I try to be antique.
  I hold all the
riches of empire
in my speech.
This glut of idioms
    is cousins with
the pain that sticks in you

from all that desire
as it cakes, as it stales,
crashed hopes littering
   the lawn.  I can read
the tyre tracks back
from your jewellery

through teenage
  fashion attacks
an identity in spasms.


5 I'm getting missed messages

   I scare the kids
the sign in the park
saying no drunks
I'm a pure metal sound in your mouth
  but so what

Excitement bulges under these clothes.
   the muscle is clean
         the hammers, the pliers
         the manners, the dress
Things take the things to things.
I dabble in your physique.
Our English is as thick as foam

on water.  All compliments slide
smack onto the floor, stain rugs.
       I spill your
well wishes down my shirt.

  the sky turned
clockwise in little jumps
back and turns again.


6 Terror nobilis

Can I be direct?
or does the brain fever
obscure central points

The plain mouth
again missing its point
the giant unpredictable sky
  grown more unstable

   The hills fall
taking his money
          making the gale rise
the chaos, the secret
  all the cruel designs
on winking dashboards of BMWs

all the putdowns
we inject inside the kids.
     My fragility
     your fragility
the tiny round of habits
on which my sense of myself rides

the privileges
I don't notice
on which my life depends.


The Cops

                  need something to hate
sooner or later it's likely
    to be you.
Our infringements delight us

We're past the tipping point now.
There's a high probability
  of dangerous weather

droughts and police states
  floods and neo-fascism
banditas kickin it in the high wind
mana motuhake in the kitchen

        money shouting its guts out
poverty rising up around our throats
the mid class eaten back like a cliff

and searching our brains for
  what nobody taught us
skills, ideas, how to get on.
The time is watching itself feel
   on screen.  If we get up
            if we wake up

  stand up.  It's a fabulous day
to start to practise.





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